If your water tastes of chlorine, smells like a swimming pool, leaves grit in the kettle or stains a white sink, water filtration is the fix. A water softener is not. The two solve different problems, and fitting the wrong one is the most expensive mistake homeowners make with water filtration in San Antonio.
A softener removes the calcium and magnesium that scale your water heater and spot your glassware. It does not remove chlorine, sediment, iron, sulphur smell or taste. If your complaint is how the water tastes or smells, a softener on its own will not change it.
What water filtration actually removes
Chlorine and chloramine taste
The disinfectant that makes city water safe to deliver is also what most people are tasting and smelling. Carbon removes it, which is why filtered water tastes flat by comparison rather than of the pool.
Sediment and grit
Fine sand and scale fragments that block aerators, jam toilet fill valves and score the seats in mixer taps. A sediment stage ahead of everything else protects the rest of the plumbing and the equipment behind it.
Iron and the orange staining that follows
Rust-coloured marks in the toilet bowl, the shower tray and the laundry. Common on private wells west and north of the city, and it will ruin a softener resin bed if it is not taken out first.
Hydrogen sulphide, the rotten-egg smell
Usually worse on the hot side. It needs oxidation or a dedicated filter; running it through a softener does nothing and shortens the softener.
Dissolved solids at the drinking tap
Reverse osmosis at one tap handles what a whole-house filter is not designed to: total dissolved solids, sodium, and the last of the taste. It is a point-of-use job, not a whole-house one.
Scale, by way of a softener
Hardness is the one thing water filtration does not address. If your real problem is scale on the heating element and spots on the glasses, that is a water softener, and we will tell you so rather than sell you a filter.
Chloramine is not chlorine, and it changes the water filtration unit
SAWS disinfects with chloramine — chlorine combined with ammonia — rather than free chlorine, because it holds its residual further out into the distribution network. For anyone specifying water filtration, that one fact decides the media.
Standard granular activated carbon removes free chlorine very efficiently and chloramine only slowly. A carbon bed sized for chlorine will therefore pass chloramine straight through and the taste people were trying to remove stays. Catalytic carbon is the answer: the same material with a surface treated to break the chloramine bond, and it is what any competent water filtration system in this city should be built around.
It matters beyond taste. Chloramine is harmful to fish, so anyone keeping an aquarium needs it removed rather than merely reduced. It also degrades certain rubber compounds, which is why older flexible connectors and some toilet flappers fail earlier here than the manufacturer expected.
If you have already fitted a cartridge filter and the smell is still there, catalytic carbon is almost certainly what is missing.
Three different jobs, three different pieces of equipment
Most of the confusion in this category comes from treating “water treatment” as one product. It is three, and a house can need one, two or all of them. Which you need depends on what the test says, not on what a salesperson found convenient to carry.
| What you notice | What it is | What fixes it |
|---|---|---|
| Spots on glasses, scale on the element, soap will not lather | Hardness: calcium and magnesium | Softener |
| Chlorine taste, pool smell, flat coffee | Disinfectant residual | Whole-house carbon filter |
| Grit in the aerator, toilet fill valve sticking | Sediment | Sediment pre-filter |
| Orange staining, metallic taste | Iron | Oxidation or iron filter, ahead of the softener |
| Rotten-egg smell, worse on hot | Hydrogen sulphide | Oxidation or a dedicated filter |
| Water is fine but you still buy bottled | Dissolved solids and taste | Reverse osmosis at one tap |
Order matters as much as equipment. Sediment comes out first, then iron and sulphide, then softening, and disinfection last. Put a softener in front of untreated iron and you will be replacing the resin bed long before its time.
What drives the price
We do not publish a single figure for water filtration because the number moves more than it does on a water heater or a disposal. What it costs depends on how many stages your test actually calls for and where the equipment has to go. These are the factors that move it, and we give you the number before anything is fitted.
| Factor | Why it moves the price |
|---|---|
| How many stages the test calls for | A single carbon tank is a different job from sediment, iron, softening and UV in series. |
| Point-of-use or whole-house | An under-sink reverse osmosis unit is a fraction of a whole-house install. |
| Where the main enters the house | A garage wall with a drain nearby is straightforward. A run through a slab or an attic is not. |
| Drain and power availability | Backwashing equipment needs a drain and a receptacle. Adding either is separate work. |
| Bypass and isolation valves | Anything we fit gets valved so it can be serviced without shutting the house down. |
| Permit and inspection where required | Some jurisdictions treat treatment equipment as permitted work. We handle it either way. |
Under-sink reverse osmosis, and where it belongs
Whole-house water filtration and point-of-use reverse osmosis solve different problems, and the households that are happiest have both doing their own job.
