I think I got this figured out….I wasn’t trying to chase a “better” or designer system. What I was trying to do was reduce my future operating costs for a comparable system.
My new house had a 3 stage RO water filter system: EcoWater 175…
I’ve never heard of this company, and the system looks pretty similar to ones made by Kenmore, Whirpool, and EcoPure, and the replacement filters and membrane all looked the same, so I thought they were interchangeable.
Nope, I was wrong. The EcoWater system uses a slightly thicker thread on the pre/post filter so that you can only buy the filters from EcoWater, not anyone else…. That annoyed me, so I looked into replacing the entire system with something similar….
I found that the EcoPure ECOP30 system, Whirlpool WHER25, Whirpool WHAR055, kenmore ultrafilter 650. and kenmore ultrafilter 450 all are all very similar systems with the same post and pre filters and membranes that can be used interchangeably. There is no difference in performance in those systems and the EcoWater system, as there is nothing special about the different filter housing, and they all use the same filter type. EcoWater was just an ahole company to make their filter thread different so they could vendor lock their customers.
So I ended up buying an EcoPure water system, since it looked similar to the EcoWater system, was the second cheapest price, The cheapest priced system that uses the same filter was the Whirpool WHAR055, which looked really flimsy…..
All I had to do was replace the EcoWater filter housing with the EcoPure housing. Everything else, all the hose fittings, tank, etc was pretty much the same…
The future running cost will be much lower and more readily available generic filters and membrane since gther are 5 different RO systems that share the same filter/membrane design, unlike the EcoWater that intentionally changed the thread of the filters to vendor lock customers into there own branded filters….
The membrane is good for 3 years, and the pre/post filters are around $30 for both, and I think can last for about 1.5 years given my usage…. Score! EcoWater’s replacement costs are nearly double. Screw you EcoWater.
I don’t need anything more fancy than 3 stage..
Anyone want an older EcoWater 175 system????Makes a great doorstop.
