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My water sucks (1 Viewer)

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ShipWrecked

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So I live out in the country "Rosharon". We're on a water well and my tds is around 750 before going into my Ro/di. I'm blowing through filters from brs trying to keep my tds as low as possible. Does anyone have any ideas or experience with this? My idea was to start bringing in water from the local water mill express and running it through a DI setup and call it good. I've checked the watermill express and the tds i got was like a 5 or 6 if i remember. Their water is just Ro according to their website. I'm at my wits end with the water situation and its almost got me to the point of getting out.
 

ITreefer

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That's unfortunate. As a city dweller, I have no experince with this.
Your watermill plan sounds viable, though definitely a pain to have to do that regularly.
Good luck
 

DwPolcyn

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A water softener might help a little with that, and your pipes and appliances in your home would thank you.
 

steveb

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So I live out in the country "Rosharon". We're on a water well and my tds is around 750 before going into my Ro/di. I'm blowing through filters from brs trying to keep my tds as low as possible. Does anyone have any ideas or experience with this? My idea was to start bringing in water from the local water mill express and running it through a DI setup and call it good. I've checked the watermill express and the tds i got was like a 5 or 6 if i remember. Their water is just Ro according to their website. I'm at my wits end with the water situation and its almost got me to the point of getting out.

@Buckeye Hydro Any thoughts?
 
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Thoughts? Sure! Always have lot's of those. :)

First, I invite the original post-er to give us a call at 513-312-2343 so he can experience what it's like to talk to a water treatment professional rather than a vendor of pet supplies.

There are lots of easy troubleshooting we could do right off the bat. For instance:
*What is your water pressure? Because you are on a well, your water pressure will likely be variable as it is controlled by a pressure switch. Conversely, your water pressure may not be variable if you have a variable speed well pump (most people do not). With water like yours, high pressure will be your friend.

* What is your RO water TDS? In your case it will be critical to have a TDS meter probe that reads in THREE locations: tap, RO, DI. There is only one meter on the market that does this, and it was developed by HM Digital at the long-term and repeated prompting of Buckeye Hydro: TRM1 Tri Inline TDS Meter

*Hopefully you are not running one of those ill-configured "water-saver" units. That would be a horrible fit for your situation.

*What is your recovery? In this hobby, "recovery" is usually talked about as your "waste water to purified water ratio."

*What is your water temperature?

*What flow (volume per unit time such as gallons per day) is your RO producing?

*Hopefully you have a whole-house water softener that is in proper working order. Do you have other issues such as iron or manganese for instance?

So that's where we'd start. Best to give us a call when you are in front of your system.

Russ
 
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A water softener might help a little with that, and your pipes and appliances in your home would thank you.
I'll go a bit further: with water like that a water softener is a MUST, and may or may not be the only piece of whole house water treatment needed. Hopefully the original poster has had the well water tested at a lab. In the water treatment biz, just about any contaminant or suite of contaminants can be treated, but knowing what's in the water, at what concentration is the place to start.

Russ
 
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ShipWrecked

ShipWrecked

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A water softener might help a little with that, and your pipes and appliances in your home would thank you.
I checked into a water softener and I was told they do not lower tds.

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decimal

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Hi.. did this ever get resolved or Still dealing with high tds? You never mentioned what your filter stages look like. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but theoretically you could add 1 or 2 stages with coarse filtration (like 30 micron and 12 micron or whatever) that are less expensive and changed out more often. This should extend the life of your downstream filters considerably and might be a cost effective solution.
 

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Not only are water wells high in TDS they also have a lot off C02 which will deplete resin real quick.
 
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Not only are water wells high in TDS they also have a lot off C02 which will deplete resin real quick.
I would say this COULD be the case... but other well water is really good. Especially if you are drinking the well water, it is important to get it tested. I'd do that once to check up on a broad suite of contaminants like this:
and annually to check for bacteria. Often, your county will have a lab that will do the bacterial tests at no charge.
Russ
 
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Hi.. did this ever get resolved or Still dealing with high tds? You never mentioned what your filter stages look like. Someone correct me if I’m wrong but theoretically you could add 1 or 2 stages with coarse filtration (like 30 micron and 12 micron or whatever) that are less expensive and changed out more often. This should extend the life of your downstream filters considerably and might be a cost effective solution.
Remember that sediment filters like you describe do not remove dissolved solids (TDS). Sediment filters remove UNdissolved solids (referred to as total suspended solids or TSS).

Russ
 

decimal

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Remember that sediment filters like you describe do not remove dissolved solids (TDS). Sediment filters remove UNdissolved solids (referred to as total suspended solids or TSS).

Russ

cool.. so at what point does tss become tds? tds indicates that it is indeed measuring "solids" as a parts per xxx concentration. while "micron" references particle size but could theoretically be present at any parts per xxx concentration. i'm sure i'm missing Something. No need to write a book but could you explain a little further?

also, i was going on the premise that filters where being clogged up and failing at a faster than acceptable. Presenting particles to filter sections designed for lower resolution particles capture would do that and prevent those sections from performing properly due to being clogged with larger particles. maybe i'm wrong and it just affects the flow rate and nothing else.
 
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cool.. so at what point does tss become tds? tds indicates that it is indeed measuring "solids" as a parts per xxx concentration. while "micron" references particle size but could theoretically be present at any parts per xxx concentration. i'm sure i'm missing Something. No need to write a book but could you explain a little further?
Not sure I'm following you here. You can have high tss but little tds for instance. Think for example about ground water coming from a granite aquifer. Might have only 50 tds, but might clog a sediment filter quickly because it has a lot of undissolved sand/silt/clay in it.

also, i was going on the premise that filters where being clogged up and failing at a faster than acceptable. Presenting particles to filter sections designed for lower resolution particles capture would do that and prevent those sections from performing properly due to being clogged with larger particles. maybe i'm wrong and it just affects the flow rate and nothing else.
Its not clear to me WHICH filters he's blowing through. If his sediment filter is clogging quickly, then yes - he might want to add another sediment filter with a larger pore size ahead of the system. I suspect what is happenning is that he is scaling/clogging his membrane because of super high Total Hardness, and because his starting TDS is so high, his RO water TDS is high - even with a new membrane. That would make him go through DI resin quickly.
 

decimal

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i guess it is me who is confused. tds is a volume ratio measurement and micron is a physical size measurement. as in we read tds as .017 parts per million and we would use a 1 micron filter to filter out particles that measure 1 micron and above. there could be a .017 parts per million concentration of 1 micron particles. or 2 micron particles or whatever suspended in solution. based on what is being discussed here, i am to understand that at one point or another there is a marked line that separates tss from tds. i was asking if it was clear where that point is or what the decisive difference between tds and tss is. i guess i can just google it but hey.. its covid and what else am i gonna do? thank you for the stimulating discourse. i remember you from when you first became a marsh sponsor and i know that you know your stuff so if anyone would would have insight into RO its you haha.
 
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I think I see where the confusion is.
First, TDS (in ppm) is derived arithmetically from a conductivity measurement. So your TDS meter is really a conductivity meter that applies an algorithm to estimate the amount of dissolved solids.

Second, because the solids in the TDS measurement are DISSOLVED, they have no physical dimension. Well, a chemistry person would say the dissolved chemicals do have a dimension - but we are talking here about molecular size - much smaller than a micron (e.g., 1/1000 of 1 micron). This may help (note - 1 micrometer = 1 micron).
Part. Size Chart.png
 
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