My wife is pushing for one of these very expensive home water treatment/filtration systems, but it all feels like a scam to me. No one I know has one, so turning to random strangers on the internet for opinions.
Edit: We’re on city water in a decent area. No well water. It’s more about removing the chlorine and microplastics than anything.
It’s not a scam if your town/well water is shitty or causes issues.
I don’t have one, but many restaurants in my city have them because the city water is hard, and will destroy pipes and equipment. Like, if you ran an espresso machine in my city w/o a filter the machine would clog every other week from mineral build up. So in terms of lowing your plumber and equipment bills it’s a very good investment. Often in my city water heater tanks, for example, will last 5-10 years instead of like 20. Also, a lot of people find the hard water in my city unpalatable.
The info about your water should be available through your town or city. The water in my city isn’t treated because it’s perfectly safe and clean, it just has high mineral content. I have lived in places where the water was treated with softeners because it was too hard, and that has other drawbacks.
If I was building a new home in my same town, I would totally install one because it would pay for itself in the long run. I use a Brita filter and that’s good enough for me to clean up the taste, and I do call a plumber to flush my pipes and all that every couple of years to prevent the build up that eats away at them, so that is an ongoing cost I have to eat. And retrofitting a filter system would be stupidly expensive for my building.