RO or RO/DI for drinking water?

[Reef Pilot]

I have an RO/DI filter system that has an RO only output for drinking water, and an RO/DI output for my reef resovoir. Any reason for not using the RO/DI one also for drinking water? I also have a pressure tank with my system.

[Leon71]

My understanding is that we, as humans, need the minerals and trace elements. Pure water is not good.

[FishyFishy!]

I would take it this way... Those systems were initially designed to filter household drinking water.

[clowny]

If you want to drink water from it drink the waste water it has all the minerals and stuff removed from the filters.

[Reef Pilot]

I am in Langley, BC, and our GVRD drinking water is fairly pure to begin with. Tap water is about 50 to 70 TDS here. RO water is around 5 to 7 TDS and RO/DI is zero. So not sure how much difference it makes. Just wondering if the final DI filtration stage does something to the water that is not good for drinking?

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Leon71

My understanding is that we, as humans, need the minerals and trace elements. Pure water is not good.

We, as humans, get all we need from a proper diet, and pure water is the essence of life. All I drink is RO water, I'm fairly healthy

[Leon71]

Originally Posted by Aquattro

We, as humans, get all we need from a proper diet, and pure water is the essence of life. All I drink is RO water, I'm fairly healthy

RO water YES. DI water NO. Do a search on the net, there is lots of info.

[Aquattro]

Originally Posted by Leon71

RO water YES. DI water NO. Do a search on the net, there is lots of info.

Correct, RO is what I mentioned. Which technically should be pure water.

[cwatkins]

Ya, if you were for instance say, working out in the hot sun all day, and only drinking RO/DI water, the sweat would remove necessary minerals and trace elements from our body, and the RO/DI water would not be replenishing them. I doubt you'd die from it but it may not be the best thing to do.

For sure these RO filter systems were used A LOT for household use.

BUT... I don't think I've seen many household water filters with a nuclear DI stage. I'd think the DI phase is used for specific and necessary purposes only I.E. reef keeping, industrial processes, etc. Did I mention reef keeping?

[Aquattro]

Well, all I drink is RO water, and I run a lot out in the hot sun. Minerals come from the banana I ate, or the energy gel, or oatmeal for breakfast. It really is fine to drink RO (and probably DI) as long as you eat food,which almost everybody does. The ratio of minerals from water vs. food is so huge that the content in the water isn't worth counting. The water is not going to act like a magnet and suck the minerals from my body