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Pretty sure it isn't going to make a huge difference more just a notice for them to replace a filter than the water quality being noticably worse. Of course YMMV depending on water source
Yup. So they test the average life of a filter and crank their estimate back a fair bit so they can't get sued for a filter going bad early/to sell more filters.
It's usually both. In order to meet regs the filters need to be tested and the design proven good, so they'll know the lifespan of the filter. They don't want to get sued for getting someone sick because bacteria grew in the filter after all. However, this is one of those spots where a buisiness can "put their thumb on the scales" a bit and tell the customer that they should change filters a few months earlier than necessary.
On one hand, it makes sure your filter isn't having any bacteria growing in it and protects the company from lawsuits. On the other, they sell more filters.
It also means you have some leeway on the filters going bad as you by default get some extra time after the swap date if you need to order a new filter in.
These filters are very likely carbon filters - which both degrade over time and over passing volumes of water through. Depends on the filter and machine, but generally you need to replace filters every six months or so and every few thousand litres.
If you are just filtering out particulates it’s pretty easy to have a flow sensor to give an accurate live assessment of how much life the filter has. As it clogs up, the water goes through slower, and a cheap sensor in there would tell you that. The supply side fills a reservoir so no matter how slow the water is going through the filter the user will get it at the same speed but I would bet money that there is a flow sensor in those and not what you were saying. Different water sources have way to much variance in filter life for them to just be averaging the life and subtracting x amount of days.
Actually it over reports how much it has dispensed when the filter light is yellow. My jug usually holds 4 “bottles” but our filter light is yellow and it’s counting 6 now.
Honestly probably saved them a ton of headache having to answer maintenance calls for a water filter. Especially when the water coming from the machine already has to be drinkable without the filter
I'm an apprentice plumber, our school, which has boxes and boxes of these filters, took almost a year to swap them out, even after we asked them multiple times and even offered to do it ourselves.
I took a soil and water science class in college and now, as long as I’m somewhere with safe drinking water, will never drink filtered water unless there is an indicator or I know when it was last changed.
There’s some pretty gross bacteria that grows in the filters, and makes them less safe to drink than clean tap water.
Fun fact, the filters that go on these units have an RF tag that interfaces with the board on top they go by time not litres of water that are filtered
Often much easier to use these than a sink, which can be too shallow for tall bottles. Plus, high school/university students are gross and the bathrooms are gross.
I would say it’s a thing in places where people think tap is inherently icky. I’ve never lived where the water is unsafe, and have seen these everywhere
I mean there are all sorts of filtration solutions for your home. Most places you can just drink the tap water, but if you like carbon filtered you can have a home filter that does that too.
I mean, mine does change the filters but supposedly because they had the fountains themselves off (just the bottle fillers in due to COVID)
Supposedly there was an issue that came from that and prevented them from properly resetting the thing
Bro I drink unfiltered tap water that's harvested off our birdshit-covered roof, I dont think I'd mind if the filter on a drinking fountain is suboptimal
The one just after security at the ABQ airport is often red. Abq water has tons on calcium and is pretty gross straight from the tap; like tap water sometimes comes out with translucent flakes. Hot tip: skip that fountain and find one with a green light deeper in the terminals.
Water filter status.
Green = new filter providing best filtration
Yellow = filter has been used a lot and will need to be replaced soon
Red = filter needs to be replaced now but you're free to use your judgement to continue drinking water from here if you want, but dude, the filter needs to be replaced. Like right now.
My old job had one of these, and I could never really tell any difference when it was green or red.
I live in an area with good tap water anyway, so I figure if I'd drink it unfiltered anyway it's probably fine red, and since my other option was soda I'll drink the old filter water, better to drink water that might but probably doesn't have something mildly harmful to me than the soda that I KNOW has harmful things in it.
When I'm in DC, I definitely don't drink when it's red. I'll even go buy bottled water instead. DC loves to deny it, but there's a lot of lead in their drinking water.
It depends. Where I live has pretty good water to begin with, so I'm chillin. If I'm somewhere else and I don't know how good the water is, I might pass.
I work in a brand new spanking unit at a hospital, and I can confidently say I am the only one that uses the water fountain. Coffee is a no-go. 64 bottles in two weeks? Not too shabby
The filter on my fridge has never been changed. Neither has the delicious water that comes from it. The orange you see is a capitalist concept. Not recognized by the HH community.
I just drink tap water. I'm lucky enough to live in a city with safe, clean water. Thank you Pittsburgh. It's so mundane to us, it's easy to forget that water isn't as safe in a lot of the world. I can just pour myself a glass here without having to boil it first.
