are you on city water? City water should have lots of chorine and other stuff in it allowed by the EPA.socknitster wrote:Everyone has really interesting points.
The softener and RO system have been installed for about 2.5 months. I used the RO water for about half of that time before noticing anything. This is after a year of never cleaning the humidifier tank, only topping it off with distilled each night (not a terribly smart idea, but I have an m-series and it is a pain). So I followed suite with the RO water.
I didn't notice any smell until after weeks and weeks of doing this. So, I just think that the RO water has a teeny bit more residual stuff that bacteria in the air could grow in. Also, the smell was very mild and the "cloudiness" was really not much more than just a few white floaties--someone less paranoid than me probaby would have not noticed either thing. I do have a degree in biology, so I know the smell of bacteria very well.
The RO system is installed above the water softener in garage, giving it a gravity feed to the nearby kitchen. The installer said that that this kind of situation is easier for install and filter replacement and doesn't take up all that room under the kitchen sink. The drain line goes out separately to the same place the softener drain line goes.
Treesap--if you have hard water and an RO system, you may need to replace the filters more often because the system gets clogged up a lot faster. It also may not perform as well. With a softener, you really aren't technically supposed to drink the soft water without more filtration. But, by the same token, water softeners don't dump nearly as much salt into the water as they used to. There is actually very little sodium in softened water. Which the RO filter takes out along with fluoride and other ions.
For this reason a friend of mine had an absolute fit--that I would raise a child in a house without fluoridated water. Well, I did some research and called our dentist and the densist isn't concerned about it at all. Tons of kids all over America grow up on well systems without fluoride and have perfectly fine teeth. Apparantly you can buy prescription supplements for fluoride, but our densist says we don't need them.
I don't believe RO can filter out all bacteria either. Hearing the success of some of you with RO, I think I will send some water samples out to be tested just for peace of mind. If there IS bacteria in the water I'm guessing it is coming from the water source not my RO system. We have a strange water system here. It isn't city water even though we live in a city. It is a "private company" and we have to pay for it separate from trash and sewer and it is very expensive even though it is the crappiest water I have ever encountered. This is a college town with a prominent chemistry department so I don't know why all of this is put up with when just 2 miles away the next town over has much better city water.
So, I will clean my equiptment and get my RO and plain softened water tested as soon as I can. Good points everyone. Thanks for your input.
jen
However chlorine can play havoc on RO systems, if chlorine gets to the RO membrane it can ruin it in a few hours. That is why primary and secondary filters are usually charcoal to remove the chlorine before it gets to the membrane.
Keep in mind the RO system removes all chlorine from city tap water so it doesn't ruin the RO membrane. So that means the water stored in the small storage tank under the sink has NO sanitizer in it, if you don't use up that tank of water regularly it can become nasty and the "tank and lines have to be sanitized with peroxide or bleach (I like bleach it kills everything). I also use a full eye dropper full not just drops of bleach. But that storage tank is my guess as to where the smell is coming from.
If you use that link below to Watts, it has instructions on how to "sanitize" your RO system, in your case you want to sanitize the line going to the storage tank and after the final charcoal filter usually on top. The RO membrane would be the long filter in the middle, but to sanitize it,
you turn off the supply water feeding the system, open the valve above the sink and allow the storage tank to drain completely (it is under bladder pressure so it should drain completely). Then you disconnect the line under the sink coming from the RO final filter which runs/goes to the storage the tank and using an eye dropper put in a dropper full of laundry bleach into the line so the bleach goes to the tank, reconnect the line and turn the water back on.
Note: Before turning the water back on to the RO unit and while they "say" to replace it (I'm cheap and that membrane filter is $50 bucks), that RO membrane can be removed, examined (for bacteria) and cleaned, use dish soap and rinse it clean (don't use any bleach on the RO membrane). They say that RO membrane should be replaced at least once a year, you may have to replace yours more often depending on your water and how much water you are using.
while distilled water is probably the purest you'll get for home use, it tastes like crap, but it is not so bad if you run the distilled water through a Brita water pitcher.
Where I lived there was lots of MTBE, the bad residual water I had left in my distiller sure looked like Chevron Techron. I'd get a shot glass out of every gallon I distilled.
Watts Procedure:
http://www.wattspremier.com/watts/webpa ... 7&DID=15#4
