Water Filtration near you

Start by finding out what you are dealing with. Many municipalities publish water quality reports, and the utility can tell you whether your street still has lead service lines. If the water is safe and only the taste bothers you, a simple filter at one tap may be all you need.

Health Canada sets the maximum acceptable concentration for lead in drinking water at 0.005 mg/L and identifies lead service lines, the pipes connecting a house to the water main, as the most significant source of lead in drinking water. It also notes that the National Plumbing Code accepted lead as a pipe material until 1975, so older homes are the ones to check. Health Canada recommends replacing the whole line, both the municipal and the private portion, since a partial replacement can leave lead levels high for a while afterwards.

Cities run their own programs. The City of Toronto says a house built before the mid-1950s may have a lead service pipe, offers residents free lead testing of a drinking water sample at an accredited lab and, through its priority replacement program, moves up the replacement of the City's portion when the owner commits to replacing theirs. The Ville de Montréal targets buildings with fewer than 8 dwellings built before 1970, replaces the public portion of the service line and now requires owners to replace the private portion.

Until the line is replaced, a filter certified to NSF/ANSI Standard 53 for lead, as the City of Toronto recommends, is the practical safeguard for drinking and cooking water. Replacing the private portion of a service line involves excavation and plumbing work for a licensed plumber.

Health Canada groups home treatment devices into point-of-use units, which treat water at a single tap, and point-of-entry systems, which treat all the water entering the house. Most filters rely on activated carbon, sometimes combined with other media, and what each one removes depends on its design and certification, not on its size.

For drinking and cooking water, a point-of-use filter at the kitchen sink is usually the better choice: it treats the water you actually swallow, is simpler to maintain and can be certified for health-related contaminants such as lead. A whole-house system makes sense when the problem affects every tap, such as sediment, iron staining or a sulphur smell from a well, or when a well needs disinfection.

The two often work together. A well might have a sediment filter and an ultraviolet unit on the main line, a softener if the water is hard, and a reverse osmosis system at the kitchen sink. If the house has a softener, Health Canada recommends that a portion of the water most often consumed, from the kitchen tap, bypass it to avoid excess sodium, so plan any drinking water filter on that unsoftened line.

A private well is the owner's responsibility; no utility tests it for you. Health Canada advises testing well water for microbial contamination at least once every 6 months and for general water quality once every 2 years, through an accredited laboratory or the local public health unit. In Quebec, the government recommends microbiological analysis at least twice a year and testing for chemical contaminants at least once while the well is in use, by an accredited laboratory.

Test again after flooding, after work on the well or the septic system, or whenever the taste, smell or colour changes. Treatment comes after the results: bacteria call for disinfection, while iron, manganese, hardness or naturally occurring contaminants each need a device designed and certified for them. A water testing service can take samples, explain the results and retest once equipment is installed to confirm it works.

A filter past the end of its life does more harm than good: it stops removing what it was bought for, and a neglected cartridge can let trapped material and bacteria build up. Health Canada advises carefully following the maintenance instructions that come with the device.

Pitchers and faucet-mounted filters need no tools. Under-sink units tie into the cold supply line and often need a hole for their own faucet, and reverse osmosis systems also connect to the drain in a way that keeps waste water from flowing back into the unit. Whole-house systems are cut into the main line with shut-off and bypass valves, so cartridges can be changed without draining the house.

Connecting to the main supply is plumbing work. In Quebec it falls under the Régie du bâtiment du Québec licence that plumbing contractors obtain through the CMMTQ, and elsewhere under provincial rules, so hire a licensed plumber or a water treatment company whose installers hold the required qualifications.