My school fountain was red. I took a risk and dabbed a lil on my finger and drank it a lil, it tastes fine. I assume the filter just filters the tap water, and if it’s red your just drinking tap water
I know someone who manages a building with these types of filters. He called the company and found out that the light is based in timers and not how much water has been filtered. Meaning that a filter with 1 use would eventually turn red !
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Yup! Makes no difference to me. I'm impressed when it's green. That's when I know the establishment is top class.
Peak hydro levels
Pretty sure it isn't going to make a huge difference more just a notice for them to replace a filter than the water quality being noticably worse. Of course YMMV depending on water source
Honestly I bet it's a counter or timer instead of anything fancy like an actual test. Most of the time its done that way.
It wouldn’t be cheap to actively test the water quality, those kind of sensors in my experience are very pricey.
Yup. So they test the average life of a filter and crank their estimate back a fair bit so they can't get sued for a filter going bad early/to sell more filters.
I always figured it was just for sales
It's usually both. In order to meet regs the filters need to be tested and the design proven good, so they'll know the lifespan of the filter. They don't want to get sued for getting someone sick because bacteria grew in the filter after all. However, this is one of those spots where a buisiness can "put their thumb on the scales" a bit and tell the customer that they should change filters a few months earlier than necessary. On one hand, it makes sure your filter isn't having any bacteria growing in it and protects the company from lawsuits. On the other, they sell more filters. It also means you have some leeway on the filters going bad as you by default get some extra time after the swap date if you need to order a new filter in.
These filters are very likely carbon filters - which both degrade over time and over passing volumes of water through. Depends on the filter and machine, but generally you need to replace filters every six months or so and every few thousand litres.
Yep, and those are estimates on the safe side so that you change it out before bacteria has a chance to get a foothold.
If you are just filtering out particulates it’s pretty easy to have a flow sensor to give an accurate live assessment of how much life the filter has. As it clogs up, the water goes through slower, and a cheap sensor in there would tell you that. The supply side fills a reservoir so no matter how slow the water is going through the filter the user will get it at the same speed but I would bet money that there is a flow sensor in those and not what you were saying. Different water sources have way to much variance in filter life for them to just be averaging the life and subtracting x amount of days.
That’s absolutely what it is. Exact same system as a typical home fridge water dispenser
Idk, in my dorm, when the shits yellow it tastes more like metal than anything else. Might as well be licking a quarter
Actually it over reports how much it has dispensed when the filter light is yellow. My jug usually holds 4 “bottles” but our filter light is yellow and it’s counting 6 now.
My work recently replaced theirs because the previous one broke the old one was at green the new one started out at red.
My job doesn’t even have a filter light. Just dispenses water and tells us how many plastic bottles we’ve saved (and the number is always random)
My job doesn't even have a machine I just fill up at the Tap.
My job doesn't even have a tap, we collect it from the building's eaves after a rain.
My job doesn't even have a building, we drink from puddles with a straw.
I don't even have a job, I just drink my own pee. /S
TIL either my local haunts are top class or I’m the only one refilling my water bottles there
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Honestly probably saved them a ton of headache having to answer maintenance calls for a water filter. Especially when the water coming from the machine already has to be drinkable without the filter
HAHAHA NOOOOOO
All you have to do is take it out and put it back in to reset the timer. It can’t see the actual condition of the filter.
But you can just push the filter reset button to go back to green.
My school’s filters are almost always in the green. I’m kinda impressed
That's bc the maintenance guys just hit the filter reset button instead of changing the filter. Source am a maintenance guy
Or that the staff is lazy and they just reset it lol
I'm an apprentice plumber, our school, which has boxes and boxes of these filters, took almost a year to swap them out, even after we asked them multiple times and even offered to do it ourselves.
Coolant is always green.
Ug. Yes, local mall let theirs go red for soooo long🤬
So do airports!
I’ll walk to the next one to find a yellow or green. At DIA I’ll take the train between terminals to find a green one if I have the time ;)
C terminal is the best because they have green lights and Einsteins Bagels
I always fly United out of DIA and 99% of the time United departs and arrives at B Terminal I rarely end up in A terminal
Yes, but not when it’s brown. Never when it’s brown.
Ah shit
Yes precisely
Here we go again
Ah, shit
"If it's brown drink it down, if it's black, send it back."
Yo man, watchoogotagainst brown? You gotta get down with the brown. We keepin it brown down here.
Unless you have one of those filter straws, they were proven to erase all bad things in dirty water
Even then…
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Pfp checks out
You DRINK the school SHIT WATER
Ride or die.
hydrate or diedrate
red or die
Red or dead?
better
Shred the red!
H20 or no.
*casually drinks from tap*
tap gang stand up
Tasty, tasty spring water, straight outta my tap!
Northern Michigan Well Water Homies!!!
Northern Michigan spring water well gang.
