A while back we had the old water softener replaced. The guys from City Water Filter also looked at our reverse osmosis setup under the kitchen sink and recommended we add a mineral filter, only we found out a few days later that getting one for the stock Lowes/HomeDespot setup the POs installed is actually a pain in the butt, as it requires special ordering since most stores don’t carry any of the bits and some of them have been discontinued.
Then during the last few days that AS’s dad was visiting the contraption started to make some rather interesting noises. What started as just slight wheezy sound eventually turned into a dying duck.
We were already pricing out the cost of all new filters for the existing system versus a new and better setup, and had decided a new setup was worth the extra costs, so I made a call to the guys at City Water Filter and scheduled the install.
The install went smoothly and now we have proper shut off valves (those little blue things you see in the pic below) on everything (the old system was hooked up to the same one the dishwasher used and certain bits that the manual said should be installed in certain ways weren’t installed in those certain ways.) The result, while it takes up a tad more room under the sink, not only produces much tastier water, it also has much better water pressure coming out of the tap. (We had a similar experience with increased water pressure when we put in the new softener too.)
Not only do we now have a happier drinking water setup, I’m also happy to report we finally have a dish rack solution that works. Since we now use our dishwasher for almost all dirty dishes (when we lived in SF I washed things by hand,) the number of dishes to go in dish rack has dropped significantly. When we lived in SF we used a Dish Gent. A truly marvelous contraption that allows for lots of things to dry without making a mess on the sink. The sink space here though, doesn’t really make it a viable solution though. It takes up too much room to the left of the sink and the space on the right is far to small for it.
Right after we took possession I purchased a simple collapsable drainer at Bed Bath and Beyond and it sort of worked as you can pop out the sides to suspend it across a sink or just leave it on the counter. It too though is too big for the right side of the sink and took up too much room if just left on the right side.
Sidenote about the dishwasher, since we have VERY HARD WATER everything came out with spots the first few washings. I then started trying out different rinse aids and have finally found ones that work. A combination of Rinse-Aid in the rinse receptacle and Lemi Shine plus Cascade Complete All-in-1 in the detergent dingus means we no longer have white film on all the clean dishes. The three combined products seem to be the magic potion.
But back to the dish drying woes….
I then tried using just a silicon mat to the left of the sink and that kind of worked. The problem then became that the big kettle we have (Zojirushi CV-DSC40) sits just to the left of the sink and so we use that area for a lot of food and tea prep. The mat, while not a bad solution ended up leaving water on the counter and taking up valuable counter real estate.
So a few weeks ago I started scouring Amazon for better options and in the end I found the Better Chef DR-16 2-Tier Dish Rack and had it delivered. It’s been a smashing success. Here’s a picture of it in place. (We aren’t using the sponge or utensil caddies that came with it.) As you can see it fits the space to the right of the sink perfectly and since we compost most things, reaching the disposal switch is only slightly annoying.
Lastly a small note (the About section now also includes this info): I’ve started posting a few links to some of the stuff we buy from Amazon.com but if you happen to click the link to see the item and then purchase the item, we won’t be getting any sort of money/credit. I use Amazon Smile and a small portion of all purchases made by me, and I think possibly also people who use any links I post, go to my non-profit of choice which is the Alex Foundation.