[Nathanael Jones]

Have you considered rainwater harvesting? It may only supplement your water needs,.. but every little helps.

[Rob_Mac]

Come on Nat

Keep up

Quote from earlier post - I have looked at rain water harvesting from our roof, though this is old corrugated asbestos and of a good size it would have a good yield - and we are certainly getting enough of the wet stuff.

I will set up a rainwater catchment system on Monday and see what purity I get. You watch now it will stop raining!!!!

Rob

[Rob_Mac]

I do like the idea of rain water harvesting but am also looking for a permanent system to be reliant on.

If when I set up the rain harvester it will have sufficient purity levels and I can keep micro organism levels low then I am confident that this may be what I am looking for.

I have a dirty roof - I think but I have 4 IBC tanks and would like to store water rather than wait for it to rain for my requirements.

I will do a test next week -  the rain water is not going to be a problem - storing may be

Rob

[Nathanael Jones]

LOL,.. sorry,.. speed reading again!!

I get approx 30 TDS off my cement tile roof,.. still have to use DI, but the resin lasts ages.

[Rob_Mac]

Do you store the water or use it quickly

Rob

[Wayne Thomas]

Water companies waste more water than anyone else. If you have a meter fitted and it's outside your boundaries they couldn't give a monkeys. If it's on your side of the boundary, they can't come out fast enough.
I  have my water switched off on a regular basis because of the 32 tonne trucks that are forever damaging the pipes under the road nearby. I have 2 x 2000 litre tanks and 4 x 1000 litre tanks which I always keep topped up (from the mains and rainwater harvesting) so at least I have enough water for work for a couple of weeks to be on the safe side.

Midas:   .............. what's stopping you buying an Ionics 100% waste free RO system (7 series)? Is it the cost of the system and the cost of the replacement zero reject filter?

We'd all like to waste less water. I'm doing my bit although I don't use it as a marketing tool, perhaps I should. At the end of the day, most of it all boils down to saving money first.

[michael papworth]

A couple of points here. First of all, as I understand it you cannot have a waste-free RO system. Think about it. The dissolved solids that aren't in the water you collect have to go somewhere. They are swept away by the waste water. If you measure the tds of the waste water you'll find that it's about double the tds of the tap water.

Secondly, purifying water takes energy. Purifying sea water takes more energy than purifying tap water. The energy comes from the pressure drop across the RO membrane. Purifying sea water can be done - and IS done on a very large scale in many middle eastern countries - where energy is relatively cheap. In the UK the cost would be prohibitive.

Going back to my days in Africa, I seem to recall that ceramic filters are used for filtering of micro-organisms. (I never used them for this. I was lucky and lived in places with good groundwater.)  I'm sure that they wouldn't remove ions.

Distillation would be, as stated, prohibitively expensive.

Rain water is, of course, distilled by the Sun and wind.

I have three containers of rain water in my garden right now. Two are collecting from the roof. One is collecting directly from the sky!

Roof 1 - 002
Roof 2 - 006
Direct - 004 (also collects a lot of dust from the trees which explains why it's so high.)

And I haven't had my roof cleaned, but the gutters ARE clean.

(I'm going to look into the Ionics zero-waste RO. It sounds fascinating.)

[Rob_Mac]

I have never given factory units a thought. - how much are they, Alex was meant to be bringing out an add on to existing systems but that has not appeared.

We have a large trading address that is not open to customers coming to us - more storage for the vans and equipment, I have never felt the need for shiney systems. From my point of view what goes on in the background is less important than what the customer sees and I am more than capable of setting my own systems up and putting different pieces together - but I don't want to waste money on ceramic filtration etc if it is not going to give me what I am looking for.

I am on a meter at my address and want a better solution than throwing water down the drain

Rob

[Wayne Thomas]

Midas, the water you would normally throw down the drain could go into a below ground level soakaway/storage tank and be recycled for flushing toilets and the like. For more information, look at rainwater harvesting ideas on google search.

[michael papworth]

I've had a quick look at zero-waste RO and it seems to be, as I suspected, a system that simply recycles the waste into another part of the system.

I found some really good information on RO systems. Check it out:

www.watts.com/pro/divisions/waterquality/support/support_faq.asp

[steve a]

Sounds to me like it all boils down to cost in the end.

Less waste/less total quantity/less cost.

Come on we live in a mainly wet country, thats why the grass is green. If everybody saved water do you really think it would help arid countries, we wouldn't ship the excess to them and just because we weren't using it it wouldn't stay in the sky and fall elsewhere, any excess over the level of the reservoirs would go as runoff and be returned to our rivers and rtreams.
And if you think that the water companies would charge us less for using less then get real you would be charged more for each litre you use 'cos they want to earn the same amount as before but will be selling less product.

Just my humble opinion.
Steve

[Rob_Mac]

Steve

I agree my little bit do nothing for the thirsty millions in Africa but my quest for an answer to the original post is about senseless waste and this is one area where there is far too much.

It cannot be that difficult to loop an additional couple of filters from the waste outlet and then re pipe the waste oultet back into the supply outlet.

I know there will always be a need to have some waste but not at a ratio of 1:1 and above. I would be happier spending additional money on extra filters to do this but I just don't know what filters I would need and if you looped back into the supply feed there would be no option to have a waste at all.

Rob

[DASERVICES]

There is an alternative to the r/o

Looking into it, but will be some time before we decide it is a viable option. As you know costs is the main issue so need to see if it is worth while.

Doug

[Rob_Mac]

D. A

Any chance I can have a bit more info
 
Rob

[DASERVICES]

Sorry mate, too many suppliers on here

Have to do a lot of trialing before we introduce it into the market so will be a long time. Cost is the biggest factor.

[Rob_Mac]

Is it anything to do with any of the options I have mentioned, could this be discussed over emails or the phone or is it something completely out of the box that you are developing to be an alternative.

Rob

[DASERVICES]

This is something new, will see it next week to see if it is a vaible option for our Industry.

Let's say it will be an alternative to the r/o. Saying nothing else now 

Cheers

Doug

[Moderator David@stives]

da

are you on about the low pressure ro which doesnt need a booster pump ?

[Dave Turley]

hiya.

m-clean, what is your tapwater tds? if you're more bothered about waste water than cost, how about backpedalling a bit and just using resin.

if you bought it in bulk quantities, and if your tds isn't too high, maybe it's an option.

I suppose it depends how much water you use.

[DASERVICES]

da

are you on about the low pressure ro which doesnt need a booster pump ?

Dave,

No totally something different, a top person in the water industry knows the set up we use in our industry. He gave us some info on an alternative method, this I will discuss next week to see if it is a feasable option.