DIY Reverse Osmosis - For Scale Grower - Cheap, Portable, & Effective

[Pipedream]

The water from any good filtration system (RO or other) will have alot of the Cal/Mag removed as that's a primary function of the system. If your nute say mix with distilled or filtered water, you should have no worries as the manufacturer will generally put in enough to make up the difference. If you are supposed to use tap water, you may wind up a bit short and want to add a drop. Of course all this depends on the plants you are growing. Some strains are cal/mag hogs while others couldn't care less.

 

[gonejah17]

HEY MAN AWESOME THREAD I JUST WENT AND BOUGHT ONE!!

Gotta get teh right hose adaptor for my faucet (size wise) and Im off. Right outta the box the thing spat out 20 ppm which is cool w me. My tap is 300 lol. And my cheap RO spat out 15 so werd.

I had a question. the switch on it cuts on and off the flow, is this no longer there once u take it apart??? Im afraid to take it apart because its working fine for me the way it is. lemme know and thanks again for posting such a great idea!!!

 

[Pipedream]

Sure, you can use it just the way it comes out of the box if you prefer. I wanted to get it as simple as possible with no restriction to the water flow and scale it down size-wise.

 

[Phantom594]

Hey pipe, long time no post, i tried the autodry and confirmed it, brought my ppms from 575 to 0010, the crazy thing was the bottled water i was using as a control tested at 0020 ppm. As far as the comments about the autodry affecting pH, mine didnt change much, it did go slightly more basic but we are talking like .1-.2 so it couldve just been machine error. Still not sure how many gallons it will filter total but i will let you know

 

[Nayxio]

Bump for a good idea. They sell these for $10 bucks where I live at Wal-Mart and the replacement filters are $4. Out of the tap the water is around 300ppm and now its at a pleasing 25ppm. I don't remember the pH of the water afterwards but I'll find out later. I disassembled it and glued it together with Power Grab (I made sure that no water will touch the power grab though.) This works great so far...

ps - Even if the pH swings, I recommend it. Less TDS is worth a little more pH +/-.

 

[wolfy_9005]

Nice find

 

[maryjanesjungle]

Hey Pipedream, just got me a Mr Clean AutoDry last week and tonight i finally got around to fuckin with it. My tap water is 450ppm and in my current DWC I'm having the pH go up .2 a day, which is too much for my taste. Someone thought it might be the distilled bottled water from walmart I was using so I'm gonna give filtering my tap water a try. Even if this method doesn't fix my pH rising too fast problem it should at least get my cost per gal below .80 cents and i wont have to lug it home from the store either.

I build mine up exactly like you did yours, but then realized in my apartment i got no garden hose to attach it to, LOL! So I busted it apart and all i'm doing now is I temporarily hijacked a submersible pump out of my res, set it in one of my 2 bathroom sinks, and a 5 gallon water cooler jug on the floor. 1/8th in tubing fits right into the filter cap from inside the Mr. Clean Auto Dry unit, and i have an 1/8th" tube running out as well and into the jug. It's slow pumping but oh well its practically free!

Just wanted to give you props and a hell of an idea.


Ok update, readings from the first gallon of filtered water are 17ppm and
9.3pH. Out of the tap it was 445ppm and 7.7pH. Weird that the ph went so high but hopefully it wont continue to rise once i add nutes and get it down to 5.5pH

 

[Pipedream]

but then realized in my apartment i got no garden hose to attach it to, LOL!

Come to think of it, I'm sure this applies to alot of arartment growers. If you go to Home DePot or Lowes, they sell a small cheap ($3) brass adapter that screws onto the kitchen faucet and converts it to a hose fitting. Although, your solution works as well. You should post a couple of pic's here for others that might benefit from it.

Thanks!

 

[maryjanesjungle]

hey pipedream,. below is a pic of what i did. just an 1/8th" hose in and out. out going to a jug and in coming from a submersible water pump i had in a sink full of water. pretty simple. leaks a little bit but no big deal.




how many gallons did you get out of the starter filter? i filled a one gallon jug as a test and got 15ppm, then did a 5 gallon water cooler jug and ppm's were 250! did one more one gallon jug after that and they were in the 400's. It seems like the starter filter is beat only after a few gallons.

 

[Ipsissimus]

Cool thread! I became fascinated with how this thing works, and I did some poking around in it seems the consensus is that the device is a de-ionizer. It replaces calcium and magnesium ions with sodium ions.

from wikipedia:

The water to be treated passes through a bed of the resin. Negatively-charged resins absorb and bind metal ions, which are positively charged. The resins initially contain univalent hydrogen, sodium or potassium ions, which exchange with divalent calcium and magnesium ions in the water. This exchange eliminates precipitation and soap scum formation. As the water passes through both kinds of resin, the hardness ions replace the hydrogen, sodium or potassium ions which are released into the water. The "harder" the water, the more hydrogen, sodium or potassium ions are released from the resin and into the water.

RV dealerships sell what is likely a scaled up version, and the units treat 100 gallons to 400 gallons of water. The resin replacements cost 100 bucks and they treat 100-400 gallons of water.

This being the case, it seems plausible that it might be more economical to purchase treated water, considering that it only treats a limited amount of water.

Your tap water may have other problems other than having too high of a PPM as well.

