Do I Need Whole-Home Reverse Osmosis?
Whole-home RO puts reverse osmosis water at every tap, at a premium. Four-stage whole-home filtration plus RO at the kitchen sink gets most families the same drinking water for far less. Here’s how to choose.
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Two ways to great water
In this guide
The short answer
Probably not, unless you want RO water at every tap and don’t mind paying a premium for it. Whole-home RO works, and we install it. For most families, four-stage whole-home filtration takes care of bathing, laundry and cleaning, and reverse osmosis at the kitchen sink handles the smallest contaminants in the water you drink and cook with. You get the same drinking water for a lot less, up front and every year after.
Two ways to get great water
Whole-home RO
Every drop that enters the house goes through a large reverse osmosis system, with a softener and filtration in front, a storage tank and a pump to send the water back out. Best quality at every tap, at a premium.
Filtration plus kitchen RO
HydroOne or HydroDuo treats all your water with four stages where it enters the house. HydroSip adds four-stage RO at the kitchen sink for drinking and cooking.
What your water does in each part of the house
Most of the water in a home goes to showers, laundry, dishes and toilets. What matters there is no hardness and no chlorine taste or smell: soft skin and hair, clean laundry, no scale on glass and fixtures, and a water heater that isn’t filling up with minerals. Four-stage filtration and softening does exactly that.
A small share of your water is the water you drink and cook with. That’s where the smallest contaminants matter most, and where reverse osmosis earns its place. HydroSip puts it right at the kitchen tap.
Why whole-home RO needs a softener in front of it
An RO membrane is the finest filter in the system, which also makes it the most delicate. Hardness minerals scale it up, and chlorine damages most residential RO membranes. So a whole-home RO system still needs a softener and carbon filtration ahead of it to protect the membrane. We design that in.
In other words, whole-home RO is the same filtration and softening a Hydro package already gives you, plus a much bigger RO system, a storage tank and a pump on top of it.
What each one costs to own
| Whole-home RO | Filtration plus kitchen RO | |
|---|---|---|
| Up front | Softener and filtration, a large RO system, storage and a pump | One four-stage system plus an under-sink RO |
| Membranes | Large membranes, a not-inexpensive replacement roughly every other year | One small under-sink membrane |
| Water to drain | RO runs on all the water the house uses | RO runs only on drinking and cooking water |
| Power and space | A pump, a storage tank and room for both | No house pump or storage tank |
| Drinking water | RO at every tap | RO at the kitchen faucet |
Both give you excellent water to bathe in and RO water to drink. The difference is how much you pay to also send RO water to the shower, the washing machine and the toilet.
When whole-home RO makes sense
If you want the best water you can get at every faucet and the premium doesn’t bother you, whole-home RO is a great system, and our Hydro360 is designed around your property: pretreatment, storage, drainage and space. We’ll also tell you when your water test gives you a specific reason to treat every tap.
Why we recommend the two-step approach for most families
We’ve found it’s a lot more cost-effective for most homeowners to get all their water to a really high quality with four-stage filtration, then use point-of-use RO for the water they drink and cook with. Two-step treatment puts the right technology where it does the most good, without the ongoing expense of running a whole house through a membrane.
It’s why both complete Hydro packages include HydroSip, and why we publish the installed price so you can see the difference for yourself.
How Sunstorm treats the whole home
We use the highest-performing multi-stage media we can buy, size it to your water and household, and add reverse osmosis where you drink.
HydroOne or HydroDuo
Catalytic carbon, KDF and 10% cross-linked softening resin treat the water where it enters your home, so every shower, sink and appliance gets filtered, soft water.
See HydroOne →HydroSip RO
Four-stage reverse osmosis under the sink with its own faucet, for drinking water, coffee, cooking and ice.
See HydroSip →Want RO at every tap? We install Hydro360 whole-home reverse osmosis too. For most homes, filtration and softening plus kitchen RO is the better value: the same drinking water at the sink, without paying to purify the water you shower, flush and wash with. See Hydro360
Questions homeowners ask
Is the drinking water any different between the two?
At the kitchen tap, both give you reverse osmosis water. Whole-home RO adds it to every other tap too.
Can whole-home RO water affect my plumbing?
Water with very few minerals can be harder on some plumbing materials. That’s part of designing a whole-home RO system, and we’ll walk you through how your design handles it.
Does a softener or carbon filter replace RO?
No. A softener removes hardness and carbon removes chlorine taste and smell. RO is the step for the smallest contaminants in your drinking water.
Do both Hydro packages include RO?
Yes. HydroOne and HydroDuo complete packages both include HydroSip RO at the kitchen sink.
Sources
- NSF: reverse osmosis systems
- NSF: water softener standard (NSF/ANSI 44)
- NSF: standards 42, 53 and 401
- CDC: home water treatment systems
- EPA WaterSense: water softeners
About this guide: We check our guides against current EPA, CDC, state and utility sources and update them as rules and equipment change.