A whole-house unit treats everything entering the building: taste and odour at every tap, sediment out of the water heater, chloramine off the shower. What it does not do is remove dissolved solids, and that is what an RO unit at the kitchen sink is for. RO pushes water through a semi-permeable membrane and takes out the great majority of dissolved minerals, nitrate and anything else at that scale.
Two practical notes. RO wastes water as part of how it works — typically two to four gallons to the drain for each gallon produced, though modern permeate-pump systems do better. And RO strips minerals indiscriminately, so many units add a remineralising stage afterwards purely so the water does not taste flat.
The sensible arrangement in most San Antonio homes is a softener for hardness, whole-house water filtration for chloramine and sediment, and a small RO at the kitchen tap for drinking and cooking. Each is doing something the others cannot.
How a water filtration system gets sized
- We test the water at your house. Hardness, iron, pH and, on a private well, a laboratory analysis rather than a strip.
- We work out peak demand from fixture count and household size, because a filter that cannot pass enough flow gives you low pressure in every shower.
- We specify the stages in treatment order and tell you which ones you can skip, including the ones we would not fit if it were our house.
- You get the full number in writing before anything is ordered, with the annual running cost separated out from the installation.
If the test comes back saying you do not need water filtration, that is what we will tell you. A free in-home water test is a sales tool as often as it is a diagnostic, which is why our numbers come with the reading they were based on.
Where the equipment goes and what it does to pressure
Every vessel water passes through costs a little pressure, and a house that already runs at the low end of normal notices it.
Order matters. Sediment pre-water filtration comes first, because grit shortens the life of everything behind it. Water water filtration media comes next. A softener goes after the carbon, so the resin is not being asked to sit in chloramine year round. Anything point-of-use sits last, at the fixture.
Size is the other half. A cartridge housing rated for six gallons a minute in a house that peaks at twelve will drop pressure every time two showers run together, and people blame the water filtration when the specification was simply too small. We size to measured peak demand rather than to occupancy, because a house with four bathrooms and two occupants still has a peak.
Physically, the equipment wants the same things a softener does: space at the main before any branch, a drain within reach for backwashing units, and protection from the afternoon sun if it is going outside.
Servicing a water filtration system you already have
| Situation | The usual call |
|---|---|
| Pressure has dropped across the house | A blocked sediment cartridge. Usually a cartridge change |
| Taste has come back after a year or two | Carbon media is exhausted. Media swap rather than a new system. |
| Reverse osmosis tap runs slowly or stops | Membrane or storage tank pressure. Usually repairable |
| Equipment is leaking at the head | Valve head seals. Worth repairing on a newer unit, rarely on an old one. |
| Staining returned and the water filtration unit is over ten years old | Media and vessel both past their life. Replacement |
- Change sediment cartridges on schedule, not when pressure drops
- Have carbon media checked at the interval the manufacturer states
- Sanitise a reverse osmosis unit when the membrane is changed
- Keep a bypass valve fitted so service does not mean shutting off the house
- Retest the water after any change to the supply or a new well pump
Cartridges, backwashing tanks and what each costs to run
There are two shapes of whole-house water filtration and the difference is mostly about what you do afterwards.
A cartridge system holds replaceable elements in housings. It is cheaper to install, it takes up less room, and you change cartridges on a schedule — typically every six to twelve months depending on the media and your usage. The cost is ongoing and predictable, and it is a job most people can do themselves once shown.
A backwashing tank system holds a bed of media in a vessel with a control head that periodically flushes it. Nothing gets replaced for years; the media itself is renewed at intervals measured in half-decades. It costs more up front, needs a drain and power, and it is the better answer for a household with high usage or a heavy sediment load.
