Reverse Osmosis Drinking Water Installation in Pocatello, Idaho
By Chad Baxter, Licensed Plumber · Water Softeners Plus LLC · Serving Pocatello, Chubbuck & Bannock County
$699 fully installed. A four-stage reverse osmosis system that removes approximately 98% of dissolved solids from your drinking water — including the calcium, magnesium, sodium, fluoride, and chlorine taste left in Pocatello's 20.5 GPG city water. Installed under your kitchen sink with a dedicated faucet on the countertop. No power required. No monthly subscription.
Pocatello has the hardest municipal water in Southeast Idaho. A water softener handles your dishwasher, shower, and laundry. Reverse osmosis handles the water you actually drink. Here's how RO works, what it costs to run, and when it makes sense as a standalone install versus part of a complete home system.
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Why Pocatello Drinking Water Specifically Benefits from RO
Pocatello's municipal water draws from the Lower Portneuf River Valley Aquifer through seventeen deep wells. The water moves through limestone bedrock on its way up, picking up an enormous load of dissolved calcium and magnesium along the way. By the time it arrives at your kitchen tap it's measuring 20.5 grains per gallon — or about 350 parts per million of dissolved minerals. That's the hardest municipal water of any city we serve in Southeast Idaho, harder than Idaho Falls (14 GPG) and harder than most of the country.
The water is safe to drink. Pocatello's Water Department does a fine job keeping bacteria out and chlorine levels reasonable. What it can't do is remove the dissolved minerals — that takes filtration at the home. And the minerals are what cause the metallic taste, the chalky white residue on the inside of your kettle, the spots on your ice cubes, and the "hard" feel of the water itself.
Reverse osmosis is the only practical home technology that removes those dissolved solids. The system pushes water through a semipermeable membrane with pores small enough to block calcium, magnesium, sodium, fluoride, lead, arsenic, nitrates, and the chlorine taste left from municipal treatment. What comes out the other side is essentially the same water sold in bottles at the grocery store — produced at your kitchen sink for a few cents a gallon. See how fast that beats the grocery-store run with our bottled water vs. RO savings calculator.
What's Included in the $699 Install
Equipment
- ✓Four-stage RO unit (sediment, carbon pre-filter, RO membrane, polishing carbon post-filter)
- ✓3.2-gallon pressurized storage tank
- ✓Dedicated chrome RO faucet for the countertop
- ✓All tubing, fittings, and shut-off valves
- ✓Saddle valve drain connection to existing kitchen plumbing
- ✓First set of filters included
Labor
- ✓Plumbing tie-in under the kitchen sink to cold-water supply
- ✓Faucet hole drilled in countertop if needed (most kitchens already have a sprayer hole to use)
- ✓Drain saddle install on existing P-trap
- ✓System flush and water quality test after install
- ✓Walkthrough on filter change procedure
Optional add-ons
- +Premium faucet upgrade — $799 total install (vs. $699 standard). Brushed nickel, oil-rubbed bronze, and matte black available.
- +Refrigerator / ice-maker line — $125. Runs RO water to your fridge dispenser and ice maker.
- +Utility-room placement — $299. Installs the RO away from the kitchen sink so the drain trickle isn't in your kitchen (requires space and a nearby drain).
Standalone RO vs. RO Paired with a Softener
Reverse osmosis works as a standalone install. It's the right move if you're renting and can't put in a whole-house softener, if you're on a budget and want to fix the drinking water first, or if you're a Pocatello family that just doesn't love the taste of city water and isn't ready to commit to a full water treatment system. $699 gets you clean drinking water at the kitchen sink and you're done.
That said — there's a real reason most Pocatello homes end up running both. Pocatello's 20.5 GPG hardness is hard on the RO membrane. Without a softener upstream, the calcium and magnesium build up on the membrane surface and shorten its life from a normal 5 years down to 2–3. The softener also protects every other appliance in the house: dishwasher, water heater, washing machine, ice maker. The RO finishes the job at the drinking water tap.
A common worry from softener owners: "am I drinking sodium?" The answer is yes, in trace amounts — a softener replaces calcium and magnesium with a tiny bit of sodium through ion exchange. For most people it's negligible. But if you're sodium-sensitive, or you just don't love the idea, an RO system at the kitchen tap removes that sodium completely. Soft water everywhere else. Zero-sodium drinking water where you drink. That's why softener + RO is the gold standard for Pocatello homes.
Most Pocatello customers we install RO for end up adding a softener within a year or two. If you know you want both, our packages save you real money versus paying for them separately:
- City Water Package — $2,699 installed. NuGen Fusion XT softener + whole-house carbon filter. Save $199.
- Complete Home Package — $3,299 installed. Softener + carbon filter + reverse osmosis at the kitchen tap. Every drop of water in your house, treated. Save $298 versus a la carte.
Maintenance and Ongoing Cost
RO systems are simple to live with. The four-stage unit has three filter cartridges that get changed annually — sediment, carbon pre, and carbon post — and the RO membrane itself gets changed every 3 to 5 years. Total cost in filters is around $80 a year. The annual swap is a 15-minute DIY job for most folks, or we'll come out and do it on a service call.
There's no subscription, no monitoring fee, and no contract. You own the system outright. The only ongoing cost is the filters and the very small amount of water used to flush the membrane (RO units produce roughly 1 gallon of drinking water for every 3 to 4 gallons used — that ratio improves dramatically when there's a softener upstream because the membrane works less hard).
