It was a dark and stormy night. Thunder rolled over the land and lightning shot from the sky incinerating trees, cars and unlucky people caught out in the worst storms since records began. Out of the dark came a hulking shape. It was transparent, and water sloshed from side to side as it moved down the road, but no! Disaster struck, a little pebble made a small crack in the jug and it’s life force, the magical water seeped into the ground and the transparent walls of the Brita jug finally fell silent.
The thunder rolled on …
Well, I had to make a post about water filters exciting in some way eh? Now, here’s what I really wanted to tell you.
We’re on our second water filter at home. The first one was a Brita jug, which worked perfectly fine until a small crack appeared in the bottom. Filters lasted slightly less than a month before it became obvious the water wasn’t as pure.
My litmus test is my bedside glass of water. If it’s still drinkable in the morning then the water filter works! Without a filter, water in Blarney where I live tastes fine out of the tap, but left overnight it has a distinctly metallic taste.
As I said, the Brita jug was fine, but water leaked out of that slowly but surely and it was time to replace the jug. Little did I know how much the Brita was costing us ..
A few days later we were shopping in Tesco and I remembered the water filter. We made our way to the hardware section of the store, and discovered quite an array of shapes and sizes, not only from Brita, but also Tesco’s own brand. I compared prices and the Tesco filters were half the price of the Brita ones, so buying a Tesco branded water filter jug was a no brainer.
Back home, the Tesco jug works great. The filter seems to last longer and my glass of water can still quench my thirst in the morning a month after installing it. If you’re going to buy a water filter, go do yourself a favour and buy the Tesco one. It’s cheaper and works just as well as the Brita one.
If on the other hand you still have a Brita jug, the Tesco filter may fit it if your jug uses the long and round filters. That’ll save you about €3 a month and as they say, “every little helps” 🙂
No, I’m not paid by Tesco for this. I think it’s too good a bargain to pass up if you use a water filter at home! Normal WordPress, tech and “popular culture” blogging will resume shortly!
PS. ‘course the Brita filter might have been doing more work because the water was leaking out of it, and thus clogging up the filter more quickly!
Thanks for the story and the tip!
How is Adam?
Glad you liked it Grannymar!
Adam is super. He has the cutest little laugh, and when he laughs or smiles I just melt inside! 🙂
He had his second round of vaccinations on Tuesday though, and that didn’t go down well. He was baptised on Sunday and I was so proud. He was good as gold all day! He was a little terror on Monday, but we expected that. He gets like that after being over stimulated by a crowd.
Doh! It’s Brita, not Britta. All corrected except the permalink.
I remember in Holland we had a little tap beside the main one that piped water from a filter behind the sink. A lot of trouble to install but you don’t have to constantly pour water into it
did you have a look on ebay for filters? they might be cheaper
Via Mark Jaquith: http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/117/features-message-in-a-bottle.html
Brita is not good enough. Brita does some corrections. It takes out a bit, but it doesn’t leave a healthy water. I have seen several times a test done with electrolosys and measured what was in the water after Brita.
Water should be empty enough to take the toxins out of the body on a daily basis. Most of the waters today aren’t.
Thanks for sharing all these insights. I will surely take note of all of these. I have in fact bookmarked your site.
Great advice! Saving money is always great. Don’t forget to test your water. If you test your tap water, you might find out that the metallic taste is really nothing to worry about, and you’re just wasting money on filters and jugs.
I just bought some Tesco filters for home and some Britas for work. Comparing the specifications, Brita claim that their filters remove lead, copper and aluminium, whereas the Tesco filters claim only to reduce hardness and chlorine.
If true, this means that Tesco filters are useless from the health point of view whereas Brita have some benefit. Does anyone know any more?
But what makes the water better isn’t the jug ( except if the jug is made from a shitty plastic, which can be harmful…)! Is the filter! There is lots different types of filter and I doubt that tesco has done more research then brita on that subject. A good filter wont only filter impurities e.g. chlorine, suspended solids etc… it will enriched the water with minerals e.g. Calcium and Magnesium, which consequently higher the ph of the water, making the water alkaline.
If the brita filter fits perfectly on the tesco jug, than I wld have no prob on buyin a tesco value jug.
ps: I do not work for brita. But I sld mention that I was in the lab and I tested a sample of brita filtered tap water and the ph increased wa 1.6. The water ph was 7 and after i filtered it it was 8.6.