Neither is universally right. We quote both against your measured water and your actual usage, with the running cost of each over ten years, because that is the number that decides it rather than the price on the day.
Reading your own water report
SAWS publishes an annual water quality report and it is free. Five lines on it do most of the work when specifying water filtration, and they are worth knowing how to read.
Total dissolved solids tells you the mineral load and sets whether reverse osmosis is worth adding. Hardness in grains per gallon is the softener number, not a water filtration number. Chloramine residual confirms what the disinfectant is and roughly how much carbon capacity you need. Turbidity hints at sediment load, though a house at the end of a long run often sees more than the published figure. And pH matters because very low pH is corrosive to copper and very high pH reduces how well carbon performs.
A city report describes what left the plant and travelled the network. It does not describe what arrives at your particular tap after the service line and the house piping have had their say, which is why we test at the fixture before quoting any water filtration rather than working from the published averages alone.
Water filtration across San Antonio and the towns around it
We install and service water filtration in San Antonio, Helotes, Boerne, Bulverde, Schertz, Converse, Stone Oak and Somerset. On SAWS supply the specification is fairly consistent — chloramine and hardness with sediment varying by neighbourhood and by how old the mains are in your street.
Out towards the Hill Country a good number of properties are on private wells, and the water filtration there is a different exercise entirely: iron, sulfur, nitrate and bacteria all come into it and nothing is specified without a lab result first. If that is you, the well water treatment page is the one you want.
Work is carried out by licensed plumbers under our Responsible Master Plumber, license RMP-43333, issued by the Texas State Board of Plumbing Examiners. You can verify that license yourself.
What San Antonio homeowners say
Reviews pulled live from our Google Business Profile, not retyped here.
Frequently asked questions
Do I need a filter if I already have a softener?
Possibly. A softener deals with hardness and nothing else. If your complaint is taste, smell, staining or grit, the softener was never going to fix it and a filter is a separate piece of equipment.
Is San Antonio city water safe to drink without water filtration?
City water is treated to meet drinking water standards before it reaches you. Water water filtration here is about taste, smell, sediment and what the disinfectant residual does to coffee and ice, not about making unsafe water safe.
Whole-house or just the kitchen tap?
Both have a place. Whole-house carbon deals with chlorine at every outlet including the shower. Reverse osmosis at one tap deals with dissolved solids and taste for drinking and cooking. Plenty of houses end up with one of each.
Will a filter fix my orange staining?
If the staining is iron, yes, but the iron has to come out before the water reaches a softener or it will destroy the resin. That sequencing is the part most often got wrong.
How often do cartridges need changing?
Sediment cartridges are the frequent ones and depend entirely on how much sediment your supply carries. Carbon media runs far longer. We set the interval from your water rather than from a box label.
Does reverse osmosis waste water?
It sends some water to drain as part of how it works. On a single drinking tap the volume is small, and newer units are better at it than older ones. On a whole-house scale it would not be the right choice.
Can you service a water filtration system another company installed?
Yes. Cartridge changes, media swaps, valve head repairs and reverse osmosis membranes on equipment we did not fit are routine work.
Do I need a permit for water treatment equipment?
It depends on the jurisdiction and on what the install involves, particularly where a drain connection is added. We deal with the permit where one is required.
What if the test says I do not need anything?
Then you do not buy anything. We would rather tell you the water is fine than fit equipment that solves a problem you do not have.
Does water filtration remove hardness?
No. Carbon takes out taste, odour, chloramine and sediment; it leaves calcium and magnesium exactly where they were. Hardness needs ion exchange, which is a softener. The two are separate pieces of equipment doing separate jobs.
How often do cartridges need changing?
Six to twelve months for most whole-house water filtration cartridges in San Antonio, sooner where sediment is heavy. The honest indicator is a pressure drop rather than the calendar, so it is worth noting your normal pressure when the water filtration system is new.
Is bottled water not simpler?
For drinking, it is a reasonable substitute. It does nothing for the shower, the washing machine, the dishwasher or the water heater, which is where most of the water in a house actually goes and where chloramine and sediment do their damage.
Find out what is actually in your water before you buy equipment for it.
We test at your house, tell you which stages your water calls for, and give you the number in writing before anything is ordered.