Zero Waste Reverse Osmosis (RO) system and tankless water heater...
Brent Christensen
6 years ago
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hdbarrera
6 years agohdbarrera
6 years agoRelated Discussions
Reverse Osmosis system for expanding hydroponics setup...
Comments (12)After going back and forth with Freeman on this in private e-mails, I am becoming disenchanted with R/O for plants, too. My biggest concern was the chlorine because of falling for marketing hype in the hydro publications. I normally don't take magazines to heart because the authors are always writing to promote their own self interest. You'll notice all the "experts" are coincidentally reps or owners of R/O system companies. But, I also read it in commonly recommended book. Anyway, Freeman pointed out that chlorine evaporates pretty quickly. I dug a little deeper to find it to be quite true (spoke with the lab at our waste water treatment plant like he suggested). The minerals in water that will keep your EC high are actually good for you plants. Especially the calcium. The only good thing about the R/O system is that you can get water for drinking that doesn't contain a bunch of drug residues that treatment plants don't remove. I just wanted to put that out there because I thought you might be hearing some of the same R/O hype I've heard. So, even if you feel R/O is a must, you might find it more cost effective to go with a small unit and mix it with tap. Then the stuff you might find bad is at least being diluted. Is there research out there concerning how much of the pharmaceuticals in the water are being taken up by plants? Am I eating estrogen laced tomatoes and peppers?...See MoreThoughts/Comments on RO (Reverse Osmosis) water systems
Comments (28)As someone well steeped in a medical and science background, I can't really recommend an ionized water system over RO. No offense. Of course all unstudied things remain a mystery, but sometimes there are reasons we don't study things, because they don't make a lot of sense. Water is an extraordinarily weak buffer. You can sway its pH by electrolysis, but upon contact with any small amount of acid or base, it will quickly lose whatever pH it has. Read, stomach acid vs ionized water... stomach acid wins. If your goal is better tasting water, then carbon may be fine. If you want to remove tasteless chemicals and toxins, maybe RO is for you. The claim that there are 80,000 chemicals and toxins in the water supply at one time or another is sort of like claiming that every once in a while somebody gets hit by a bus, or struck by lighting. Yes, they are very real things, like chemicals in water, that may cause harm. But living your life in fear of such things can make people do extreme things, and waste a lot of money. You are not going to stay in your house, and avoid all roads to avoid lighting and buses, nor should every house install an RO system "to be safe." If your city has a bad track record for maintaining its water, you live near a clearly unregulated pesticide production facility, or you live on a farm with a well that has fluctuating water quality, it may be that an RO system is for you for "safety reasons." I still maintain an RO system is for us water snobs that not only want better tasting water, but clear ice, clear tea, and better water for our plants and high maintenance fish.......See MoreReverse Osmosis or Undercounter Filter?
Comments (9)justalurker makes some good points about actual waste vs theoretical waste. On the convenience side -- which you'll notice frequently, if not every day, in-use -- I would encourage you to also consider replenishment rate, flow-rate from the spigot, and whether or not the spigot flow-rate diminishes as the tank empties. These things are affected by inbound line pressure, line size within the unit and out to the spigot, whether or not the tank refills against back-pressure, and whether or not the spigot output is controlled by holding-tank air-pressure. Everybody's getting better at this but some are MUCH better than others. Some folks don't care much one way or the other but, if you do, I would recommend looking into it. Also, some folks are interested in and good at DIY. If you are, you can save a lot of money. If not, you will want to consider availability and price from local vendors. I must observe from many posts here over the years, however, that many people who thought DIY would be easy found it was quite confusing and easy to botch. Reports have run the gamut from line leaks to wrong-way connections. If you have the interest and ability, by all means go ahead. Just suggesting you not pretend about it....See MoreWhole house Reverse Osmosis system
Comments (21)I’m not a pro by training but I spent a solid 4 months (every single day) researching, reading, talking to chemical engineers at the local university, plumbers, etc. I exhausted myself day and night. I slept with my phone waiting for replies from a water chemist engineer from Germany. Stress. Bought a house with a well. Had water tested at lab and I had just about every problem imagined. Forget the local water treatment salesmen, unless you just want to make a donation. Waste of time and inefficient. I wasted a lot of time with those companies before I realized they didn’t know a damn thing. First test water for EVERYTHING! Yes, you have to go to a lab and probably spend $250.00 or more. Hardness PH bacteria levels iron sulfur and Sulphates TDS, alkalinity, manganese, everything! Get results and go from there. I had high iron, hardness, iron bacteria, dangerously high sulphates, rotten egg smell, all with a low Flow rate well. This matters! After handling all of my issues I was stuck with sulphates which is hard to deal with. R/O is the only way. This means I was going to be limited to having drinkable water in one location in my brand new house...the kitchen sink. I couldn’t even use the water dispenser or ice machine from my fridge because there was no practical way to connect an r/o system. I wanted a full house r/o where my kids could get water from their bathroom sink...but I have copper pipes so I didn’t think it was an option. ****IT IS AN OPTION no don’t have to re-pipe. BUT YOU DO HAVE TO TREAT OTHER ISSUES FIRST. Hard water doesn’t do well going into R/O system. Simply put, you r/o for the entire house and after R/O system you install another system which is a re-mineralizing the water to neutralize the PH and make it taste REALLY GOOD! The neutralized water (ph around 7-8) will not corrode anything. Water tastes just like the ph water from “smart water” You will spend some money. There will be an adjustment period while you fine tune everything. It’s worth it at the end. Licensed plumber for install. Water salesmen can not do this. Good luck. Bad water sucks, I almost put our house back on the market because nobody could figure it out. Eventually, some very kind and intelligent people helped me. They weren’t selling anything or getting anything in return. They just simply took the time to help someone in a bad situation. I am grateful and found this post and wanted to share. There is a way to fix water, no matter how bad....See MoreBrent Christensen
6 years agolast modified: 6 years agohdbarrera is right on this one; they are not compatible. BUT there is a solution if you are handy! I built a new low waste (not zero waste) system by purchasing a new membrane from Pentair (the GRO-50EN) on Amazon for about $50 that is 1 to 1 instead of 1 to 5 permeate-to-waste. I re-used my filter carriers and tank and just had to buy a variety of fittings and some tubing to build the new system (less than $100 total). If you go this route make SURE you get a 150 ml/min (10 GPD) flow restrictor on the waste line - this is what keeps the system efficient (its all the membrane needs).
If you go this route, you'll also need:
Misc 1/4" fittings (you can buy them individually once you know what you need, but this is very inexpensive)
an air gap faucet (or you can install an air gap adapter, but this faucet is REALLY nice and a HUGE upgrade from the Watts unit).
A drain saddle (attaches to your sink drain to dump the waste water)
A 10 GPD (150 ml/min) flow restrictor
You will also need some 1/4" tubing for the main lines and some 3/8" line for the drain from the faucet to the sink's drain.
The downside of this system is that it does create some waste (1 gallon waste for every gallon of drinking water) but it is MUCH better than all the other systems out there which waste from 4 to 6 gallons for every gallon of drinking water.
The upside is that it is MUCH more compact and also absolutely silent.
A complete list of the parts I ordered on Amazon for this build is here
A system diagram that I created after a LOT of research is here
The only tricky part is making sure you make the high side connections (red on the diagram) on the ASOV correctly. The low side connections don't matter.
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6 years agoBrent Christensen
6 years agocatfishsew
4 years agoBrent Christensen
4 years agoHU-317761524
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