How Often Should You Replace Water Filter In Refrigerator

Tom Lohr is an gorging habitation improvement enthusiast. He prefers to spend the money he saves on new tools and gardening supplies.

H2o filters are the real cash cow of the appliance manufacture. Like clockwork, the "change filter" light comes on every six months, prompting yous to alter your water filter. According to nearly manufacturers, if you don't, a behemothic asteroid will collide with the earth, and we volition all be killed. In reality, each time that light illuminates, the company that sold y'all your fridge hears a cash register.

H2o filters are not inexpensive. If you stick with the recommended make (of course supplied by the manufacturer), you lot volition be shelling out somewhere betwixt $20–l. I am not sure about you, but spending $l every six months hits my wallet pretty difficult.

The same could exist said of the machine manufacture. For decades, automakers swore that you needed to change your oil every 3,000 miles or gamble serious engine damage. As it turns out, under normal driving conditions, your oil lasts significantly longer than that.

It is the same with fridge h2o filters. They do not need to be inverse twice a twelvemonth. Once a year, maybe. That l bucks you relieve could fill a shelf on your refrigerator with something y'all really need—say, beer, for instance.

What Is Inside Your Fridge Water Filter

I just inverse my filter last week, later iv years. I figured it was fourth dimension. The area I live in has very difficult h2o, and I imagined the within of my filter being choked with hard water deposits.

So I bit the bullet, bought an off-brand filter (much cheaper than the manufacturer'due south brand), and changed it out. The process was super elementary. But now that I had that old filter in my mitt, I had to know just how nasty it was on the within. And so, I cutting information technology open to see.

Afterward locking down the filter in a vise, I introduced it to my hacksaw. Afterwards five minutes of sawing, the mystery of the inside of refrigerator water filters was revealed. Franky, I was underwhelmed.

Inside that thick, plastic shell is a circular charcoal filter with a hole in it. At that place was no nastiness, no slime, no goo, and absolutely no hard water deposits. I fifty-fifty cut the charcoal element in half and was even more underwhelmed.

After purging the air out of the line by dispensing 10 or so glasses of water, the menses was the aforementioned, and the sense of taste was the same. Personally, I recall it could have gone some other iv years without changing.

Gyre to Keep

Hit the Reset

Co-ordinate to the manufacturer's manuals, the charcoal element will eventually terminate filtering out the nasty creatures that live in the h2o. Simply call up of what feeds your water filter: city tap water.

The h2o supplied by your municipality is tested regularly and deemed safe to drink. So information technology runs through your refrigerator filter. If you take funky tasting h2o in your locale, then mayhap information technology helps. Only in nigh cases, information technology isn't doing much.

If your water is tasting funny and you begin to see blackness bits of charcoal in your dispensed water, or if the flow is significantly reduced, then, by all ways, spend the dough and go a new filter. Otherwise, consider saving a few bucks and hitting the filter reset button.

This article is accurate and true to the best of the author'due south knowledge. Content is for informational or entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional communication in business, financial, legal, or technical matters.

Questions & Answers

Question: If I don't use my refrigerator water ice maker or h2o do I just do reset when ruddy light goes on?

Answer: Aye.

Question: I have a model RF261 BEAESR Samsung refrigerator and I need to change the water filter. The manual says to turn off the h2o, only I cannot movement the refrigerator to get to the water valve. Exercise I have to plough off the water earlier changing the filter?

Answer: On my Samsung, I did non have to close off the water. Your model may be unlike. I recommend shutting off your main firm h2o line if you cannot accomplish your desiccated refrigerator line. Better rubber than sorry.

Ron on Apr 16, 2019:

It must be 2 years since I installed my start filter and I noticed the h2o improvement over the tap right abroad, very glad for that. And after all this time it still seems fine to me, I merely proceed resetting the lite.

Affections Guzman from Joliet, Illinois on March 17, 2019:

After six months Sears mailed me one and my card charged. The h2o taste fine to me and its been 7 months now. Oasis't changed it yet.