Specs and Configuration
| Dissolved solids reduction | ~98% |
|---|---|
| Stages | Sediment, carbon pre-filter, RO membrane, polishing carbon post-filter |
| Daily production | ~50 gallons per day at 60 psi |
| Storage tank | 3.2-gallon pressurized holding tank |
| Faucet | Standard chrome faucet included; premium faucet upgrade $799 total install |
| Fridge / ice maker line | $125 add-on at install |
| Utility-room placement | $299 add-on (space + nearby drain required) |
| Filter change interval | Annual ($80 in filters, DIY or service call) |
| Membrane life | 3–5 years (longer with a softener upstream) |
| Drain connection | Saddle valve to existing kitchen drain line |
| Power required | None |
| Footprint | Fits under most standard 36" kitchen sink cabinets |
Reverse osmosis is a point-of-use system at the kitchen sink. It doesn't soften the water going to your dishwasher, your shower, your laundry, or your hot water heater. For that, you need a whole-house water softener. RO also produces a small amount of waste water during the filtration process — that's normal and unavoidable for any membrane-based filter. And like any filter, it has limits: it's not designed for water of unknown microbiological quality (well water with bacteria risk should be treated upstream with UV or chlorination before RO).
Service Area — Pocatello and Beyond
Water Softeners Plus installs reverse osmosis systems throughout Pocatello, Chubbuck, Inkom, McCammon, and the I-15 corridor across Bannock County. We also serve Blackfoot, Shelley, Idaho Falls, Ammon, Rexburg, Rigby, Ririe, Sugar City, St Anthony, Driggs, and Victor — anywhere within 100 miles of Idaho Falls. Same $699 price across the entire service area; no surcharge for the drive south. Most installs in Pocatello can be scheduled within a week.
Free In-Home Water Test — No Obligation
Before recommending an RO system, we test your Pocatello water and tell you exactly what's in it. If RO is the right call, we'll explain why. If a softener should come first, we'll say that too. No sales pitch, no pressure.
Frequently Asked Questions
An RO system removes approximately 98% of dissolved solids — that's calcium and magnesium left over from your softener, dissolved sodium, fluoride, lead, arsenic, nitrates, chlorine taste, and a long list of other contaminants. Pocatello's municipal water is safe to drink straight from the tap, but it's also extremely mineral-heavy at 20.5 GPG. RO is the finishing layer that turns it into truly clean, great-tasting drinking water at your kitchen sink.
You can absolutely install RO by itself, and many Pocatello customers do — especially if you're renting, on a budget, or only worried about drinking water quality. RO at the kitchen tap is a complete standalone solution for the water you drink and cook with. That said, RO doesn't help your dishwasher, shower, or laundry — for that you need a softener. Most Pocatello homeowners end up adding the softener within a year or two once they see what soft water does for the rest of the house.
Yes, in trace amounts. A softener replaces calcium and magnesium with a small amount of sodium through ion exchange. For most people the amount is negligible — about the same as a slice of bread per gallon. But if you're on a sodium-restricted diet, or you just don't love the idea, an RO system at the kitchen tap removes that sodium completely. That's why softener + RO is what we call the gold standard setup. Soft water everywhere else, zero-sodium drinking water where you actually drink.
The RO system installs under your kitchen sink and feeds a dedicated faucet on the countertop next to your main sink faucet. Your main sink faucet keeps running softened or city water for dishes; the RO faucet gives you purified water for drinking, cooking, ice makers, and houseplants. We can also plumb a line to your fridge water dispenser and ice maker for a $125 add-on so the whole kitchen runs on RO.
That's normal, and it's not a leak. It's your RO system sending concentrate water to the drain while the storage tank refills — the membrane flushes the dissolved solids it just filtered out down the drain instead of into your glass. If your household drinks a lot of RO water, the tank refills often, so you may hear a faint, near-constant trickle at the sink drain. If that sound bothers you, we can install the RO in a utility room instead of under the kitchen sink — wherever there's space and a nearby drain — for a $299 add-on, which moves the trickle out of your kitchen entirely. Since your softener and carbon filter already live in the utility room, many customers who go this route choose the Complete Home Package and have all their water treatment installed together in one spot.
Filter changes once a year, membrane every three to five years. The annual filter swap is straightforward — we sell the filter sets and walk you through it, or we'll come out and do it. No monthly subscription, no surprise fees. Total annual cost of ownership is around $80 in filters for the typical Pocatello household.
Yes, but with a caveat. RO systems work better and the membrane lasts longer when the water is softened first. Pocatello's 20.5 GPG hardness can shorten the RO membrane's life from 5 years down to 2–3 years if you run it on raw city water. If you want the full RO lifespan and the gold-standard setup, install a softener first and the RO downstream of it. That's why we usually recommend the City Water Package or Complete Home Package for Pocatello homes.
Yes. We install reverse osmosis systems throughout Pocatello, Chubbuck, Inkom, McCammon, and the I-15 corridor across Bannock County. Same $699 price across the entire 100-mile service area — no surcharge for the drive south.
There's a popular myth that RO water is unhealthy because it strips out minerals. The reality is that we get almost all of our dietary minerals from food, not water. RO water is the same water bottled water companies sell at $2 a bottle, just produced at your kitchen sink for pennies. If you'd like to add minerals back for taste, there are remineralization filters that bolt on — we can include one for an additional cost.