Tony The Tool Man and The Aquasana Premium Under Counter Drinking System

We filter our drinking water. That is likely quite pointless: I just got the yearly water quality report from our town and, as usual, our water tests far below acceptable levels of contaminants.

Even more silly is that it tastes fine.

Well, most of the time. Sometimes the chlorine taste is a little too strong. I particularly notice that in tea for some reason.

We are Liberals - Liberals do strange things

But we filter it. The filters take out the chlorine taste and if they happen to remove anything else, that's great. As you can get rid of chlorine by just letting water sit around a bit, I suppose it is all a grand waste of time and money, but there it is: we filter our drinking water.

So how do you do that?

Having established that we are going to filter, the next question is how. Our first solution was the units that screw on to the faucet. Pur makes a unit like this and you can find them at BJ's and other stores. They run about $30 or $40 and you just screw them on.

They are awful.

First, they are bulky and they get in the way. You might not be able to rinse out a big pan with one of these attached. Well, no problem: unscrew it.

Unscrewing it is annoying enough by itself, but has another downside. These things are cheap. Take them off a few times and you end up with leaks. That's what happened to us, and after wasting another $40 on something that was always in our way, we decided to do something smarter.

Wrenches are expensive

My first thought was to call a plumber. Quotes exceeding $400.00 quickly changed my mind and sent me looking for something I could install myself.

I scoured Google and found the Aquasana Premium Under Counter Drinking System. At $180.00, this seemed more reasonable and it had good reviews and promises that the installation would be easy.

Mr. Good Wrench

That "easy installation" promise is important to me. My wife calls me Tony The Tool Man, but as an ironic joke: I am dangerous with tools. Clumsy, clueless and helpless, I do not have much "mechanical ability".

Frankly, most mechanical projects fill me with dread. It is usually far less costly to hire someone to do anything rather than have me attempt it, screw it up, break things, and end up having to call a highly amused professional anyway. Yet, I felt I could do this installation. The on-line instructions really looked simple. My wife was a little dubious, but I threw caution to the winds and ordered it.

Comes with GREAT instructions!

Luckily enough, I was right. The instructions were excellent. they included everything I needed and I had everything installed and working very quickly. We had filtered water with nothing in our way and I hadn't ruined anything putting it in. I was rather pleased with myself.

If a fool can screw it up, I'm ready to try

Oh, how the Tool Gods must have laughed that day! They knew that in six months I would need to change the filters. I knew that too, but I didn't know what a mess I would make of it.

Six months later, with no thought of disaster in my mind, I poked my head under the sink with two new filters in hand.

No, really, it is simple

The actual process is as simple as could be. You unscrew two caps, remove two filters, insert the new ones and close it up. You don't even need tools other than scissors to cut open the packaging.

Hah.

What I forgot is that while most screws and caps turn counterclockwise to be removed, some are designed to be turned in the opposite direction. That's sometimes done for safety reasons: old propane fittings use a reverse thread. I have never quite understood why that makes anything safer, and apparently newer fittings do not have this, so maybe it wasn't for safety. Maybe it was just to frustrate klutzes like me.

Lefties - how appropriate!

Anyway, this Aquasana thing has one cap with a left hand thread and one with a right hand thread. I can't imagine any reason in the world for doing that, but that is how it works.

The enclosure actually has helpful little arrows molded into its plastic which would inform you which way the threads turn if you were smart enough to look at them.

I was not.

A bit unfair

Well, that is a little unfair to me. I didn't look because I couldn't see them.

Somewhere I read that there was no need to take everything out from under the sink, that a person of ordinary dexterity could reach under and unscrew the caps in place. In fact, this method seemed to be the best method, as it would not involve decoupling any water fittings. Given how many times I have been made truly insane by causing an intractable leak for myself, this seemed preferable. So I couldn't see the stupid little arrows, OK?

On the other hand..

I wouldn't have noticed the arrows.

That is indisputable, because, after futile attempts to unscrew the cap in place, including attacking it with vise grips, I gave up, took the whole thing out and continued to attack it with vise grips and pretty much destroyed it before, duh, I realized that this side had a left hand thread.

As you might expect, this revelation didn't lead to instant gratification either, because my prior grunting and straining in the wrong direction had socked the cap in unbelievably tightly. I did finally get it off, but distorted it quite a bit in the process.

The distortion worried me. The water fitting enters through the now mangled cap. I knew the gods were laughing, slapping their knees and pointing down at me. I had once again destroyed something and when I hooked it up and turned it back on, water was going to be spurting out joyfully. I just knew it.

Imagine my surprise when it did not immediately leak. Cautiously I felt around the cap; there was no sign of moisture. Could I really have dodged my obvious fate? I set the kitchen timer for fifteen minutes and went off to do something not involving tools. I put down a big pile of paper towels under the unit in preparation for what I knew had to come.

But it didn't. Everything was dry when the timer went off and it has remained dry for a full half year. For once, I got lucky.

Six months later

Tomorrow I need to change the filters again. Just in case, I ordered a replacement basin from Aquasana. I don't dare chance that my luck will hold again, so I am ready to replace the whole thing. An extra $30 is better than a big mess. I am ready!

And I am ready to turn the caps in the right direction.