What’s in Your Kid’s Water?

When I was like four or five years old, I vaguely remember the massive drilling truck driving up the double-tracked dirt pathway that, at the time, was our driveway. My parents hadn’t broken ground to build yet, as it was somewhat contingent upon the location of our well.

My dad anticipated a water table somewhere around 120 feet below the surface, but as he recalls, ‘the guy kept calling me throughout the day, every hundred feet, before we finally hit something’… that day, they drilled a well on my parents’ property a little over 440 feet beneath the surface of the earth.

My Dad was anxiously awaiting the “we hit water” moment, as their entire future, and the future of our growing family, depended on whether there was water easily accessible below the yard. So when that moment finally came, I have to say that there was nothing better than a cool glass of that water from the sink on a hot summer’s day. Or even to load up the squirt guns to blast each other in the mouth.

At the time, they submitted the water for testing and continue to do so over the years – and it turned out fine. In my life, I’ve had all kinds of tap water – from the water fountains in my high school (well before bottled water was a thing) to kitchen sinks in Venice, California. They’ve always had a different taste, but I guess I didn’t really think twice about it because the alternative was either too expensive or too far away from where I was in the moment.

It wasn’t until I started making more money and the idea of starting a family was on the horizon, that I began to consider the fact that unfiltered city tap water may not be the best thing for me or my future children. So I contacted a major consumer water provider and began renting a cooler unit for a few bucks a month, and continuously upgrading my 5-gallon order each year. I started with 15 gallons a month and up until this past December, our family of five has been consuming almost 35 gallons of drinking water every thirty days.

Not only has this become costly, but I’ve got to tell you that it’s no fun lugging these jugs into the garage when it’s blustery and 10º outside. Not to mention the fact that you’re constantly changing them and depending on how many house guests you have for holidays or even while hosting impromptu dinners, can leave you scrambling to have more delivered or running to the supermarket upon availability. My biggest problem right now is that ONLY the hot spigot is childproofed – which means that ALL DAY LONG, Mason (currently 2 years old) is helping himself to cold, expensive water, overfilling the dog dish, watering house plants or dumping it all over the floor while giving me a sing-songy ‘UHHHH OHH DADA’.

As I’m struggling to research a solution, just this week, President Obama declared a state of emergency in Flint, Michigan. Residents of the Michigan city were exposed to elevated levels of lead in their drinking water, after a cost-cutting move in 2014 switched their water source from Lake Huron to the Flint River. While being told by city and state officials that the water was perfectly fine to drink, residents soon began to complain about rashes and strange odors from the river water – and just last year, elevated levels of lead were found in children’s blood. Lead is known to cause cognitive issues in kids and kidney issues in adults.

I know it’s cliché, but sometimes timing is everything—as you may have seen in a previous post or two, my wife and I live a cash-only life. And as such we are always reevaluating lowering our monthly expenditures… this is why I was really curious when PUR reached out to me last week.

I explained to them all of the concerns addressed above and they went ahead and sent me one of their PUR Stainless Steel Faucet Mounts.

The kit came with four different adaptors that fit most standard kitchen sinks. It took me less than three minutes to pop this thing on and get clean water flowing. It removes up to 72 contaminants including lead, heavy metals (mercury and arsenic, to name a couple), agricultural pesticides (why even bother eating organic if your tap water could potentially contain these?), industrial pollutants (have you ever thought about what happens to all of the hard pharmaceuticals that are washed down the drains every year?!), microbial cysts (Google Cryptosporidium, you’ll never forget what you’re drinking!) and the color and taste of chlorine.

The faucet allows regular tap water to run through the center, for washing hands or dishes – and with the flip of a switch, it shifts the water through their MAXION filter (faucet mount and filters are recyclable) of blended carbon and ion exchange materials.

While I’m sure that my neighborhood water is ‘okay’ to drink, I’ve had it. It has a funky twang to it, I’m not sure what it is – probably chlorine? After switching over to the filter, it’s gone. This water is crisp and tastes great. It’s got an electronic filter life indicator that assures me it’s working properly OR when it needs to be replaced (after 100 gallons, roughly 3 months).

We’ve only had this for a week, but I’ve already reduced my previous cooler order by half – and if this continues to work out for us, I’m going to cancel my order all together….and save myself about $700 a year, without even considering the bottled water that we consume here and there.

If you’re considering something like this for your family, if you’re tired of paying a fortune for water delivery or looking for an alternative to the filtered refrigerated pitchers (and BTW the PUR faucet reduces 10x more contaminants than the Brita Pitcher), do your own research before you purchase at PUR.com.

EDITOR’S NOTE: This is a sponsored post by PUR, however, the stories, opinions and thoughts are my own.