An under-sink reverse osmosis system treats water at one tap for drinking and cooking. A whole-house RO system treats every drop entering the building. For most Albuquerque homes, under-sink RO paired with a whole-house softener is the better combination — and considerably cheaper.

Under-Sink RO

What it does: produces highly purified water at a dedicated faucet, removing dissolved solids, many contaminants, and the mineral taste that comes with hard water.

Advantages: far lower cost, compact, straightforward to install and service, and it produces excellent drinking and cooking water. It can also feed a refrigerator ice maker.

Limitations: one tap only. Your shower, laundry, and water heater still see untreated water.

Whole-House RO

What it does: treats all incoming water — every fixture, appliance, and hose bib.

Advantages: purified water throughout, useful for households with specific health requirements or genuinely problematic source water.

Limitations, honestly: substantially higher cost to install and operate. It needs significant space, a storage tank, and a pressure pump, since RO output is slow relative to household demand. It also wastes water in the treatment process, which matters in a desert city. And membranes are expensive to replace at whole-house scale.

What We Usually Recommend Here

A whole-house water softener plus an under-sink RO system. The softener addresses the actual problem in Albuquerque — hardness scaling water heaters, fixtures, and appliances — for the whole house. The RO handles drinking water quality at the tap where it matters. Together they cost a fraction of whole-house RO and solve both problems more directly.

Whole-house RO makes sense in narrower cases: severe contamination, well water with specific issues, or particular medical needs.

Start With Testing

Before buying anything, test the water. What is actually in it determines whether you need softening, filtration, RO, or some combination. Recommending equipment without testing is guessing. See water quality treatment.

Contact B. Carlson about reverse osmosis in Albuquerque.