Honest answers to the questions we actually get.

RO water comes out of the membrane at about ½–1 gpm, slower than your main faucet, which runs around 2.2+ gpm. It’s meant for drinking, cooking, and ice, not for washing dishes or filling a stockpot quickly. A small dedicated “RO faucet” mounts at the back of your sink for the filtered water; your main faucet keeps running on the city line as it does today.

Most plumbing codes in Missouri and Illinois require an air gap on the RO drain line to prevent backflow. We standardize on a brushed-nickel air-gap faucet across every install for that reason.

About 50–60% of installs use an existing unused hole in the sink (a capped soap-dispenser hole, for example), zero drilling. Stainless or laminate counters that need a hole drill cleanly with a step bit; that’s included in the standard install at no upcharge.

Stone counters (granite/quartz/marble) without a spare hole are the exception. Drilling stone requires diamond core bits and water cooling, and a cracked $4,000 quartz counter is worse than no install. We sub the drilling to a stone fabricator, who bills you separately at $150–$300. We identify this from your countertop photo and quote it before install day, never as a surprise.

The unit needs about 14 inches of cabinet width, plus enough vertical clearance for the storage tank (~16 inches tall). One of the questions on the photo intake checklist is whether you have at least 14 inches of clear width, most kitchens do. If clearance is tight, we’ll tell you before install day and suggest options (a smaller storage tank, a different placement, or in rare cases, the fridge-only configuration).

Sediment and carbon pre/post filters: about 6 months in St. Louis on chloramine. The RO membrane: typically 2–3 years depending on incoming water hardness. We bundle the membrane into your service plan visit when it’s due, no separate charge or surprise bill.

The recommended service cadence here is 6-Month Care because chloraminated water exhausts carbon prefilters by month 7–8. Annual Care works for low-usage households (single-occupant, part-time residence). Use the system heavily, swap twice a year.

Both the City of St. Louis Water Division and Missouri American Water meet every federal Safe Drinking Water Act standard. The federal limits were last updated in 1998. Independent health-based guidelines from the Environmental Working Group, based on more recent peer-reviewed cancer-risk modeling, show several common contaminants at levels well above modern health recommendations. TTHMs run ~102× the EWG guideline; chromium-6 runs ~63× the guideline; the City has 9,000+ confirmed lead service lines.

The free water report goes deeper for your specific address. The Water Quality page has the full science.

The Water Co System is $1,095 fully installed. The optional ice-maker tie-in is $200. Stone-counter drilling, when needed, is $150–$300, billed by a stone fabricator, not by us, and quoted before install day. Service plans are $199/year (Annual) or $349/year (6-Month). A la carte filter kits are $69. That is the entire menu, on the website, before you give us a phone number.

We don’t run pressure pitches, “sign tonight for $300 off” tactics, or chemical-precipitator demos. The pricing is the pricing.

Two reasons. First, focus: we want to be the company you trust for under-sink RO, and adding more products takes attention away from doing that job exceptionally well. Second, honesty: most shower-filter and fluoride-removal claims aren’t well supported by research, and we’d rather not sell things we don’t fully believe in. If you do need a softener, we have a local company we trust and we’ll point you their way.

Yes. The hardware is standard 3/8" quick-connect tubing and a drain saddle, a confident DIYer can get it done in an afternoon. A unit-only RO system from a reputable brand will run $300–$500, plus another $100–$150 in fittings and a faucet. You won’t get the catalytic carbon stage, the leak-detection auto-shutoff, or the lifetime install warranty we put on every install, but if you’d rather build it yourself and save the labor, that’s a legitimate path, and we’ll happily sell you replacement filters at $69/kit when the time comes.

Lifetime install warranty on the workmanship of every Water Coinstall, fittings, connections, and the drain saddle, for as long as you own the home. Manufacturer warranty on the RO unit itself is typically 5 years; we handle the warranty claim on your behalf if anything fails. And there’s a 30-day uninstall promise: if for any reason you decide it isn’t for you in the first 30 days, we uninstall it and refund the full install price.

On 6-Month Care: we email you a few weeks before each visit to schedule. The technician arrives on the appointment, swaps the filters, checks tank pressure, runs a quick water test, and leaves. Each visit is 20–30 minutes. The membrane is replaced every 2–3 years, bundled into your regular visit when due, no separate charge.

Annual Care is the same workflow, once a year. Filter kits a la carte ship via USPS in plain packaging, pre and post filters with simple swap instructions and the OEM filters we use ourselves.

Two options. Most customers leave the system installed, RO systems are increasingly a selling feature, and our research suggests they add ~$1,000–$1,500 to perceived kitchen value in St. Louis MSA listings. Your service plan transfers to the new owner if they want to keep it (we’ll send them a single email; they decide).

If you’d rather take the system with you, we’ll uninstall it for $99 within the City of St. Louis service area and re-install at your new address for $299 (no full install charge). Out-of-area moves: we connect you to a local RO specialist we trust.

Not yet. Illinois licenses plumbers at the state level (Missouri doesn’t), and we’re working through that registration now. Edwardsville, Belleville, O’Fallon IL, and Granite City are on our roadmap for 2027, sign up for the free water report and we’ll let you know when we’re booking on your side.

In the meantime, the give-back program does cross the river: East St. Louis and Cahokia Heights are priority neighborhoods for free installs, in partnership with local nonprofits.

If we can’t confirm scope from the photos you sent, we’ll email to ask for a single follow-up, usually a closer photo of one specific thing (the shutoff valve, the cabinet width, the countertop edge). Most flagged submissions resolve in one round.

If photos still aren’t enough, we’ll come out in person for $99 (refunded when you book the install). And if you’d rather walk away at any point, we refund any deposit, no questions.