A little over a year ago I wrote How To Quit Drinking Coffee, and my beverage of choice continues to be water. It has to be cold. The colder the better and if it has chunks of ice in it that’s great.

The best water I’ve ever tasted has come from the mountains. Melting off the snowy caps. Some well water is good, usually in rural areas. City water is often the worst and while it can be filtered at the tap it doesn’t compare to fresh running water off a mountain. Of course you are hoping a bear hasn’t recently taken a leak upstream. Unfortunately mountain water isn’t free unless you actually live in the mountains near a fresh running creek or stream. With current gas prices, driving to the mountains to stock up on water probably isn’t a viable option.

Water services delivery
Pros - They provide the unit for a small monthly fee (around $5/month usually) and if it breaks down they’ll bring you a new one. They deliver the water so no gas prices in driving to get it yourself. Water quality is high.
Cons - water can get expensive (as much as $1/gallon or more in some cases)

Fill and stock the water yourself
You can buy your own 5-gallon containers, cooling unit (or transfer to a gallon jugs with a funnel) and stock the water yourself, usually at around 30 cents a gallon.

Pros - no rental fees, good exercise lugging around the 5-gallong jugs, high water quality
Cons - moving around the water can be heavy and cumbersome, gas prices have to be factored into cost per gallon of water.

We have a local Safeway about a half mile away that has a machine where we can take our own 5-gallon containers in and pay $.39 per gallon. This water isn’t as good as the factory where they create their own water, but it’st he option we are currently using.

Filter the water yourself from the tap
We haven’t tried this option ourselves although I have tasted water from others who are doing this and it didn’t seem much better than straight tap water. Admittedly, I’m unexperienced in this one and remain curious to hear what readers who have tried this option at home and what are the pros/cons? Not ruling this one out, but it seems like there are many different filtering and purifying options and don’t know where to start. Also, how often do you have to buy/change the filters?

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