Are water filter taps worth fitting?
What a filter actually removes from UK mains water, the three configurations, and the running cost that decides whether it beats a jug.
- Difficulty
- beginner
- Time
- 15 min
- Read
- 5 min
Short answer
UK mains water is already safe to drink, so a filter is about taste, chlorine and scale rather than safety. A plumbed-in filter tap gives filtered water on demand with no jug to refill and no fridge space used, at the cost of installation and a cartridge every six to twelve months. Whether that beats a jug is mostly about how much you drink.
The honest starting point is that mains water in the UK is treated to a drinking standard and is tested continuously. Nothing here is about making unsafe water safe. It is about chlorine taste, hardness, and the convenience of not having a jug in the fridge — all of which are legitimate reasons, and none of which are health claims.
Step by step
- Be clear what you are trying to fix.Chlorine taste and smell: a carbon filter deals with it comfortably. Hardness and scale: needs a different cartridge or a softener, and a taste filter will not do it. Something specific in your supply: get the water company's published quality report for your postcode first.
- Choose the configuration.Three options: a separate small filter tap alongside the main tap, which needs a spare tap hole; a three-in-one tap delivering hot, cold and filtered from one spout; or an under-sink inline filter feeding the existing cold tap, which filters everything including water for cooking.
- Check you have a tap hole for a separate tap.A dedicated filter tap needs its own hole. Drilling a new hole is straightforward in stainless steel, possible in composite with the right cutter, and not a DIY job in ceramic or in a stone worktop.
- Understand what the cartridge does and does not do.A standard activated carbon cartridge reduces chlorine, some organic compounds and taste and odour. It does not soften water, does not remove dissolved minerals, and does not remove limescale. Read the specific claims for the cartridge you are buying.
- Work out the running cost honestly.Cartridge price divided by its rated life in litres or months, plus how much filtered water you actually draw. Compare with jug filter cartridges over the same period. For a household drinking a lot of water the plumbed system usually wins; for occasional use it does not.
- Check where the cartridge lives and whether you can reach it.Under the sink, with the trap, the waste and the tap tails. Cartridges are usually changed by twisting a housing, which needs clearance around it. Check that clearance before installing.
- Fit an isolating valve on the filter feed.It makes every cartridge change a five-minute job rather than a trip to the stopcock. Many kits include one, and if yours does not, fit one.
- Set a reminder for cartridge changes.An exhausted carbon cartridge does nothing useful, and a very old one can harbour bacterial growth in the medium. The date on the calendar is what keeps the system doing what it was bought for.
- Consider whether a softener is the real answer.In a very hard water area the problem is usually scale in the kettle, the boiler and the shower rather than taste at one tap. A whole-house softener addresses that; a filter tap does not. They solve different problems.
Tips
- Your water company publishes a quality report by postcode, including hardness. Read it before buying anything — it tells you whether your problem is chlorine, hardness, or neither.
- If the complaint is chlorine taste, a jug of tap water left in the fridge uncovered for an hour loses most of it for free. Worth trying before spending anything.
- Reverse osmosis systems remove far more, produce waste water, need a storage tank and are a larger installation. They are a different product from a carbon filter tap, and are rarely necessary on a UK mains supply.
- Buy a system whose cartridges are widely available rather than proprietary to one retailer. A discontinued cartridge turns a filter tap into an ordinary tap.
Alternatives
- Separate filter tap: A small dedicated tap beside the main one, fed through an under-sink cartridge. Filtered water on demand, main tap unaffected, and the cartridge only treats drinking water so it lasts longer. Needs a spare tap hole.
- Three-in-one tap: One tap delivering hot, cold and filtered from a single spout with a separate control. No extra hole needed and a tidier sink. If the tap fails, everything fails together.
- Inline under-sink filter: A cartridge plumbed into the cold supply to the existing tap, so everything from that tap is filtered, including water for cooking. Cheapest to install if a tap change is not wanted, and the cartridge works harder because it treats all cold water.
- Jug filter: No installation, no plumbing, cartridges widely available. Takes fridge space, has to be refilled, and the cartridge cost per litre is usually higher. Perfectly adequate for a household that drinks a couple of litres a day.
- Whole-house water softener: Addresses hardness throughout the house — kettle, boiler, shower, washing machine — which a drinking-water filter does not. A larger installation with salt to buy, and usually a separate unsoftened drinking tap is retained.
Questions people ask
Is filtered water better than UK tap water?
Not in safety terms — UK mains water is treated to a drinking standard and tested continuously. A filter changes taste and odour, mainly by removing chlorine. That is a legitimate reason to fit one, but it is a preference rather than a health improvement.
Do water filter taps remove limescale?
A standard carbon taste filter does not. It reduces chlorine and taste, not dissolved hardness minerals. If scale is the problem, you need a scale-reducing cartridge or, for the whole house, a softener.
How often do filter cartridges need changing?
Typically every six to twelve months, or at a rated volume of water. An exhausted cartridge does nothing useful and a very old one can harbour bacterial growth, so the schedule matters more than it feels like it does.