Customer Reviews for Watts Zero-Waste Under Sink Reverse Osmosis Water Filtration System

I've had mine for 4 years, and it has been good, but not perfect. The Good: 1. The filtered water tastes wonderful! I think about that every time I fill my glass. It's not about knowing that all the garbage in my municipal water supply is being filtered out. It's the taste. 2. I like the zero waste feature, but it has trade-offs as listed below. 3. The replacement filters are relatively inexpensive, compared to many. 4. I bought a water tester, and I have tested my water enough to know that I don't have to replace the filters on schedule. With my family of 5, I do the 6-month filter change once a year. I haven't tried to go longer. 5. The motor is reasonably quiet. Mine doesn't have a cushioned motor mount like the picture here shows, so I added a cushion. 6. No need for an air gap on the waste line. The Bad: 1. The ceramic faucet valve that it came with was leaking in just over a year. There's a different faucet in the picture here. 2. While you don't waste water, you will waste energy. This unit pushes the "brine" into the hot water pipe under your sink. This pushes it back through the hot water pipes to the water heater, and in turn, hot water from the bottom of the tank is pushed back out of the tank into the cold water system, where it cools. The energy used to heat that water either goes to heat your house, it goes to waste, or it adds to the cooling load on your A/C system. I have no idea how the total energy loss compares from this system to.a wasteful one, but it's a trade off. 3. As a result of the brine in the hot water pipes, when I wash my hands in a nearby bathroom, I frequently feel the hot water go cold (brine) before warming up again. Others have complained about the fittings. I soldered copper and brass valves to my hot and cold water supplies because I'm that kind of guy. I'm not a fan of push-in connectors, but I've used the rest of the supplied connectors without any problems. 4. Buy a filter wrench. What's moderately hand tight when you put it together gets a lot tighter 6-12 months later. For the premium price, it should be included. Summary: If I were to start over, I would install this by my hot water system, run the return brine backward through my hot water pre-heater tank (instead of my water heater tank), and put only the expansion tank and finish filter under my sink. It would solve the 2nd and 3rd problems I described above. Actually, I'm installing another one at a second house and doing just that.

It is a replacement of exact same system that lasted 12+ years of daily use. Very much appreciate “zero waste”. This review is based on our previous system, as the new one had only been installed about a month ago. The original system required professional installation (electric outlet was needed and plumbing fittings had to be installed) but the replacement was hooked up to old fittings by us (not really handy people).

The theory is to pump the waste water into the hot water tank. Maybe its different now but that's what it was like a decade ago when I put the Watts unit it. The waste water goes into the hot water line, that pushes the hot water back into the hot water tank along with cold waste water. So turn on the hot water facet and you get cold water as the hot water was replaced with cold in the line. This was a 20 year old hot water tank in a 4,000 sq foot house with lots of pipe. We have a well and water pump. Not sure if that makes a difference but then the cold water started coming out warm. I theorized that the cold waste water pumped into the hot water tank displaced hot water in the tank and forced that hot water to go somewhere. My guess is it went to the cold water lines. I routed the waste water back out into the sewer lines and now everything works fine again. Just not saving any waste water. System has lasted a long time and seems good, just didn't save on waste water.

I bought this unit at least 8 years ago, don't remember where I bought, or how hard it was to install, but what I will give a review it makes my well water taste great. Why I am writing this review is I am stuck at home because of the Covid so why not change my filters on my RO water filtration system. I did not change my filters regularly but the water still tastes great. I think I only changed them once after 4 years but will try to be more responsible and follow the manufactures recommendation of at least once a year and the membrane every 5 years. I do send my water in for testing at the health unit once a year and so far everything comes back good. I live on an acreage with well water and it has no iron but it has a sodium taste to the water. It is hard to stomach so I tried this RO System and I can say it works great 8 years later. We only use about 2-4 gallons of water a day so it easily keeps up and I had it hooked to my fridge only. I recently hooked it to my Culligan water cooler and it also works great. I don't give many reviews because most people give a review the month they buy the product and I find that unbelievable but I bought this unit so long ago and I had no problems with it I give it a 5 thumbs up.

I'm very excited that I am not wasting water. The pump only goes on occasionally and is not very loud. However, I thought the price was very high compared to the regular filters.

We have had an RO system for the last 30 years. We remolded our kitchen & decided to get a new one. I am so happy that I researched the ones available & chose this one. More pressure, always enough even for a party function with no waste

I have had this for 15 years now. The water it produces is amazing. Over time this is what I have liked about it most. - it is a Watts product, a huge plumbing & water treatment company. They are not going out of biz. -Watts Tech support, fully informed experts to help you out when needed, if the pump stops working etc. -Watts STILL makes parts for this thing, eventually the pump will burn out, or the transformer, or the big tank bladder will burst and need replacement etc. Can still get those parts, and they are an easy DYI install. - The design is virtually the same all these years later, which means they hit the mark, and you won't have to worry about next years model being better. The filters and pump are linear in design, not a blocky or square thing like some of the others. So it fits along the side wall under my sink and does not (except for the tank - fact of RO life) take up "too" much space. It is a zero waste, which means the waste water produced by every RO system, goes back down the hot water line and into your Water Heater tank. I live in LV, NV, and we are in a drought. So any water "wasted" is a sin. My water bill is almost nothing, but I'm sure if I was tossing 4-12 gal of waste per 1 gal recovered, my water bill would be out the door. Yes, it's pricey, but in the end it was so worth the money. In savings on my water bill, and especially NOT having to buy bottled water. You know, that stale bacterial "filtered from a municipal source," throw the plastic bottle away water, go to the store and get it water - you are better off without. And finally, the best benefit any RO system is that not only are you more inclined to drink water - for good health, but since it is limitless, you can use it of cooking. So your spaghetti, your rice, your whatever is made with clean fresh uncontaminated water. Lets face it, no one dumps four bottles of bottled water in a pot to boil spaghetti. I did the math, base on the amount of water my family of four consumes and uses for cooking, if we went out and bought bottled water for the same usage, we would spend $1200.00-1500.00 per year. No kidding. With this, two sets of the hanging down filters, plus one RO filter per year, $100.00 bucks. Saving literally over a thousand bucks per year. Side note- they say the RO filter only needs to be changed every two years, but I change it annually, it gets a little slimy in that RO canister, if you let it go the full two years. A time tested, completely repairable, backed with by a solid company with great tech support. Buy it.

