This post is a compilation of two valuable comments posted on our earlier article - Drinking Water for home .

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Comment Number 7 from the article - 5 September 2007

Voltas which sells the Aquaguard brand, sells R.O system for Rs.12,000. If you check out the Yellow pages for portable R.O.systems you can find something in Rs.10,000 range. Its not just the price, checkout the maintenance details from the supplier. If you are looking for the local brand I have described, I have to check with my family friend on the details, he has been using this system for about 2 years now.

Comment Number 5 from the article - 3 October 2007

Got a demo of the high end RO system from Eureka Forbes (7 stages, with UV treatment, costing Rs.25,000)…..the water from the system still had odour and was not tasteless…read-on.

Eureka Forbes sells 2 models with RO through dealers. One at Rs.7000, a pure RO plant and another at Rs.14,000 with 7 stages. Besides this Eureka Forbes do direct marketing of another system which has UV treatment, and some minor features at Rs.25000. Anyway wanted to try the highend system. The Sales person gave a good level of dump on TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) and mentioned that TDS should not be ridiculously low as in Saravana water etc. TDS measurements from our ground water was around 800, and post RO was around 50 to 100, whereas Saravana Water was between 10 to 20. The Sales person advised that TDS too low means the water is devoid of any minerals and advised to go with the high-end system. The Sales talk would not stop extolling EF prompt door-step service etc, when I interrupted with “Well TDS or no TDS, I don’t care, I want my water to be tasteless and odourless from the system, else I would directly take my well water which is clean, gets UV light from direct sun-light, and the water is potable with minerals”. After this I asked the Sales person to sample the Metro water out of his RO system, and he confided that the water was not odourless nor tasteless, and quickly added a new unit would perform better…..With a smile I mentioned, you are most welcome to do the demo again with a new system, and until then its good bye to Eureka Forbes RO. The point I am trying to make is, get yourself a demo, know the investment and running costs before you buy an RO system…

Comment Number 5 from the article - 15 October 2007

Yesterday Eureka Forbes Sales person came in for the second round. While the unit was running, I asked the Sales person for the justification of the Integra 7 at Rs.24,000 compared to their own brand selling an RO system at Vasanth for Rs.8,000 to Rs.14,000. Since it was their own brand, the Sales person came up with “I think” etc, and at that point I requested the sales person to come back to me with the facts straight with feature comparison of this product with their own models as well as with their competitors like Kent. Finally I also got to measure the TDS (Total Dissolved Solids) of the well water, RO rejected water and the RO water Vs Saravana Stores bottled water. The results are as follows,
TDS of my well water ~800
TDS of RO unit rejected water ~600*
RO water ~50
Saravana Stores ~20
*don’t ask me why TDS of RO unit rejected water is purer than the TDS of my well water. Perhaps the TDS gets stuck in the filters or in the RO membrane.

Also I got to talk to one Dr.Axxxx Kumar of Eureka Forbes labs to know their lab-results Vs competition. The summary was that their RO membrane is more or less identical vs competition. The Integra7 has optional modules not available in competitors such as for,
a. removal of heavy metals (Cadmium) & iron which may not be completely eliminated. Note this optional module may/may not be relevant, as it was launched for WB & Orissa.
b. Magnetizing chamber

In summary for high-end RO systems, Kent and Integra 7 stand-out in the category of filtration+RO+UV. Kent system costs around Rs.14,000 only, but does not have auto-clean of filters like Integra7 (I need to check this out). But personally I don’t mind manual cleaning than having to pay Rs.10,000 more on the Integra7. This ends my dilemma. Once again vanilla RO systems (with pre-filters) start at Rs.8K from Eureka Forbes.

Thanks to Sudarsan for sharing his experiences.