RODI problems

[mseepman]

All good suggestions. Knew I came to the right place.

[11purewater]

are you using a piercing valve for the feed line? the clog easily and the post can break off inside,the water pressure may be the same but the flow could be very low.

[mseepman]

Haha...good to see people are still trying to help. In the end I took piece by piece off my system until I got more flow. It turned out the new carbon cartridge that I put in a short while before wouldn't let any water through. Getting water now :-)

[mike31154]

Hey Mark, reading thru this thread I notice a couple of things that raised questions for me. You mention your source TDS is 125-135 and your RO output with that is typically 8. Any idea what water source you're on? Kal Lake or Duteau Creek?

Generally I'm on the Kal Lake source which gives me TDS readings of 210 or a bit higher. This can be corroborated by the RDNO water reports which list TDS as 234 from the Kal Lake intake. Earlier this year they temporarily switched South Vernon to the Duteau source due to turbidity from Kal Lake (used to be Duteau suffered more from this). The new Duteau treatment facility is evidently worth the money since that was giving me 35 TDS source! I actually started a thread on here to advise Vernon reef keepers so they could run their systems while on the low TDS source. I certainly took advantage & filled up all my RODI containers during that spell.

Nevertheless, with my 75 gpd membrane system on the Kal Lake 210 TDS source, I can get the TDS after RO down to 1 within about 5 to 10 minutes of running it. During the winter with colder input water I actually get a 0 TDS reading. Makes me think you should be getting better than 8 TDS from a 135 TDS source with your membrane. Could be that my TDS meters are out of whack, but I've only recently had to change my DI resin after over 3 years of use (2390 gals produced), so that should be a good indication that my RO output has very low TDS. Food for thought?

With regard to pressure issues, I've adjusted the PRV in my house plumbing to provide at least 80 psi downstream. I also have two pressure gauges to monitor my RODI system. One at the input shows house pressure, one after the pre filters, before the membrane. This allows me to monitor the difference & is a great indicator that one or more of the pre filters needs service.

[mseepman]

Mike I'm on Duteau creek. I just took measurements this morning and I'm getting 79 source tds. During my attempts to fix the original problem, I got a new RO membrane installed and now get a reading of 1 after the RO. I still put it through my DI since 0 sounds good to me.

[mike31154]

Cool, that sounds about right with the RO output now. I tap off the RO for drinking water, making beer & fizzy pop. DI is used only for making up fresh tank water & top off.

[11purewater]

Also ,after seeing some lab results from various sources of B.C waters,you guys are high in tannins,your tds meter wont pick that out only conductive mineral salts.thats why I tend to see high bio fouling on commercial size membranes(10GPM).Great TDS but poor production.