Guides
Miami water and your hair and skin
Short answer: Miami-Dade tap water is safe to drink, but the disinfectant that keeps it safe can leave hair feeling dry and skin feeling tight, especially in long, hot showers. A shower filter can reduce that disinfectant. It can't make hard water soft.
What's in Miami tap water
Like almost every US city, Miami-Dade adds a disinfectant to tap water so germs can't grow on the way to your home. That's a good thing, and it's required by law. Many US utilities use chlorine, and many now use chloramine, which is chlorine combined with ammonia so it lasts longer in the pipes.
You can usually tell it's there. In a hot shower the steam carries a faint pool smell, and some people notice their hair feels rougher or their skin feels tight afterward.
South Florida's water also comes from limestone, so it tends to be hard. Hard water carries dissolved minerals like calcium and magnesium. Those are what leave white spots on glass doors and build up on faucets.
If you want the exact numbers for your area, Miami-Dade publishes a yearly water quality report on its website.
Why showers are different from drinking water
A shower runs hot water over your whole body for several minutes, and hot water opens up your hair cuticle and skin. That's why people who never mind the taste of tap water still notice it in the shower.
What a shower filter can do
- Reduce chlorine and its smell. KDF (a copper-zinc media) and coconut carbon are the common layers for this.
- Handle chloramine better. A vitamin C layer is designed to neutralize both chlorine and chloramine, which carbon alone handles less well in fast-moving shower water.
- Catch rust and sediment. Mesh and cotton layers trap the grit that older pipes can shed.
What a shower filter can't do
A shower filter doesn't soften hard water. It won't remove the calcium and magnesium that cause spots and scale. If that's your main problem, a whole-house water softener is the right tool. Be careful with any shower filter that promises to soften water.
How to tell if a filter is working
- The pool smell in the steam is gone or much weaker.
- After a couple of weeks, your hair and skin feel less dry.
- When the smell comes back, usually around 60 days, it's time for a new cartridge.
The short version
If the chlorine smell and that dry, tight feeling bother you, an inline filter like Lull is a simple, low-cost fix that takes a few minutes to install. If hard-water spots are the problem, look at a softener. Some Miami homes use both.
Read next: Does a shower filter help hard water? or how to install a shower filter.