Help with incorporating RO/DI

[Roberta]

Originally Posted by estación seca

Reverse osmosis units waste up to 80% of water input. It goes down the drain. It's the reason I decided to collect rain.

Rain is great if you can get it...I haven't seen much in a very long time. When there is anything passing through, it mostly just spits a little at my house. I manage the RO waste issue by collecting it and using it to water my front lawn. That way, I get to have a lawn, water nourishes that and surrounding plants, and then percolates into the ground. Maybe some of it even makes it back to the aquifer though I'm not betting on it.

[SDK]

Originally Posted by tmoney

oh the things we used to do with those jugs back in the day....memories, memories....

I'm not going to admit in a public forum that I know exactly what you are talking about

[Dimples]

There is one positive aspect to the RO waste water going down the drain for people not in a position to collect and repurpose it. Our sewers were designed when toilets and other water faucets had a much higher flow rate. The switch to low-flow devices has, um, clogged up the works downstream from our homes (also flushing things that shouldn’t be flushed).

Yes, it’s not ideal to waste 30-80% of water for unnecessary applications but an RO unit for drinking water and occasional other uses isn’t the biggest water waster in most homes. If it is, assuming you aren’t using hundreds of gallons of RO a month, that’s an incredibly water efficient home!

RO is also one of the only ways home users can remove PFAS and other contaminants from drinking water.

[estación seca]

RO, distilled and purified water are not good for drinking for the great majority of people. Almost all the calcium we take in comes from drinking water and cooking water. If RO, distilled or purified water are used for drinking people don't get enough calcium. Calcium supplements are poorly absorbed and not adequate replacement for calcium in drinking water. Bottled purified water doesn't have adequate minerals added to it to replace what was there. There is an epidemic of osteoporosis and hip fractures in the US, which I predicted 20 years ago when I saw people beginning to drink purified water.

Bottled natural spring water typically does have enough calcium.

When kitchen RO units were introduced they had disclaimers on the box saying they were not intended to replace drinking water. They were sold as units to rinse dishes to avoid water spots.

[Dimples]

That is something I think about and it’s good information to remind people of, but I can not drink the tap water here. It tastes like what I imagine licking a penny covered sidewalk would be like and my body says “no”. It’s a struggle to drink enough tap, and bottled is an environmental and social nightmare, so we settled on RO. Definitely a no-win situation though. Northern California and other places have lovely tap water but ours is just gross. We eat a lot of dairy and use tap for everything except plain drinking water, so hopefully we’ll be ok.

[Ray]

Activated carbon is also good for PFAS removal. The Cape Fear River, which is the source of water for Wilmington NC and much of the surrounding area, is contaminated by the Chemours plant in Jacksonville. CFPU recently commissioned several large carbon filters and has detected no PFAS in the outflow.

There are lots of ways to use, minimize, or even eliminate RO “waste” water, some of which are discussed here.