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P @ F

  • Posts: 6319
Water storage Q
« on: October 21, 2005, 09:42:44 am »
Help , i hear that it is a no no to store RO water for to long , does this apply to DI water aswell , if so , what are the safe periods that you can keep the water for ?
Its pointless me buying an ibc to store lots of DI water if its only safe for a short period of time .

 TANKS IN ADVANCE ,   HAHA  GET IT !   ;D

 Rich P @ F  ::)
I'm so lazy I'm getting tired of it !

brett walker

  • Posts: 1943
Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #1 on: October 21, 2005, 10:04:02 am »
Hi P @ F


I took advice from Andrew 24-7 regarding this, im sure when he sees this he will reply to it, as he is very helpful.

Sorry i wont comment myself as i dont want to give you he wrong advice only being a beginner! 
Very good question though for h & S reasons but im glad its been bought up as im storing it myself

regards

Brett























H h20

Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #2 on: October 21, 2005, 06:25:34 pm »
Rich,how long are you thinking about that the water will be stored for? Gaz.

P @ F

  • Posts: 6319
Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #3 on: October 21, 2005, 08:30:03 pm »
Gaz , not really sure , i spose it will be constantly filling and i will be taking it on a daily basis .

  Rich  P @ F
I'm so lazy I'm getting tired of it !

H h20

Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #4 on: October 21, 2005, 08:32:02 pm »
Well Rich,ive had water stored in some containers for over a month sometimes and the tds readings stay the same,Gaz.

P @ F

  • Posts: 6319
Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #5 on: October 21, 2005, 08:46:21 pm »
Well hey , all systems go then ,
I'm gonna put a post on in a min about pricing , let me know what you'd charge.

  Rich
I'm so lazy I'm getting tired of it !

H h20

Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #6 on: October 21, 2005, 08:55:25 pm »
Rich,are you on about selling it?,Gaz.

P @ F

  • Posts: 6319
Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #7 on: October 21, 2005, 09:38:55 pm »
No no no Gaz , sorry mate , that was a bit misleading , i just want to store the water for myself , the pricing im on about is for sixteen houses i picked up today
i just want to make sure i got the prices right ,

  RICH p @ f
I'm so lazy I'm getting tired of it !

Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #8 on: October 29, 2005, 09:13:34 pm »
Hi Rich

Firstly let me apologise for not answering this question sooner.

You can store Your RO/ DI-ionized water for lengthy periods of time, months on end, however, there are some important rules to follow.

1) Never store the water in a temperature that can rise above 19 degrees!!!! Once the water temperature rises to 20 degrees, Legionnaires disease will start to multiply at 30 degrees, you now have a killer disease breading in you stored water. (In the summer, I freeze 5lt blocks of ionized water, and drop these into the tanks, if the temperatures start to rise)

2) Make sure whatever containers you are using to store the water in are full, and then make sure you have some way of circulating the water at least once a week, this will stop the water going stagnant. (I use 1000lt tanks to store my water in, every 3 days; I circulate the water in them, by pumping the water out of the bottom and back into the top)

3) Providing the storage tanks are clean and I do mean clean, the TD's rating will stay the same as it was when the water was stored. The Td's will rise, if the water gets contaminated.

Just make sure you always circulate the water and make sure the temperature is always below 20 degrees and you should be fine.

Hope this helps

Andrew

dai

  • Posts: 3503
Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #9 on: October 30, 2005, 01:45:48 pm »
Well I can't argue with what others have found out through personal experience. I was doing some research of my own the other night. DI water will absorve carbon dioxide from the air. If kept in clear glass containers it will even take in solids from the glass itself. The piece that I read said that DI water starts deteriating the moment it leaves the vessel. This may be in reference to DI water for laborotory work. The only way to keep it pure was to store in stainless steel or titanium, air tight containers.
Requirements here may be greater than ours for window cleaning. They could be talking about fractions of 1ppm, I don't know. DAI

Ian_Giles

  • Posts: 2987
Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #10 on: October 30, 2005, 02:35:52 pm »
Just to play devils advocate for a moment;

Our tap water is chlorinated, ergo our tap water should not have the bacterium for legionnaires disease in it.
I know that our pure water has all the chlorine removed, but surely the water will have to have the bacterium in for it to multiply? It can't spontaneously create itself can it.

Now there are many thousands of us using WFP and have been for years, and so far there have been zero incidents of Legionnaires disease caused through WFP useage.
Now I know that this does not mean it is impossible, but the chances of it happening must be incredibly low.
This doesn't mean that we shouldn't take great care of our equipment, changing our prefilters regularly, and with this being done the chances of the bug growing are even slimmer.