The ZeroWaste Reverse Osmosis system works GREAT Nice fresh clean water Thank You

Our installer really liked it and he is letting his boss know how easy it was to install.

This system works great. Fairly easy to install. However, for my install I needed to replace a few fittings because I did not use the supplied faucet as I had a fairly new airgap faucet already that mached my other faucet.

Product came in with broken fitting, all fittings and tubings are made of low quality plastic. The product is not worth it for the price.

I have this system for 9 years now, the original transformer is still working fine. It has some humming sound when the pump is working, but it is not annoying to me. It is under my sink inside a cabinet. All RO systems are slow, but this one is faster than regular RO system with the help of pump. Regular RO system wastes about 4 gallons of water down the drain for every gallon of filtered water it produces unless you recycle that water. It helps to save plenty of water for California drought if all families use it.

It does exactly what it is suppose to do. It was simple to install and much smaller than our previous system. You can hear the pump working when it turns on but it isn't loud enough to bother anyone and it is a small inconvenience vs wasting gallons of water every day.

Have a friend who installed one which works well. Mine never worked even after two checks of setup and 2+ hrs on phone with Watts tech. Returned to Homedepot and got full refund.

I replaced an older 4 stage unit because of the water savings. It performs as advertized. It is important to be sure that requirements such as hot water pipe length and water pressure are met. Water that normally would be wasted is stored in the hot water supply pipe. The water in a hot water pipe usually goes down the drain while waiting for hot water at the tap or the cold water faucet would have been used used. If the supply is too short it won't hold enough RO waste and if water pressure is too high the pump may have to work too hard to push the waste up the pipe. This system easily fills my 2 gal. pitcher without fading to a drizzle like my old unit did and the water tastes as pure even though it has less filters. The pump turns on after about a cup of water. I can't hear it unless the cabinet door is open and the house is silent. I researched the unit on line but bought it at Home Depot because it was available locally. It has T-valve adapters that fit at the hot and cold faucet connections so you don't have to pierce any pipes. This is a big improvement over older systems that used self tapping valves that eventually leaked. I've had it for almost a year now and disagree with statements by some that you would be washing your hands in contaminated water (when the water gets warm it's from the water heater so the waste water is down the drain) or that the pump is noisy (my refrigerator is louder). This system is the answer to RO.

Estimates, depending on the unit, run from three to six-gallons of waste water for every gallon produced in an RO. We have had this Zero-Waste system for five and a half years and let me tell you, compared to our Culligan unit that we had for ovr ten-years we are saving about between eight and ten-gallons of water a day. The only trouble we have had was because the contractor installed the pressure gauge on the co-op water meter and probably used the setting of the unit out of the box. The motor ran on and on and I was sure I would have to replace the motor before long. I finally got off my dead rear end and checked incoming pressure at the meter one day and it was only 50 PSI. I upped to it 65 PSI and everything was better, toilets flushed better, water softener was more efficient, as was the dishwasher and the RO pump ran and was done in a few minutes. With the price of water going up and with it becoming more scarce, this Zero-Waste RO is perfect.

We bought this system three years ago and it runs great. We use it for cooking and drinking all day long and its pressure is very good and constant. The only down side is that I couldn't find replacement filters in the local stores not even in Home Depot where we purchased it. However, I was able to order the filters from the company's website for very reasonable price ($13 per set).

We are here only for 5 months a year and have had this system for two years and just starting our third year. We are just now replacing the filters as we only use it for 5 months each year. We have never had a problem with the system and would highly recommend it. We like the fact that we do not waste any water with this system thus saving on water. We have never run out of water and we do use quite a lot of water from the system. Makes good tasting ice cubes.

I tried many reverse osmosis systems in the past, unfortunately they produce and waste 3 cups of water for every 1 cup of drinking water. This unit works different than the other systems by placing the waste water back into the hot water line which can then be used throughout the house at the dishwasher, laundry or shower. I owned this unit for many years and I am very happy with its performance.

I bought this unit about a year ago (time for new filters). It has performed great. It was easy to install (the tubes are all color coded). The waste water hooks up to your hot water system. There is a small pump that runs when the water is being filtered. The pump is very quite. I have never had a problem with pressure or running out of water. (We use a lot of RO water in our humidifier.) No broken parts. No leaks. No complaints.

Bought this to replace my 5 stage Watts Premier R/O. The old unit worked fine, but wasted a lot of water. I remodeled my kitchen, and in the process, thought I would replace my old R/O with a new one since it was quite old and needed new filters anyway. I was going to buy the same unit (even though it was slow like all R/O's but decided on the zero waste for enviromental purposes. Boy was I wrong! This unit has less water pressure and produces about 3 glasses worth of water at a time, then runs dry. I am now going to try a single Culligan (US-EZ-1)filter. I will try to update this.