Installed my new RO/DI unit!
Alright so I received my new RO/DI unit last week. I purchased this unit from bulkreefsupply and so far I have to say I am impressed. This is the 3rd RO/DI unit I have purchased in my life. One was used and didn’t work really well. The other was through e-bay with a no-name brand that worked fine. This one was a little more expensive, but it also has some features that my other ones did not come with that I like a lot. First of all on my second RO/DI unit I had a small DI canister that went along the top. I read in many places after I bought it that this is not ideal as it creates streams that water will go through without hitting the DI resin. It also needs to be changed out more frequently, something I hate doing. I eventually bought a separate DI canister that was bigger and mounted vertically to fix this problem. I bought it at my local reef shop in the Chicago burbs, and that was my first problem. Costed me around $75 for that alone, and I think it was on sale… Anyways, since I went through that once, my priority this time was that I needed to have a separate DI canister as part of the package. I was originally looking for 100gpd, but as I read more the 100gpd membranes usually have a 96 percent rejection rate, where as the 75gpd membranes have 98. This I thought was more important since I don’t like changing the water that frequently anyways, and 75 gpd should be plenty. One thing in IL that I didn’t take into consideration was the waste water. I knew there was waste water, but I didn’t realize how much there was (4 to 1). I just fed it into the drain. Now that I live in northern California, where we are essentially in a drought for 70% of the year, and I am on a metered water system. I am concerned with how much water I use. The way I see it, the waste water isn’t necessarily bad, it just has more contaminants in it. Sending it down the sewer seems like such a waste. So I am devising a system where I can use it to water my lawn. I have not determined exactly how I am going to do this yet, but I have some ideas. I need a good storage tank to hold my RO/DI water anyways, so I guess the first step is to get a couple tanks. That is a topic for a different post, lets get back to the RO/DI unit. The one I chose was the ‘5 stage plus’:
One of the features about this unit that I really like is the dual TDS meter.
I had a TDS meter that I could put into a cup of water, but that was always a pain. Now I can find out how my unit is performing without having to detach hoses and what not. It is also in a nice clean location. The pressure gauge is also a nice little add on that I have never used before and seems like it could prove beneficial when things aren’t working well, but we’ll see.
That’s about it for my new RO/DI unit. I’ll send an update when I get my storage tanks set up.
