3M 3US-PS01 Product reviews

Ratings

Category: Tools & Home Improvement
Brand: 3M
Model: 3US-PS01
Availability: Online/In-Store
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3M 3US-PS01 Product reviews

3M 3US-PS01 Review by Travis

Product performed as promised, all you need for installation is a screw driver, wrench, and drill. The whole process took 15minutes and the results were great. Our water used to have an odd odor and taste, now it is clean and no weird taste. The adapters and hose lines fit perfectly and have not had any leaks in the last 48hours.

3M 3US-PS01 Review by cineadbrewco (Houston, TX)

I am from the Northwest and was spoiled by the pure water up there. When I moved to Texas the tap water gave me headaches and stomach problems, so I started buying bottled water jugs (Ozarka Spring water). This solved the problem but is expensive (more than $1/gallon) and uses a lot of plastic. I bought the Filtrete system and installed it. The cost per gallon is about 1 cent, which is awesome. The quality is not quite as good as Ozarka Spring Water, but I feel better about not using so much plastic and importing someone else's ground water that should probably stay in the ground there.

I will say the Filtrete installation may not be as easy as the instructions make it out to be. If you have standard stems (where the water comes out), it's very easy and intuitive. But I had a flared stem and the compression fitting that comes with the system did not work. I spent an hour trying to modify the plastic bits before I realized I just needed to buy an adapter at the hardware store. $3 later I had a connector with a flare fitting on one side and the standard straight fitting on the other. The filtrete hose than connected in just a minute.

Be sure when you are tightening the nut for the compression fitting at the input hose (where the water comes out of the wall and goes into the first blue tubing for your filter) that you keep pushing the plastic tube into the fitting while you are tightening the fitting tightly. I used a wrench to tighten it well, but you could use pliers. This is important because if you don't keep pushing it into the fitting or if you only hand-tighten the tube will get pushed out of the fitting when tightening, or will leak. So remember: hand-tighten the fitting that goes to the faucet (the output), but wrench tighten the fitting that comes from the wall (the input).

All in all, the quality of the water is good. There is a fishy smell to tap water in Houston and it deals with this nicely. The taste is not quite as good as the Ozarka spring water, but is definitely better than the tap water. It's hard to beat ground water. But for the money, this is a very respectable unit.

It's also convenient. The flow is labeled as 1.5 gpm, and I believe it. The flow rate is great where I am (fairly high pressure area). I could it use it for washing if I wanted to and I can certainly use it to fill a pot of water for cooking pasta. This is much more convenient than the Pur water filter which has a severely reduced flow when filtering. Also, I read many reviews where people said the Pur system was very flimsy and leaked easily. That's primarily why I went with the under-the-sink Filtrete system. Also, the Filtrete is suggested by the National Science Foundation for water filtration, which I liked.

Replacement every 6 months is a deal as well since the Brita system requires constant filling and replacement every 2 months. And the filters are very reasonably priced considering the volume of water they can handle. As I said, about 1 penny per gallon for me.

I highly recommend this system. I only gave it 4 stars because I needed to buy a different compression fitting and because the flavor of the water is not absolutely perfect (it's very good, but doesn't beat ground water). The instructions should have mentioned what to do with a flared stem end, at the very least.

3M 3US-PS01 Review by C. Lauretano (Phoenix, AZ USA)

Do you hate the taste of chlorinated water? Do you live in an apartment where it's a big no-no to make any modifications? Do you hate the aesthetics, flow rate, and filter cost of Pur and other filters installed at the aerator? I'm a big water drinker, to the tune of at least a gallon daily. After moving to a new city, I grew to hate the taste of the public water supply. At the office, I became accustomed to the purity of a reverse osmosis system, and grew weary of the chlorinated water at home.

Enter the 3M Filtrete Advanced Under-Sink Water Filtration System. It took less than 20 minutes to install. Since the tubing to my faucet was already plastic, I was able to simplify the installation a bit from the instructions, discarding the compression fitting adapter and one of the included hoses and inserting the hose from the faucet directly into the push fitting filter output. After running the cold water for 5 minutes to initialize the filter, I filled a glass. From the first sip, I was hooked. I'm sure there are still plenty of harmful chemicals, like fluoride and the prescription medicine that gets into the water supply, but the taste is outstanding. I don't have water from the office here to test with, but I am sure that in a back to back taste test, I wouldn't be able to distinguish between RO-filtered water and water from my Filtrete system.

The flow rate is ever so slightly diminished. My aerator has a small leak I haven't gotten around to fixing, that used to spray a stream of water right toward my face if I fully opened the tap. Now, it sprays closer to chest level. Very scientific study here, of course, but what I'm getting at is that you can trust 3M's claim that it has a minimal impact on the flow rate. My favorite part of this system is the simplicity. No holes to drill in the stainless steel sink, no extra faucet cluttering up the counter area, and the absolute minimum number of potential points of leakage (three, including the point where the filter canister screws in). If the staff from your apartment's management ever find themselves in your unit, they'll never know. When you move, you can take your Filtrete with you, as the installation doesn't require any modifications to the existing parts under your sink.

Are there better systems available? Yes, a multi-stage filtration and reverse-osmosis system would surely yield cleaner water. I'm still giving this 5 stars, as it provides all of the tangible benefits of a RO system costing 10 times as much, in that it provides water devoid of any taste or odor. It is also much more compact (no storage tank) and filter replacement costs are much lower.

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