If you are taking handover of a new-build villa and water filtration is somewhere on the list, move it up. Handover is the cheapest and least disruptive moment there will ever be to make this decision, and the reason is simply that the house is empty. Cabinets have nothing in them, the utility area is clear, the tank enclosure is reachable, nothing is buried under landscaping yet, and no one is living around the work. The same installation done two years later means emptying cupboards, working around a family and occasionally undoing something that was finished nicely in the meantime.
That does not mean you should decide on the day the keys are handed over. It means the twenty minutes it takes to look at four or five things during the snagging walk will settle what is possible, what it will involve and what order the work should happen in. This article covers what to look at, what a developer typically has and has not provided, what to do first if the villa has been standing empty, and how the choice between a kitchen system and a whole-villa system is actually made.
Why handover is the right moment
Three practical reasons, in rough order of how much money they save.
Access. A whole-villa system is installed next to the water tank, plumbed into the incoming line. At handover that area is bare — no decking over it, no planting, no store built around it, no shelving. Access is the single biggest variable in what a villa installation costs in time, and it is never better than it is on the first day.
Sequencing. If a kitchen system is going in, the ideal moment is before the worktop is loaded and before the cabinet becomes the cleaning cupboard. If the worktop needs drilling for a dedicated drinking tap, that is far easier to arrange while the kitchen fitters are still on site than it is once the villa is occupied.
The snagging window. Anything you discover during the walk — a tank in an awkward spot, no drain near the kitchen, no socket where you would want one — is a conversation with the developer while their team is still working on the property. A fortnight later it is your problem and your contractor.
What to look at during the walk
None of this requires any technical knowledge. Take photographs of each one; they are what a site visit will want to see.
- Where the tank sits, and whether you can get to it. Is it in a dedicated enclosure, under a stair, on a plinth outside, or tucked into a plant room? Is there working space around it, or is it wedged against a wall? Note whether it is exposed to direct sun, which is what makes stored water warm and keeps it warm.
- Where the incoming line runs. Somewhere between the meter and the tank, and then between the tank and the house, there is a pipe that everything in the villa is fed from. Whole-villa equipment goes into that run, so where it is accessible determines where the equipment can sit.
- The kitchen cabinet under the sink. Look at what is already in there: the waste trap, any water softener provision, the washing machine standpipe if the machine is in the kitchen. What matters is whether there is a clear volume left and whether a neighbouring cupboard could take equipment instead with tubing run across.
- A drain near the kitchen. Some drinking systems need somewhere to send a small waste line. The sink’s own waste is usually the answer, which is why it is worth confirming it is reachable rather than boxed in behind a cabinet back.
- A power point. Only relevant if you want cold water at the kitchen tap, but decide it now. A chiller is a refrigeration unit and it needs a permanent socket within reach of the cabinet. Kitchens vary enormously on whether one exists under the sink.
- The pump and the pressure. Note where the booster pump is, if there is one. Run a tap on the upper floor and see what the flow is like. Weak pressure is worth knowing about before anything is added to the line, and the relationship between the two is covered in our piece on whether a filter reduces water pressure.
What the developer has and has not given you
This varies more than people expect, and the handover pack often does not make it clear.
Most new villas come with a storage tank and, in many cases, a booster pump. Some come with a coarse strainer or a basic sediment cartridge on the incoming line. That is worth having and it is not drinking water filtration — it is there to keep grit out of the plumbing and the appliances, and it does nothing about chlorine or taste. A surprising number of owners assume the villa came filtered because they saw a housing on the incoming pipe.
What is almost never provided is a dedicated drinking tap at the kitchen sink, a filtered supply to the fridge or ice maker, or any treatment of the water going to the bathrooms and the washing machine. If the villa was marketed with any water treatment included, ask specifically what it is, where it is, and what its cartridges are — a system nobody can identify in two years’ time is a system nobody can service.
One more thing to establish early: who is responsible for cleaning the tank and how often it is expected to happen. In a standalone villa that is usually the owner rather than a community management company, and it is a different job from filtration. We cover the interval and what it involves in our article on how often to clean a villa water tank.
If the villa has been standing empty
Many new villas sit finished for months before anyone moves in, and the plumbing has been full of still water the whole time. Do this before you think about equipment.
Have the tank cleaned first. Water that has been standing in a warm tank for a long period is not the water you want to judge the property on, and it is not what you want a new system commissioned against either. Then run every outlet in the house — every tap, both bathrooms, the garden points, the washing machine feed — for several minutes each, until what comes out is clear and runs cool for the first few seconds. Discoloration or a smell on the first draw is common in a house that has been closed up and it is usually the standing water rather than the supply.
Only once that is done is it worth judging taste, and only then is it sensible to fit anything. Installing a filter into a system full of stagnant water means the new cartridges do the tank’s work in their first week.
Kitchen system, whole villa, or both
These answer two different problems and it is worth being clear which one you have.
A kitchen system handles drinking and cooking water at one tap. It is what most households actually need, it fits in 20 to 45 minutes, and it is the sensible starting point if your concern is what you drink.
A whole-villa system treats everything the property uses — showers, bathrooms, the washing machine, the garden. It is what to consider if the reasons are about the water on your skin and hair, on the glassware and on the fittings, or if you are in one of the northern emirates where the supply draws more heavily on groundwater. The full comparison is in our piece on whole-house versus kitchen filtration.
Which technology suits you depends largely on where the villa is. Dubai and Abu Dhabi are supplied with desalinated water carrying very little dissolved material, so the work is chlorine and whatever the tank and pipework add, and carbon with a fine barrier leads. Sharjah, Ras Al Khaimah, Fujairah and Umm Al Quwain draw more on groundwater and carry a genuine dissolved load, which is what reverse osmosis was built for. Reverse osmosis remains a perfectly legitimate choice anywhere for somebody who simply wants the most thorough system — that is a preference rather than a diagnosis, and our guide to choosing a filter sets out the reasoning by emirate.
Plenty of villas end up with both: whole-villa treatment next to the tank for everything the house uses, and a drinking system at the kitchen sink for what goes in a glass.
How a villa system is priced and fitted
A whole-villa system has no list price, and that is not evasion. What it costs depends on the tank, on how the incoming line runs, on the space available beside the tank and on how much water the household actually uses, and none of those can be known from a phone call. It is quoted after a site visit, which is a look at the tank, the plumbing, the space and your daily usage. It is not a water test — we do not test water and do not claim to measure what is in yours.
On timing, a full villa installation is 3 to 4 hours of work, and adding a chiller is at least two hours on top of that. A kitchen system on its own is 20 to 45 minutes. If you want cold water at the kitchen tap, say so at the site visit rather than afterwards, because doing both in one visit is straightforward and returning to add a chiller later means opening the installation up again. The options are set out in our article on villa water tank chillers.
Every system comes with 12 months of warranty and 12 months of maintenance included. From year two an active maintenance plan covers the service visits and keeps the warranty alive: villa plans are AED 1,399 a year for Semi-Advanced and AED 1,799 for Full-Advanced. Budget for it from the start rather than discovering it in year two, while you are still working out what the house costs to run.