My wife is a microbiologist and she works with water, daily. The place she work makes their own WFI.. water for injectables. I've heard LOTS about her water experiences over the years. When we worked at a pharma plant in Broomfield, she did micro on all the water sources in the plant just so the employees would know what they are drinking. Wall hanging water coolers are like drinking from a dirty toilet, deep rock coolers are better and tap water is the best, as far as micro.
Our home tap water comes from wells that are over the same salt vein that Morton mines their salt from and it is horrible... 33 grains and 3900 conductivity! I need to look into potable water regs and have this******tested and see if we are getting what we should be getting.
We drink water from the grocery store machines and it tastes good and it's 1000 times better than our tap water but DW hasn't done micro on it.
Activated carbon makes water taste and smell nice but it also takes out chlorine so the water downstream of the activated carbon will grow things. Craig