However, wikipedia goes on to state:

As these resins become loaded with hardness ions they gradually lose their effectiveness and must be regenerated by passing a concentrated brine, usually of sodium chloride or potassium chloride, or hydrochloric acid solution through them. Most of the salts used for regeneration gets flushed out of the system..

maybe you can just run some hcl acid or salt water through the filter and recharge it - someone do a side by side!

so anyhow, part of my motivation was because it seemed like there were some other commercial applications. one idea that still stands out is using it as a shower head filtration system. They have these for chlorine (think brita filter style) but it's the hard water that really screws up your hair, and showering in general. They have (of course) entire house water softening systems, but for someone who is renting, this is not a plausible installation.

ips

 

[maryjanesjungle]

Ok i got a problem, and Im kinda pissed too!

Like I said earlier (which no one replied to) the started filter only filtered a few gallons of water before what was coming out was no better then what was going in. I figured maybe I got a bum filter so I bought a brand new one. Says on the side its good for 10 uses but it only got me 3 gallons before the 4th was over 100ppm and the change filter indicator on the side said it was shot! WTF I just spend $8.50 for 3 gallons of water!?!
I'm now seriously doubting that this idea is any good, AND it cost me over $30 to find out.

 

[Pipedream]

Life is short, there is no reason to be "pissed" here, a little disappointed, maybe.

I went back thru all 10 pages of this thread and did a bit of math. It seems that the average person gets between 12 and 18 gallons of water from a filter. At $4 a pop, that makes the cost of water between 22 cents and 33 cents per gallon. The difference in every case was the quality of the water they were starting with. The higher the ppm from the faucet, the fewer gallons of clean water produced.

As I stated several times, this is not a replacement for an RO system, and is not for the person that needs buckets and buckets of water. This is for the small scale grower that goes to the local grocery store and hauls back distilled/bottled water a few gallons at a time. In this situation, it will eliminate alot of heavy lugging and the cost per gallon can be as little as 1/2 to 1/3 of what they would otherwise pay.

One more note...I noticed on the filter in the picture that there is a CHANGE/USAGE indicator. The original filters from a couple of years ago did not have them. I'm wondering if they may have made other changes in the filter as well that would affect their longevity?

Last thought... after rereading your 1st post I noticed that you stated that, when the filter crapped out you were getting a reading of over 400 ppm. That being the case, I'm guessing that the water out of your faucet must be even higher, say near 500 ppm. Asking this small filter to pull that much mineralization out of the water is truley pushing it to its limits. Most folks are starting with tap water in the 200 ppm range. So it stands to reason that you would see less than half of the production that the average user would.

Sorry it didn't work out for you, and remember...its always better to be pissed-off than pissed-on. Regards, PD :smile:

 

[maryjanesjungle]

Culligan water from Walmart, 5 gallon jug only 23 cents a gallon. 40ppm at 6.7pH. Man up and lug it! ;-)

 

[Geezus]

This looks perfect for my 2x3x4 cab. Simple really is beautiful. I see sugabear already downsized this fore my needs, but just wanted to holla at this smart design.

Thanks

 

[ShoeboxSherman]

Life is short, there is no reason to be "pissed" here, a little disappointed, maybe.

I went back thru all 10 pages of this thread and did a bit of math. It seems that the average person gets between 12 and 18 gallons of water from a filter. At $4 a pop, that makes the cost of water between 22 cents and 33 cents per gallon. The difference in every case was the quality of the water they were starting with. The higher the ppm from the faucet, the fewer gallons of clean water produced.

As I stated several times, this is not a replacement for an RO system, and is not for the person that needs buckets and buckets of water. This is for the small scale grower that goes to the local grocery store and hauls back distilled/bottled water a few gallons at a time. In this situation, it will eliminate alot of heavy lugging and the cost per gallon can be as little as 1/2 to 1/3 of what they would otherwise pay.

One more note...I noticed on the filter in the picture that there is a CHANGE/USAGE indicator. The original filters from a couple of years ago did not have them. I'm wondering if they may have made other changes in the filter as well that would affect their longevity?

Last thought... after rereading your 1st post I noticed that you stated that, when the filter crapped out you were getting a reading of over 400 ppm. That being the case, I'm guessing that the water out of your faucet must be even higher, say near 500 ppm. Asking this small filter to pull that much mineralization out of the water is truley pushing it to its limits. Most folks are starting with tap water in the 200 ppm range. So it stands to reason that you would see less than half of the production that the average user would.

Sorry it didn't work out for you, and remember...its always better to be pissed-off than pissed-on. Regards, PD :smile:

I gave this a go, and it worked fine for about five gallons. My tap water is about 450-500 ppm, so it stands to reason I was going to see a short return per filter.

No big deal, it was worth a shot, and I still think it's a damned good idea for small scale use with better tap water than mine. I don't mind the cash I laid down for it, hell, I'll just use it to wash my car now.

Thanks again for sharing it PD.

 

[Scenario420]

Good info, thanks for the sharing...

 

[Scenario420]

Culligan water from Walmart, 5 gallon jug only 23 cents a gallon. 40ppm at 6.7pH. Man up and lug it! ;-)

thats an interesting point...lol

But either way this is really good info, thanks to all.

 

[McSnappler]

Excellent thread.. If anyone is interested it's called the Flash Home Car Wash System here in the UK.

http://shop.ebay.co.uk/?_from=R40&_trksid=m38&_nkw=FLASH+HOME+CAR+WASH+SYSTEM

 

[PiffGuru]

If anyone out there is interested in this item and can buy it today... I would suggest checking out woot its being sold today only for $2.99.. best deal you will ever find.

www.woot.com

 

[vicious bee]

I bought one of these and it worked for me. PPM going in at 86. PPM after Mr. Clean 0.0. I've only used 10 gallons. I'll have to see how long it last.