Drinking Water Cost Comparison

[laconstance]

I didn't know that all three companies bought Leon city water, and trucked the purified water to Guanajuato. What a waste! I decided last fall that I no longer wanted to buy bottled water and WOULDN'T buy from CocaCola or Pepsi. My regular independent water guy was dependable, but the water often tasted musty. So, time for a change. I decided to filter my own. After doing a fair amount of research, I bought a 3-Stage Horizontal Faucet Mount PUR filter #FM-9400B for my kitchen faucet. The technical info says that it filters solids (your basic mud), chlorination byproducts and industrial chemicals, heavy metals (we are in a heavily mineralized mining area), agricultural chemicals and pesticides (some reservoirs are in these areas), and microbial cysts including giardia. Here's the result:

Living alone, I used one 5-gal bottle in about 7 days, at a cost of 22 pesos, or about $14.40 U.S. for a two-month period. I used one filter in two months, at a cost of $8.66. You earn back the cost of the filter device itself in about 8 months, after which you'd save about $2.87 per month, hardly worth mentioning. BUT, the filtered water tastes great! And, I don't have those big jugs to wrestle, nor am I supporting "big cola" with my water purchase!

I know that some norteamericanos install whole-house filtering systems, but to me that sounds like overkill. And just one more thing to maintain and worry about. I'm very happy with my little one-faucet system. I bought mine, along with six extra filters, from Amazon.com, and brought it to Mexico in my luggage.