I have been negligent maintaining the water filter on my 381M. This is the second year with the unit and I realized last week I had never replaced the cartridge. This morning I went out to replace the old cartridge, expecting to find a messy clogged cartridge. Instead, I found an empty filter canister with no cartridge inside!

It isn't a lot of money for me to put in a cartridge, but anyone who has a new unit or has never checked the cartridge may want to make sure there is actually one there. It was not on my PDI checklist.