A drinking water faucet for Newmarket's hard, disinfected town water, fitted by licensed plumbers who check the plumbing under your sink first.
Most Newmarket homes are on town water, which reaches the tap carrying a disinfectant, chlorine or chloramine, that some people taste in a glass or smell in tea. Hardness is the white crust inside the kettle. Reverse osmosis adds one faucet where a carbon stage takes out the disinfectant and a membrane rejects most dissolved minerals.
It has limits: showers, laundry and the water heater are untouched. On properties with private wells, RO comes after well water treatment and never replaces disinfection.
So we test first, even on town water. Free and total chlorine readings show which disinfectant is present, and that picks the carbon: standard carbon handles chlorine, while chloramine needs catalytic carbon. Hardness decides whether a softener should protect the membrane, the reading sets a baseline for the finished system, and sometimes carbon alone is enough.
On Newmarket town water, carbon matched to the disinfectant shields the membrane, and a softener shields it from scale.
Newmarket homes vary widely in age, so the cold line under the sink is identified before anything connects to it. Galvanized steel supply, generally found in houses built before the 1960s, can still turn up in older homes. Its rust clogs the RO sediment cartridge sooner, and if repiping is the lasting fix, we say so.
A Newmarket house built in the 1980s or early 1990s may have grey polybutylene (Poly-B): look for PB2110 printed on the pipe and crimp rings at the fittings. A house built from the mid-1990s into the 2000s may have Kitec, which is orange or blue with brass fittings. See our Newmarket plumbing services page for more.
Same equipment as our reverse osmosis drinking water systems service; the plumbing under a Newmarket sink shapes the job.
We test the kitchen tap, note any softener or whole-home filter, and identify the cold line material.
Reject water leaves through the sink drain, so we run the sink and watch it empty. A slow kitchen drain makes that water spill from the air gap instead of flowing away, so it gets drain cleaning first.
Old galvanized, polybutylene or Kitec at the connection gets a short run of new pipe and a tee with its own shutoff. The reject line drops through an air gap, either in the RO faucet body or a separate fitting, and only then joins the sink drain at an adapter above the trap, clear of the dishwasher hose, so dirty water can never siphon back.
Carbon is rinsed before the membrane sees water, the first tank is dumped and joints are watched dry. Meter readings at both faucets are compared before handover.
Cold water, tea and coffee from the RO faucet lose the chlorine or chloramine taste and smell, since the carbon stage is chosen to suit it.
Fill it from the new tap and scale stops forming inside.
A glass fills fast from the storage tank; after a big pot, flow tapers while it refills.
A brief trickle and gurgle while the tank fills. Nonstop trickling means the automatic shutoff needs checking.
The pipe at the connection matters most: replacing galvanized, polybutylene or Kitec adds time and material. Drilling a quartz or granite counter costs more than using a spare sprayer hole. A cupboard tank is simplest; a basement tank or long fridge line adds tubing. Extra stages, catalytic carbon, a softener or drain clearing first also add. The price is written and agreed before work begins.
It guards the membrane from the disinfectant in town water. Chloramine slips through ordinary carbon, so where the test finds it we fit catalytic carbon; change either kind on schedule even if the water tastes fine.
A slowing RO faucet between changes points here first; galvanized rust fills it sooner.
Scale usually ends a membrane early; a softener upstream slows that. A meter reading confirms wear before replacement.
A strong glass then a dribble usually means lost air pressure. The empty tank is recharged, or replaced if its bladder has failed.
A softener removes hardness at every tap, protecting the water heater and shower glass: see water softener installation in Newmarket. Whole-home water filtration puts sediment and carbon at the main, so every faucet and shower loses the disinfectant taste. RO is the narrowest and most thorough, serving one drinking tap. A common pairing on hard town water is a softener for the house plus RO at the sink.
What Newmarket homeowners ask about a drinking water filter at the sink.
AquaTec Plumbing works from Holland Landing, serving Newmarket, Sharon and East Gwillimbury.
Book a water test and a look under the sink, and get a written price for the system and any pipe work up front.
