Chloramine - check your water source!

[Myka]

Thanks for stopping on the thread Russ! Axial flow makes a lot of sense. I noticed that CGAC cartridges were axial, but didn't register the significance of this.

[Myka]

Got a kit today. It is called AquaChek Select which tests for free chlorine, total chlorine, total hardness, total bromine, pH, tota alkalinity, and cyanuric acid. It was $28 for 50 test strips. I got it at a Hottub store, but had to go to three before I found a kit that would test total chlorine.

My tap water tested chlorine 0, and total chlorine 0.5-1 ppm. RODI water tested 0 for both. So, good news is no chloramines are getting through my RODI system. Maybe my system is doing just fine...

[Buckeye Field Supply]

Check to see if ammonia, a byproduct of chloramine treatment, is getting through your DI.

Russ

[Myka]

Originally Posted by Buckeye Field Supply

Check to see if ammonia, a byproduct of chloramine treatment, is getting through your DI.

Russ

No ammonia in the RODI water.

[Buckeye Field Supply]

Originally Posted by Myka

No ammonia in the RODI water.

Great. It's that ammonia that depletes the DI resin quickly on RODI systems fed water w/ chloramines.

Russ

[StirCrazy]

what I am thinking as I keep checking this is why the big panic? there nothing new, all the tanks in Victoria have been running 10 years now on chloramine water and most never did anything special to remove it that others are not already doing.

my tank there ran 7 years, Brad has been running way longer, and countless others that had tanks before I did or around the same time. no problems that were atributed to chloramines.

if you want to make sure your good, buy a 30 buck ro housing and run two carbon block filters, better yet buy another one also and run two sedimate filters before the carbon blocks. run a 5 micron absolute then run a 1 micron absolute, into two carbon blocks then as normal. if you do this you might spend 60 to 100 bucks. there are more efficient sediment filters out there.. you can buy a bigger housing like I did (more expensive) and upgrade to a 10X4" filter that is a 25micron to 1 micron absolute. I changed this one ever 6 months in Victoria as we had a very high algae count in our water.

Steve

[Myka]

Oh I heard you the first time you said nothing new. No kidding...chloramines have been used for years. However, it IS new to me (having to deal with it that is), and there are many people out there that aren't even aware of it.

Adding ammonia to your tank could very well be a problem! If the carbon in your RODI system doesn't have sufficient contact time to break the bond between ammonia and chlorine the remaining chloramines (particularly monochloramine found primarily at high tap water pH) will go right through the RODI system. Your RODI system also needs enough contact time to not only break the bond, but also to remove the resulting chlorine because chlorine (unlike chloramines) will damage the RO membrane.

Another thing to think of is that our test kits aren't exactly lab quality, so taking a couple extra measures (like adding a cartridge of catalytic carbon to the RODI system) might not be such a bad idea. I don't really trust these little dip strips to be overly accurate, but I do think they can help.

This discussion is just about awareness Steve, as more and more communities are switching from chlorine to chloramines. I don't see why you would frown on such discussion.

Originally Posted by StirCrazy

what I am thinking as I keep checking this is why the big panic? there nothing new, all the tanks in Victoria have been running 10 years now on chloramine water and most never did anything special to remove it that others are not already doing.