dont try to judge by time and cups. you need to measure the waste water to pure ratio. set it up like normal and try to fill up a gallon jug and put the waste water line in a 5 gal bucket. the ratio should be 5:1 waste to pure. ro units produce a LOT of waste. you can use it to water regular plants if you have any.

There is no reason other than available space that precludes putting an RO system in a remote location and plumbing it to wherever you need the water. By system I mean carbon prefilters (essential if there is chlorine or chloramine in the water, or any silt), RO membrane filter, nominal post carbon filter, and storage tank, at a minimum. More complex setups are often used. See Spectrapure's website among many others for examples. The plumbing over longer distances is most easily done with 3/8th-inch food grade polyethylene tubing, connected with John Guest type fittings. Portage Specialties, among many sources, has tubing and this type of fitting for sale. Just cut the tubing to length and push to connect. My RO system is plumbed to feed a centrifugal humidifier, a future family room counter area, a plant watering wand, two kitchen sinks and a refrigerator icemaker RO filtering can leave water slightly acidic, which promotes corrosion of some faucets. This depends on the nature of the water being filtered. I recently determined that my RO water is still alkaline after filtering alkaline pre-treated municipal type water, so I don't have a problem of that sort. If acidic, then another "filter" is needed on the exit end of the RO system that contains limestone chips to neutralize the water. Simple RO systems avoid all this by using plastic and stainless steel faucet parts. The approach I recommend is determine what you want the RO water for and how much you will use, peak and average. Then find a system that will accommodate those requirements. kas

Found good info and thought i would paste here. The i have a continues TDS on my RO input and output and my output is currently around 40 PPM. The Output feeds my Ice-maker and my Instant hot through copper pipes.... I was worried about corrosion and possible leaks and the below paste makes me feel better! Question: Will putting a whole-house reverse osmosis (RO) system on a house with copper pipe cause leaks? aquacareservice@embarqmail.com Answer: Will putting a whole-house reverse osmosis (RO) system on a house with copper pipe cause leaks? aquacareservice@embarqmail.com The simple answer to your question is yes. Copper plumbing that is exposed to RO water will cause pitting; however, the question begs for a more thorough explanation of whole-house RO. To begin with, when most people hear the term RO, they think of water that has had the mineral salts reduced by 99 percent. While this is good for life support water, this is not practical for domestic,whole-house, working water. It is good to keep in mind that the water for this type of application should have a finish TDS of 50-100 ppm. The product water off the membrane should pass through a small column of calcite or equivalent product, or it can be treated with soda ash to neutralize the acidic nature of the water to a less corrosive state. Bear in mind that these products must meet the NSF standard for food service. In addition to neutralizing the acid, calcite will add calcium carbonate to the water. If the water being treated by the RO still contains hardness, then an acid feed is generally needed to drop the pH to increase the solubility of the hardness. This will allow the membrane to reject high levels of hardness while preventing scaling. Therefore, passing the water through a softener to remove any remaining hardness is a very efficient way to provide the kind of working water that most homeowners would like in the first place. Gary Battenberg, Technical Director, Hague Quality Water International As a rule of thumb, if the TDS (total dissolved solids) concentration of the RO water is above 10 ppm (almost all is >10), it should not be aggressive enough to dissolve copper and cause leaks.

Filters (charcoal for at least one, I hope) precede the membrane assembly, water flow direction wise. I hope you closed up the filter housings, without filters or membranes inside, and flushed out all the bleach before reinstalling filters and membrane. Else the membrane and likely the filters will need to be replaced. Also, if bleach cleaning is needed, it is needed most in the storage tank, and commensurate maximum flushing afterwards is needed before returning it to duty. It may be desirable to ask your water supplier whether any changes in water chemistry were introduced around the time you did this. Do you live in Flint MI? There are diagrams of various hook-up configurations at SpectraPure's website (among other sites) that you should be able to use to confirm proper plumbing connectivity. http://spectrapure.com/hookup-diagrams Are any of the water lines involved in your configuration (post filters) made of anything other than polyethylene? It would also help to measure the pH of the RO water at the tap. If it is significantly acid, as it can be in some circumstances, a post RO membrane "filter" that will buffer the pH may be desirable. Acid water can leach metals out of faucets, and might even affect taste buds without any leaching.