Argumentative bit over ;D

You are right about pure water absorbing carbon dioxide from the air, our pure water very soon becomes a very mild carbonic acid :o
But this doesn't affect the purity of the water.
The pure water will of course try and absorb whatever it can from the atmosphere, but that is completely piddling so far as we are concerned.
It takes a lot for the limestone to disolve into our water to effect the TDS reading!
My plastic wheelbarrow, the inside of which had a layer of grime and muck on had partly filled over a few days with rainwater.
I checked the TDS, and even with bits floating around in it, the reading was still 0.000 pmm.
I was quite surprised about this!
So I cleaned it out, scrubbed it clean and rinsed it out with some pure water.
A couple of days later there was another couple of inches of rainwater in it, this time the TDS reading was 0.003 ppm. though there was more in the way of leaf detrius floating around in there.

Conclusion??

Well I think that the water we use to clean windows is only really affected by truly disolved solids i.e. what gets into the water after it has been filtered through various strata as it makes it's way down to the water table.

In the lab utter purity would be essential, whatever the water may absorb from the atmosphere won't affect us though, we store it in sealed containers too.

Another interesting property of very pure water is that it's freezing point is well below 0 degrees C.

Clean out a little shot glass thoroughly, rinse well with your pure water and then fill it with the pure & put it in the freezer.
Do the same with just an ordinary glass of tap water.

Even with our pure window cleaning water, providing you check on it often, will become ice quite a while after the ordinary tap water.
When it's frozen solid, pick then up and compare the ice formation.
The pure water paterns are far smoother than the tap water ones....

Yeah, ok, I'm sad, and I've no idea why I try these pointless little experiments, they just amuse me :-\

Regards,

Ian
Ian. ISM CLEANING SERVICES

matt

Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #11 on: October 30, 2005, 02:42:41 pm »
my 25 L water barrels have bits of leaves and berries in the bottom, i occasionaly i empty them, and i mean occasionaly, as in every few months

the water is allways the same it went in at, its now 000 as i changed the DI, but it used to be at 006 and those bits of leaves and berries didnt make a difference

the Legionnaires disease point is a valid one, BUT here is my story

i store my 25 L Barrels in the car over the weekend, and in the hotter months (i.e high 20's) i was a little worried, so i checked the barrels, they had condensation on them, as the water was still cold and the car red hot, it takes a hell of a temp to heat up 25 L of water and all summer it didnt manage it

Moderator David@stives

  • Posts: 8829
Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #12 on: October 30, 2005, 03:47:58 pm »
Legionella needs a constant temperature to multiply unless your water temp does not fluctuate with day and night sun and cloud you will be ok .
Legionella does not need to be in the water supply to become a problem ,it will find the water eventually given the right conditions.
It is more common in air conditioning systems as you set a certain temperature and keep it there forever and that is the ideal breeding ground

Dave

Ian_Giles

  • Posts: 2987
Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #13 on: October 30, 2005, 11:07:34 pm »
Good point David, I'd forgotten about the variable temperature!!


Ian
Ian. ISM CLEANING SERVICES

Re: Water storage Q
« Reply #14 on: October 30, 2005, 11:33:24 pm »
Hi again everyone,

It takes about three days for legionella/ legionnaires disease to evolve and start to reproduce. David’s comments about a constant temperature are valid and this has to be a constant temperature above 20 degrees.

Matt stated (I store my 25 L Barrels in the car over the weekend, and in the hotter months (i.e. high 20's) I was a little worried, so I checked the barrels, they had condensation on them, as the water was still cold and the car red hot, it takes a hell of a temp to heat up 25 L of water and all summer it didn’t manage it) Now, Matt, did you actually take a temperature reading of the water? I would say you didn’t. Water at a temperature of 20 degrees, does feel cold still. I have 1000lt tanks that are kept outside but under cover. This summer, we had temperatures in or around 27 degrees for several days, the temperature of the 1000lt’s of water was up to 25 degrees at times (ice blocks dropped the temperature for me). A full 250lt tank in my van rose up to 27 degrees and the 30 inch DI Bottle (this is where the real problems can occur) was at times above 30 degrees.

Now because Legionnaires disease needs a constant high temperature to survive, by flushing my van system each evening with the iced water, would insure no problems would occur.

Legionnaire’s disease also needs to feed (sediment), so the actual main risk factor is in your filters, in your RO systems or DI bottles. If someone was to take a week or two of in the summer and there systems where above the 20 degrees mark, then you will have the real problem.

Stored water can become stagnant on produce a bio-film on the surface, again, this can be a form of food for legionnaire’s disease, and this is another reason, why my tanks are circulated in hot weather.

Ian is right, that there have been no recorded cases so far in the UK of a window cleaner spreading Legionnaires disease. However, this is down to luck more than anything, plus our British summers are not what we would like. But, now that more and more people are getting into WFP and are using the self build units and are not being trained or given Health & Safety advise, I believe that soon, we will enter this new world of legionnaires disease and people will die due to the negligence or ignorance of the user.

My advice is, please take care. It is better to be safe than sorry.

Andrew