Understanding water stations

I don’t read a lick of Chinese and I am totally confused by the water stations. I notice there are often three separate pumps, which distribute varying amounts of water for the same money. What is the difference between these waters?

What are regulations on these guys? Could they just be sticking some fancy looking props behind the glass ? There was a ‘microbrewery’ in my hometown that did that. Are there any resources or guides to which ones are the best?

The difference would be various filter technologies applied e.g. RO, RO plus activated carbon etc. You choose the level of purity/type of filtration you want. I believe most of them probably do operate in a legit manner as there a few really big manufacturers of these filter products in Taiwan. As for regulation…there should be some system in place. You can buy essentially the same type of filter products for your apartment, there is a 3 in 1 set that fits on your tap head, or you can get a Brita. Always boil the water to kill off bacteria that may be present.

For the record, there is nothing you can get for your apartment that is essentially the same as an RO system, as no other water filtration is capable of removing heavy metals…and Brita filters remove zero harmful contaminants. But even on a high quality RO system the membrane has to be replaced I would think extremely often at these station setups, and I’d really like to know if anyone is monitoring them or if there are samples being taken, data available, that kind of thing…

Well the home installed 3 in 1 RO systems are extremely common so you are saying they don’t work then?
Taiwan is Taiwan, what do you think happens, haphazard monitoring. The best choice are probably the water supply companies or else loading up with bottles at the shop.

I’m not sure what commonness has to do with effectiveness, but actually what I said is there is no ‘essentially the same’ system as an RO, as anything else cannot filter metals.

In the meantime, does anyone have an actual answer to this question? Just want to know if there is any regulation or resources ranking companies or anything of the sort.