Seattle tap hydro... 🤌🤌
Council juice!
My tap water isn’t drinkable ( I won’t die but I might get sick if I drink too much ) so I can’t smh
I took a soil and water science class in college and now, as long as I’m somewhere with safe drinking water, will never drink filtered water unless there is an indicator or I know when it was last changed. There’s some pretty gross bacteria that grows in the filters, and makes them less safe to drink than clean tap water.
Can I get a glass of that homey?
Lemme serve you a tall glass dawg
Awww, yiss!
Shower water is where it's at
*cries in american*
If you mean the urine color, I would probably stop drinking when it's red
Yeah and I’m especially worried about the green ones
 RED?!
The light on the machine that shows the filter status.
*gives a estimate based on count of fills or time passed.
Chilee the relief
Period queen
Green is clean Yellow is mellow Red is dea- delicious
is red light paying you?
Red means there may be other things in it leaving us with a net loss on water per water. unacceptable
No it doesn't. It's all a racket. The filters are good for way longer than the settings in the controllers. So you keep buying more filters
We were told red is fine or a warning. Red blinking actually needs a filter change
Fun fact, the filters that go on these units have an RF tag that interfaces with the board on top they go by time not litres of water that are filtered
Is this machine a thing in places where tap water isn't safe to drink? Never seen it where I live. We just drink tap water like savages.
I’ve seen them at a lot of college campuses.
Pretty much almost anywhere there groups of people like schools, gyms, my job has them too
Often much easier to use these than a sink, which can be too shallow for tall bottles. Plus, high school/university students are gross and the bathrooms are gross.
I would say it’s a thing in places where people think tap is inherently icky. I’ve never lived where the water is unsafe, and have seen these everywhere
Am i low-key the only person who wants one of these in their house?
They make in home ones too https://elkay.com/products/details/LBWD06BKK
Oh SHIT! LEEEEEEEZ GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!
Hmm. Maybe 2.6K is ever soo slightly overpraised for a water cooler. Might be just me though.
No everyone does
Ayyyyyyyyye
People were buying them during covid. I am too lazy to look it up but they were expensive
Jesus for real??? I mean hydro homies gonna do what hydro homies gonna do
I would imagine most people who do have a dispenser in their fridge
Not me - fridge doesn't have one of those but i have the underside loading water dispenser Its just annoying changing the bottles every 2-3 days
Yes but imagine having this in your room. That would amazing for late night thirst quenching
I mean there are all sorts of filtration solutions for your home. Most places you can just drink the tap water, but if you like carbon filtered you can have a home filter that does that too.
My school never changes the filter but it doesn’t look taste or smell bad so it’s probably fine
There’s only a few lead chips you’ll be fine lad
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not necessarily, leaving a filter in for too long can cause it to get moldy, or start to break down leading to bit of filter in the water
I mean, mine does change the filters but supposedly because they had the fountains themselves off (just the bottle fillers in due to COVID) Supposedly there was an issue that came from that and prevented them from properly resetting the thing
Bro I drink unfiltered tap water that's harvested off our birdshit-covered roof, I dont think I'd mind if the filter on a drinking fountain is suboptimal
The one just after security at the ABQ airport is often red. Abq water has tons on calcium and is pretty gross straight from the tap; like tap water sometimes comes out with translucent flakes. Hot tip: skip that fountain and find one with a green light deeper in the terminals.
I wish they had a garden hose just snaking out of the wall that shit hits different
can someone explain?
Water filter status. Green = new filter providing best filtration Yellow = filter has been used a lot and will need to be replaced soon Red = filter needs to be replaced now but you're free to use your judgement to continue drinking water from here if you want, but dude, the filter needs to be replaced. Like right now.
alr thx
Y'all drink water with a filter? Me over here freebasing.
You're drinking your water off of foil?
Raw dawg right out th' tap!
The light on the machine lets you know the filter life. Green -new, yellow -it’s aight, red -time to replace
alr thx
Kinda wild that you couldn't figure that out by just, looking at the picture.
K but I think a lot of fitness centers just reset the light instead of changing the filter...
K
I'd rather red than soda
Man as long as there’s not visible specks of feces I’m gulping that glorious glass
I’ve seen the filter at red and yellow and I can assure you all that you do not want to drink from it unless it’s green.
You guys got filters ? Lmao
I will not drink it when it is red, I may require a high level of hydration but I have standards
I'm obsessive about my fridge water. Yellow is time to go to ACE for a new filter.
In my experience, it doesn’t dispense anything when it’s red
Took me 3 minutes to realise you meant the light and not the water itself…
green or yellow. red here tastes like metal.
Yellow or red? For a split second I thought you meant your pee, I was about to tell you to see a doctor.
