What Happens If I Don't Replace My Refrigerator Water Filter

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

Water filters are the real cash cow of the appliance industry. Similar clockwork, the "alter filter" light comes on every six months, prompting you to change your water filter. Co-ordinate to nigh manufacturers, if you don't, a giant asteroid will collide with the earth, and nosotros will all be killed. In reality, each time that light illuminates, the company that sold you your refrigerator hears a cash register.

Water filters are not cheap. If you stick with the recommended brand (of class supplied by the manufacturer), yous will be shelling out somewhere betwixt $20–50. I am not sure virtually you lot, but spending $50 every half dozen months hits my wallet pretty hard.

The aforementioned could be said of the auto manufacture. For decades, automakers swore that you needed to change your oil every 3,000 miles or chance serious engine damage. As information technology turns out, nether normal driving atmospheric condition, your oil lasts significantly longer than that.

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

What Is Inside Your Fridge Water Filter

I just changed my filter terminal calendar week, after four years. I figured it was fourth dimension. The area I live in has very hard h2o, and I imagined the inside of my filter being high-strung with hard 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 hand, I had to know but how nasty it was on the inside. And so, I cut it open to see.

Later locking downwardly the filter in a vise, I introduced it to my hacksaw. After five minutes of sawing, the mystery of the inside of refrigerator h2o filters was revealed. Franky, I was underwhelmed.

Inside that thick, plastic shell is a round charcoal filter with a pigsty in it. In that location was no nastiness, no slime, no goo, and absolutely no hard water deposits. I even cut the charcoal element in one-half and was fifty-fifty more underwhelmed.

Subsequently purging the air out of the line by dispensing 10 or so glasses of h2o, the flow was the same, and the taste was the same. Personally, I think information technology could have gone another 4 years without changing.

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Hit the Reset

According to the manufacturer's manuals, the charcoal chemical element volition eventually stop filtering out the nasty creatures that live in the water. But think of what feeds your water filter: city tap h2o.

The water supplied by your municipality is tested regularly and deemed condom to drink. Then it runs through your refrigerator filter. If you accept funky tasting water in your locale, so maybe it helps. Only in most cases, it isn't doing much.

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

One of Two Filter End Pieces — Ane of Two Filter End Pieces

Tom Lohr

This article is accurate and true to the best of the writer's noesis. Content is for advisory or entertainment purposes just and does non substitute for personal counsel or professional communication in business organisation, financial, legal, or technical matters.

Questions & Answers

Question: If I don't use my refrigerator ice maker or h2o practice I just practise reset when red light goes on?

Answer: Yep.

Question: I take a model RF261 BEAESR Samsung fridge and I demand to alter the water filter. The manual says to turn off the h2o, simply I cannot move the fridge to get to the water valve. Practice I accept to plow off the water before changing the filter?

Answer: On my Samsung, I did non have to shut off the water. Your model may be different. I recommend shutting off your main house water line if you cannot reach your desiccated refrigerator line. Better safe than distressing.

Ron on April 16, 2019:

It must be two years since I installed my showtime filter and I noticed the water improvement over the tap right abroad, very glad for that. And after all this time it still seems fine to me, I simply proceed resetting the light.

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

After vi months Sears mailed me i and my card charged. The water sense of taste fine to me and its been vii months now. Oasis't changed information technology yet.