Anyone Use a Home Delivery System for Water?

We have ice mountain delivered. we use the brita or the tap when we are at home, but the bottles are great for on the go or to take to work.

To get PURE water, you can purchase a Reverse Osmosis (RO) unit for under the kitchen sink. It is the cheapest way to go in the long run, and gives you pure water on demand that tastes wonderful because it is "all water" with all impurities removed (even water softener salt, bacteria, heavy metals, etc.). The water is 99.99% pure, and is very healthy to drink. Most bottled waters are not that "clean," and I find often taste like the plastic bottles they come in. Home Depot has one for $175, and installation is not that difficult. The problem I have with a water unit on the kitchen floor or in the fridge is that the chilren will play with it, and put their germy mouths on it sharing whatever virus they have just picked up from school, etc.

We have well water and water softener at my house. The water softener adds salt to the water which impacts my husband's blood pressure. We found that we needed the water softener so we can do laundry without having clothes turning yellow from the minerals from the well...
We found that having the bottled water helped husband's blood pressure to go down (less salt in his diet!). I believe this was good for whole family to have less salt in our drinking water by having the bottled water. Being able to drink 6-8 glasses of water a day seems to work better with our bottled water. Also, with most recent replacement of motor on our well pump, for once we avoided having sickness from this change (because we are drinking the bottled water and not drinking the well water). During earlier well pump motor replacement, many of the people in our household got nasty intestinal bug that needed doctor's attention to clear up...also we worked with Will County to get our well water tested and learned how to super chlorinate to offset the well pump motor changeout...To sum it all up, we LOVE our bottled water and get delivery every two weeks...large jugs of water.

We have a water cooler and had a delivery service for a few years. I have no complaints about it. We ended up canceling the delivery and getting the water ourselves at Lowes. It's a little cheaper that way. My kids were young when we first bought the cooler. They were curious, but we did not have any problems with them playing with it. We also have a hot water feature, but it is childproof so the kids can't burn themselves. I love having it.

For economy, try a tap filter or Brita type system. Flavoring the water with a touch of orange, lemon or other fruit will help. Good Luck!

We too live on well water. While we have a water softener, iron filtration system and also a reverse osmosis water filter for our drinking water - it is still not suitable water for kids. My husband and I drink it and it tastes good, but it does not have high enough levels of flouride, which kids definitely need. We don't currently have home delivery water, but did for years with Hinckley Springs. We stopped service when we moved to this home 6 years ago and just never started it up again. We go through the hassle of buying bottled, flourinated water for our son. We really should get the bottled water again. Our son loves getting water out of the refrig door - it's fun for him and he drinks it (only from time to time b/c of the flouride issue). My guess is that he would do the same with the Hinckley water.

I have used a bottled water company called Puritan Springs Water out of Lincoln, IL. We have a well just like you do and I did not think the water was bad, or at least it did not taste bad. Where I grew up near St. Louis on a farm in Illinois we had well water that really smelled like sulphur....anyhow, when we were replacing our old Culligan water softner we shopped around and found that this Puritan offered a much superior softner and had bottled water service available. It is a little pricey but the kids definitely drink a ton more water---and, I never have to ask as the cooler is so convenient. We even have them drop off small bottles that we send along to school so they don't drink any soda all day. I think for the few dollars it costs it is well worth it. That's my input, wish you well (no pun intended).

We used to get Ice Mountain water delivery. I loved having the hot and cold water dispenser. We canceled the service last year when we got a nice refrigerator with a good filter. I can't tell the difference in taste.

My biggest complaint about water delivery is the space that it uses up. The dispenser takes up floor space, and the giant bottles take up a lot of space in the house and garage. And god forbid if you forget to put out the empty bottles before the delivery. Then you'll have even more bottles everywhere. If your husband isn't around when you empty a bottle, you'll have to lift it and put it in the dispenser yourself. They are quite heavy and the water splashes no matter how careful you are. And if they are delivered when it is cold out, they will freeze. All in all, there are a lot of bottles to deal with, and they are heavy.

Also, Ice Mountain Water is nothing more than tap water that has been filtered for taste. It is a lot of money to spend on municipal water. But if you want it for the convenience and taste, then it is a nice thing to have.

We live in joliet so we can't really drink our water... I have 2 5-gallon bottles that I take to Walmart and fill up for about $1.75 apiece, far and away cheaper than what the home delivery places charge... I don't know if the other side of the water machine is just plugged into the same water we use or if it is truly filtered but it does taste very clean... and you may be able to find a machine that has a child-proof thing on the button; otherwise I'd say just stress to your kids that this water is off-limits for playing with. (or get a countertop kind that they can't reach)

I really love having our cooler. It's nice to have and we use it for everything. The only con that I have is that it's costly to have the water delivered. We were paying about $10/5gal. I finally called it quits on that and started to get our bottles refilled at the local grocery for $1.25/5gal. Our children did play with the machine for a little while, but we keep after them (just like anything else) and show them it's not a toy. It's worth the investment of the machine (appx $100 at Lowe's). I even bought my sister and my MIL one for Christmas last year! They love theirs and use it on a daily basis!

Good luck!

We love having the bottled water with Hinckley
Springs, u can really taste the difference. We have
been using them for 16 years now. Check out their new budget
plan, if u think u will consume at least 3 bottles a
month, then it is worth it. It will include cooler
rental and the 3 bottles u get. The more bottles u
order the cheaper is your monthly bill. If u want, u might
even consider getting the flouridated water since
u have kids. Hope this helps.

We use Puritan Springs for our water and like you, have well water w/a water softener. Our well water isn't bad either but the Puritan Springs water we get is fluoridated which our kids need for their teeth. We have a 2-1/2 & 8 yr. old, they do pretty good about not playing in it. We've always taught them that it is for drinking only, do not waste. They should use the sink to get water to play in, etc. Probably like you, well water doesn't cost a monthly bill other than what it cost to run the pump. So, I justify the cost of the water service like if we lived in town and had to pay for water. It's still cheaper. We have a hot & cold spout on our dispenser and a lot of the newer dispensers have a safety feature on the hot side to prevent little ones from being able to use it & get burnt, so don't be discouraged by that. My oldest drinks tons of water & it encourages my younger one too because he sees his big brother doing it. It also makes it easy for them to get it for themself. I've also recently learned that our water service will also deliver softener salt & put it in for us. The fluoridated part is a huge plus since our well water doesn't have it and if we had city water it would. Try using that as leverage w/your hubby. LOL!!

We did this once also for around a year after moving to TX and tasting the water for the first time. It was nice for awhile, but we got a bad jug once and didn't trust it after that. We got a reverse osmosis system and change the filters twice a year. The water is pure enough to use in the steam iron and other machines that require distilled water. Good Luck in whatever decision you make.