How Often To Replace Frigidaire Water Filter

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

Water filters are the real cash cow of the apparatus industry. Similar clockwork, the "change filter" light comes on every six months, prompting y'all to modify your h2o filter. Co-ordinate to almost manufacturers, if you don't, a giant asteroid will collide with the earth, and we will all be killed. In reality, each time that calorie-free illuminates, the visitor that sold you your refrigerator hears a cash register.

Water filters are non inexpensive. If yous stick with the recommended brand (of class supplied past the manufacturer), you volition exist shelling out somewhere between $20–50. I am not sure about y'all, but spending $50 every six months hits my wallet pretty hard.

The same could exist said of the automobile industry. For decades, automakers swore that you needed to alter your oil every 3,000 miles or risk serious engine impairment. As information technology turns out, under normal driving conditions, your oil lasts significantly longer than that.

Information technology is the same with refrigerator h2o filters. They do not need to be changed twice a twelvemonth. Once a twelvemonth, possibly. That 50 bucks you save could fill a shelf on your refrigerator with something you really need—say, beer, for example.

What Is Within Your Refrigerator H2o Filter

I just inverse my filter concluding week, after iv years. I figured it was time. The area I live in has very hard water, and I imagined the within of my filter being choked with difficult water deposits.

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

Afterward locking down the filter in a vise, I introduced it to my hacksaw. After 5 minutes of sawing, the mystery of the inside of refrigerator water filters was revealed. Franky, I was underwhelmed.

Inside that thick, plastic vanquish is a round charcoal filter with a hole in information technology. There was no nastiness, no slime, no goo, and absolutely no hard water deposits. I even cut the charcoal element in half and was even more underwhelmed.

After purging the air out of the line by dispensing 10 or then glasses of water, the period was the same, and the gustation was the same. Personally, I think it could have gone another 4 years without changing.

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Hit the Reset

According to the manufacturer's manuals, the charcoal element volition eventually stop filtering out the nasty creatures that alive in the water. Just think of what feeds your water filter: city tap water.

The water supplied by your municipality is tested regularly and accounted safe to beverage. And then it runs through your refrigerator filter. If you accept funky tasting water in your locale, then peradventure it helps. But in most cases, it isn't doing much.

If your water is tasting funny and you lot brainstorm to come across blackness bits of charcoal in your dispensed water, or if the flow is significantly reduced, then, by all means, spend the dough and get a new filter. Otherwise, consider saving a few bucks and hitting the filter reset push button.

This article is authentic and true to the best of the writer'due south cognition. Content is for informational or entertainment purposes only and does not substitute for personal counsel or professional advice 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 red calorie-free goes on?

Answer: Aye.

Question: I have a model RF261 BEAESR Samsung refrigerator and I demand to change the water filter. The manual says to turn off the water, but I cannot move the fridge to get to the water valve. Do I have to plough off the water before changing the filter?

Answer: On my Samsung, I did not have to shut off the water. Your model may exist different. I recommend shutting off your main business firm h2o line if you cannot reach your desiccated refrigerator line. Ameliorate safe than lamentable.

Ron on Apr 16, 2019:

It must exist two years since I installed my first filter and I noticed the h2o improvement over the tap right abroad, very glad for that. And later on all this time it yet seems fine to me, I only keep resetting the low-cal.

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

After six months Sears mailed me one and my card charged. The water taste fine to me and its been 7 months now. Haven't changed information technology withal.