Signs at your tap
- A mild chlorine-like taste or smell that doesn't fade when water sits out
- Your city's water report lists “chloramine” as the disinfectant
- A carbon pitcher or fridge filter that doesn't seem to help the taste
What is chloramine?
Chloramine is made by combining chlorine with a small amount of ammonia. Cities use it because it's more stable than chlorine — it holds its disinfecting power longer across a big distribution system and forms fewer of the byproducts that plain chlorination can create.
In the Twin Cities, the large Minneapolis and St. Paul systems and many of the suburbs they supply use chloramine. It's safe to drink. But that same staying power is exactly what makes it harder to remove once it's in your home.
Why chloramine matters
Here's the part filter marketing tends to gloss over: a standard carbon filter barely removes chloramine. The pitcher or fridge filter that handles chlorine taste just fine will leave chloramine largely untouched.
Beyond taste, chloramine is a bit harder on the rubber seals and gaskets in fixtures and appliances over time, and it matters a great deal for aquariums and home brewing — it must be fully removed, because the ammonia component is toxic to fish and disruptive to fermentation.
What to do about chloramine
The right tool is catalytic carbon — a specially activated carbon that actually breaks chloramine apart, rather than just adsorbing it the way standard carbon does. It's the difference between a filter that works on chloramine and one that only claims to.
That can be set up as a whole-home system or at a single tap, depending on whether you want dechloraminated water everywhere or just for drinking and cooking. Reverse osmosis systems with a catalytic-carbon pre-filter also handle it well at the kitchen sink.
The key is matching the media to the disinfectant. We confirm what your city uses and spec the filtration accordingly — because the wrong carbon is money spent on a problem it can't solve.