Don’t let the Ozarka label fool you, inside is pre-filtered tap water. What originally happened was a friend of Jennifer’s retired a couple weeks ago and this water cooler was his personal gadget. He didn’t need it in his house, I guess he already has one or something. So I inherited it because Jennifer does the bottled-water thing, boo! Not good for anyone in the long run.
What I did was empty the Ozarka bottle, it had residual water, and cleaned it with a special kit I found at Target. The kit handles hard to clean containers like this, tea kettles, sports bottles, etc. Let the cleaning materials soak overnight. Rinsed thoroughly. Then filled it up with tap water put through my two Brita® Filter pitchers. After Austin’s recent boil order, I stopped drinking directly from the tap at my house. I also use the filtered water for cooking, my weekly pitchers of iced tea, the ice cube trays and the cats’ drinking bowl.
How well is it working out? I like it. I don’t think Jennifer has had a drink from it yet. My neighbor Niko received a glass after mowing my lawn. He said it worked out.
Before you mock the method to my madness. It didn’t take too long to fill the five-gallon (19 liters) jug. When you have two pitchers and a good funnel while multitasking some other job in the kitchen, it goes by pretty quickly.