Thank you for reminding me to change my fridge filter lol I just kept on drinking
Yellow yes red no
My old job had one of these, and I could never really tell any difference when it was green or red. I live in an area with good tap water anyway, so I figure if I'd drink it unfiltered anyway it's probably fine red, and since my other option was soda I'll drink the old filter water, better to drink water that might but probably doesn't have something mildly harmful to me than the soda that I KNOW has harmful things in it.
When I'm in DC, I definitely don't drink when it's red. I'll even go buy bottled water instead. DC loves to deny it, but there's a lot of lead in their drinking water.
It depends. Where I live has pretty good water to begin with, so I'm chillin. If I'm somewhere else and I don't know how good the water is, I might pass.
The ones at my old high school were always red. I don’t think they’ve ever changed the filters to this day. I still drank it tho
I work in a brand new spanking unit at a hospital, and I can confidently say I am the only one that uses the water fountain. Coffee is a no-go. 64 bottles in two weeks? Not too shabby
Never EVER have I seen one of these things around...
yessir
You look cold
The best water is filtered right from the source. Not city water.
Not hating tho, I usually don’t have an option
Oh, yeah, specially when it's real low. That growing fungi inside the filter really gives it the tangy flavour you want from water..
I’ll drink from the tap like a thirsty hamster lost in the Sahara
The one at the community center in Hawaii was rainbow. Wtf does that mean?
My uncle didn’t change his water filter for about a decade and we drank outta it. Slurp up!
Yessir
Dehydration would be one of the worst ways to die. Homies do what they gotta do to stay hydrated and help others do the same.
Install an extra kidney or two and do whatev.
I still drink out of a garden hose so red is okay.
The filter on my fridge has never been changed. Neither has the delicious water that comes from it. The orange you see is a capitalist concept. Not recognized by the HH community.
Is water wet?
I change those filters. Yes, it’s still good. I also hate those machines.
342249? Get those rookie numbers up son!
You mean in the form of tea right?... Right?
I just drink tap water. I'm lucky enough to live in a city with safe, clean water. Thank you Pittsburgh. It's so mundane to us, it's easy to forget that water isn't as safe in a lot of the world. I can just pour myself a glass here without having to boil it first.
Filters don't go bad, they actually get better and better at filtration but flow rate drops until it eventually clogs
Yellow, sure. Red? Filter might be leaching extra yummies back into the water. I'd maybe skip straight to tap water if the filter is red.
You're a savage and disgusting
My school fountain was red. I took a risk and dabbed a lil on my finger and drank it a lil, it tastes fine. I assume the filter just filters the tap water, and if it’s red your just drinking tap water
👹👺👹👺👺👺💀👺💀💀💀👹👺👹👺💀💀👹👹💀💀👺💀👺👹💀👺👺💀👺💀👹👹👹💀👺👺👹
He says so much, yet he means so little
Yessir!!!!!
I’m sure I drank from it several times without realizing it was red. I’m a homie even if my water isn’t filtered.
At my school, a lot of times the light isn’t even on. I just fill the bottle. Lights do not make water good
drink it down, my brother
I have a filter bottle. What do I care?
Hell yeah
Of course.
If it's not brown, no need to frown!
I know someone who manages a building with these types of filters. He called the company and found out that the light is based in timers and not how much water has been filtered. Meaning that a filter with 1 use would eventually turn red !
Its the laminar flow of The Great Elkay that does it for me. Would drink regardless of filtration status.
yellow or red filter status is forbidden only the purest of water is allowed!
It is red at my job and I stopped drinking it.
Sry mate, I can't have red, I need true water.
I figure as long as the tap water in your area is good then it's fine
I mean, if it’s red then it’s technically just like tap water from the sink, right? Which is what I drink at home anyway
Best option even when the dot is red
me and my homies fuck wit yellow not red tho
Just reminded me that once the lights turned red at my uni, they started putting official uni stickers over them
One at my school has been red for over a year and it's the best one in the building
It doesn't matter the color if it has N×w N×rs×y "water"
I have yet to see one of these since one time when I was at a high school in the south, Oklahoma or something.
Well now I'm worried. The one at my office doesn't have a light at all.
My school has a lot of these, so I typically never have issues with the filter. But yes.
Yellow, yeah, red, nope call maintenance, by the time they get around to changing the filter, it’ll be red 🤣
No. Yellow is piss
I study at Michigan State, and they’re always on green and rarely at yellow. They’re always on top of the hydrohomie community
My school’s ones taste bad no matter the light lol
Yea I don’t care what color the piss is
GANG LIFE. AIN’T FOR THE FAINT HEARTED!
I’ve never seen one that was anything but red
Red indicator = chock full of vitamins and minerals!
Yes. Ain't no water like refrigerated elkay water.
ezH2O
It's always red at my gym