How often you flush ro and do you do it before producing water to keep to healthy
How long do you get out of a membrane .
Or do you flush after producing water and for how long
Cheers
TBH I flush the membrane every 'blue moon.' It will mostly be when I open the cabinet to check to see what the state of the sediment filter is like which is probably once every 2 to 3 weeks.
When I do flush it will usually be for a few minutes. I'm afraid I'm not a good example to follow when it comes to flushing.
I remember once that June from GAPS Water said that flushing wasn't that necessary, so that sent a subliminal message to the 'can't be bothered to do it side' of my brain.
Fortunately, we live in a catchment area where the water has a low calcium content so probably the main reason why I get away with my tardiness. However, my membrane will be 7 years old in September and is still performing at 98% efficiency. For me, I believe that the reason why the membrane has lasted so well is that I change the carbon block prefilter at the exact time recommended by the manufacturers.
I use a 20" Fiberdyne carbon block at when the count down water meter alarm goes off after the r/o has used 77,000 liters of water, the prefilters get changed immediately. If I can't do it then and there, I switch the r/o off until I can do it.
The previous r/o was a 450gpd and the membranes lasted 6 years as well. That r/o was purchased second hand and was 1 year old. The prefilters hadn't be changed by the previous owner until I purchased the whole system. I had to replace those membranes 6 months after I purchased the wfp system which included the r/o.
In those early days there wasn't any supplier who sold long lasting 5 micron carbon block filters that I was aware of. So we used to change our 10" c/b filter every 3 months because that's what we were told to do. It was only later that a slip of paper was added to the packaging of the GAC filters we used that they only had a service life of 10,000 liters. At a 3 waste to 1 pure non adjustable restrictor, that meant that I should have changed my c/b filter after every 3 IBC tank fulls, which I certainly wasn't doing. (Maybe that 10k service life slip included in the packaging wasn't correct, I don't know. Maybe they included that to cover themselves for a future claim. I phoned the supplier to ask why the same 10k service life was applicable to the 10" and the 20" but was told that is what the manufacturer recommended. That didn't make sense as the 20" should have lasted twice as long. Gardiners were then selling the Fiberdyne range so I bought those. The 10" Fiberdyne filter has half the service life of a 20" and that made sense to me. I still have a GAC filter under my desk which I purchased 6.5 years ago.)
Those 450gpd membranes lasted a long time considering that they probably produced the same amount of water we always used, about 75k (waste plus pure combined) every 3 months. So does this mean that our chlorine content is very low in our water supply? Possibly. Does it also mean that I could extend my usage of each Fiberdyne filter to say 100k and still be fine? Maybe, but I found sticking to the manufacturers service life guidelines has worked for me so I will just carry on doing what I have done in the past 6 and a half years.
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