I use Britta water pitchers for me and bottled water for my animals. The water I have is awful, full of lime and rust bad. Our main killer is the lime. The vet said that the water pitchers don't clean it out enough for my animals and to use bottled water for them as my cat almost died because of teh minerals in my water. It's a cat thing, not a human thing with my water, trust me. lol (male, nuetered cats develop urinary tract infections from minerals in the water, he almost died of it) But the water pitchers I have found get more of the junk out compared to the faucet type filters. I had a Pur water filter on my faucet and it sucked. I still had sludge on top of my coffee. The water pitchers took that sludge from the lime deposits right out.
I hope that helps you out. :)
HH

Dunno bout your neck of the woods but most health food stores and some of the major grocery chains now have filtering stations where you bring your own containers and fill up with either reverse osmosis filtered water or distilled water for just .39 cents a gallon. I fill 2 - 5 gallon jugs for $3.90. For me it works out to somewhere in the nieghborhood of $1.50 a week. Pretty durn hard to beat that.

I have one one those small small PUR faucet filter that I use for rising vegies and maybe water for boiling pasta. I just wouldn't trust the quality of the water from those small filters
for doing the MC. The question of the quality of the water from those faucet filters gets even more dubious depending on the quality of the city water where you live. Things get compunded even further in older homes with either rust from old iron pipes and years of mineral deposits.

If your filter hasn't been used in a while make sure you let it run for a few minutes to clean it out before using it. I would also be concerned that if you stored it while it was still full of water that some molds might have developed inside. Please be carefull if you have any doubts don't use it.

I put some lemon in the water or drink herbal tea.
Emily