can you drink RO/DI?

[Wayne]

Originally Posted by fkshiu

Phhhphht, big time urban myth. RO/DI water becomes "regular" water the moment it touches your lips. It's not some kind of vampire water.

You get the vast majority of minerals from the food you eat. A few cups of RO/DI won't kill you. It just tastes bad.

Perhaps if you ingested nothing but gallons of RO/DI for weeks on end you'd have a problem, but your problems would be caused by the fact that you haven't eaten more than the water itself.

+1 What possible minerals do you want from regular tap water? Copper, Lead, Arsenic, not to mention so many more minerals that are harmful to your health. Even though RO water will remove minerals from your body, you get proper organic minerals that will actually disolve in your body from the food you eat. I do like the taste of tap water but RO water is safe to drink.

[cwatkins]

No point here in vancouver. The water from the tap is pretty darn good.

And unless it came right out of the RO/DI unit, i'm not so sure about it once it's sat in jugs for a few days. Most places put some ozone in those jugs for a reason.

Vancouver now boasts the purest tap water in the world—so why are you still drinking bottled?:
http://www.granvilleonline.ca/gr/blo...good-our-water

[Rogue951]

We may have the purest water in the world, but the pipes leading to your household tap from that pure source are anything but.
Wasn't it on the news a while ago some people were complaining their old water feed pipes were contaminating their water?
Personally, love tap water. haha. Vancouver special only.

Originally Posted by cwatkins

No point here in vancouver. The water from the tap is pretty darn good.

And unless it came right out of the RO/DI unit, i'm not so sure about it once it's sat in jugs for a few days. Most places put some ozone in those jugs for a reason.

Vancouver now boasts the purest tap water in the world—so why are you still drinking bottled?:
http://www.granvilleonline.ca/gr/blo...good-our-water

[daniella3d]

Guys, it's only a problem if you sweat a lot and you drink RODI water, then you will lose minerals (sweat is salty!) and if you don't compensate that loss with some electrolite (like in Gatorade) then you can get water poisoning.

"Any activity or situation that promotes heavy sweating can lead to water intoxication when water is consumed to replace lost fluids. Persons working in extreme heat and/or humidity for long periods must take care to drink and eat in ways that help to maintain electrolyte balance."

Personaly I would not drink RODI water but I drink filtered water with a filter that remove all the toxic stuff but not all of the good stuff.

Best water I ever drink was from some lakes in the Sierra Nevada in California, 10,000 feet elevation and filtered with a ceramic filter for hiking. That tasted awesome!

Originally Posted by Wayne

+1 What possible minerals do you want from regular tap water? Copper, Lead, Arsenic, not to mention so many more minerals that are harmful to your health. Even though RO water will remove minerals from your body, you get proper organic minerals that will actually disolve in your body from the food you eat. I do like the taste of tap water but RO water is safe to drink.

[randallino]

I have a RO line for our drinking and cooking water, I prefer it to bottled any day.

[sphelps]

Originally Posted by daniella3d

Guys, it's only a problem if you sweat a lot and you drink RODI water, then you will lose minerals (sweat is salty!) and if you don't compensate that loss with some electrolite (like in Gatorade) then you can get water poisoning.

"Any activity or situation that promotes heavy sweating can lead to water intoxication when water is consumed to replace lost fluids. Persons working in extreme heat and/or humidity for long periods must take care to drink and eat in ways that help to maintain electrolyte balance."

Personaly I would not drink RODI water but I drink filtered water with a filter that remove all the toxic stuff but not all of the good stuff.

Best water I ever drink was from some lakes in the Sierra Nevada in California, 10,000 feet elevation and filtered with a ceramic filter for hiking. That tasted awesome!

Actually the same rules apply to tap water as well. If you want to avoid this you should drink bottled mineral water. Tap water is not mineral water, it may have minerals but they aren't necessarily the correct type.

IMO you shouldn't drink tap water in most cities, some are OK depending on how close you are to the source but most not so good. When I lived in Saskatoon a study showed many areas to have 3-5 times the allowable lead content in the tap water. Calgary claims they add fluoride to help your teeth while the dentist makes sure you don't swallow any fluoride during the routine treatment Then there's the chloramine with is what is now used instead of chlorine since chlorine breaks down two easily. Chloramine is ammonia bonded and doesn't break down, all those aerators on your taps are now fairly useless.
For the amount of so called "good" things in city water there are too many bad things for me personally. In Calgary and Saskatoon the source of the water comes from rivers, the city advices the water from the rivers are safe to drink but don't eat any fish from them.
Many things within the water have been linked to cancer as well which we all know is a very common disease while most of us have never heard of water poisoning due to a lack of minerals.

I currently drink RO water but previously it was RODI which can taste funny to some but it's harmless. If you like the taste then go nuts, if not try a final taste and odor filter on your system or remove the DI. You can also tee into your filter right before the DI stage and use that for drinking (just make sure the storage tank is also tee'd in before the DI) and leave the output from the DI strictly for the aquarium.
It's sometimes recommended not to drink DI water because DI alone does not remove bacteria or pathogens. When it's added to a RO system this is no longer a concern.

[mike31154]

Since getting my RODI system a couple of years ago, I've been using RO for drinking, making coffee & tea etc. It's great. When I go play soccer, I use RO water to mix up some Gatorade, so I reckon that replaces many of the minerals I may lose working up a sweat, it's an electrolyte after all. sphelps brings up some very valid points in his post. Often general statements made by the so called health experts make their way into our mindset and we don't bother checking our local sources or conditions, or use some common sense in relation to what these health experts are feeding us. I've checked the water reports provided by the city of Vernon on a number of occasions to determine what's actually in the water they're sending down the pipe to my home. It's drinkable according to current standards and hopefully the folks keeping an eye on this regularly are doing their job. But remember Walkerton and don't take things for granted. We're ahead of the game with our RODI systems so why not use RO water for our daily consumption? It's the same as bottled and nutritional/mineral requirements are easily supplemented with the plethora of health products marketed to us these days. It's the same principle we use for our marine tanks, use water stripped of everything, mix with salt and supplement minerals & trace elements to keep our critters healthy.

PS. If you have a spare CO2 bottle kicking around, get a tire valve, integrate it into the cap of a two liter plastic pop bottle and you can make your own carbonated water or even soft drinks with RO water. Tastes awesome. I snagged a used 10lb tank some time ago and make my own bubbly. Don't use a calcium reactor so the CO2 bottle is a dedicated pop machine.

[mark]

I love the internet, where else can you put common sense aside and keep a myth going around and around.

[randallino]

Too much minerals are a bad thing...kidney, bladder stones. Ouch!

[mike31154]

Originally Posted by mark

I love the internet, where else can you put common sense aside and keep a myth going around and around.

Indeed, but on the pro side, we now also have easy access to things like water reports which would have been a bit of a chore before the interweb.