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New water filter giving me higher PPM than tap..?

Snook

Snook

Still Learning
Veteran
To me it means something is hooked up backwards. I've never measured the PPMs of my waste water run-off but I'd bet its allot more than the initially input tap water.
 
Douglas.Curtis

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
I agree. Either the other output is the clean water line, or something in your system is hooked up incorrectly. Your ppm should be around 3 to 14.
 
MJPassion

MJPassion

Observer
ICMag Donor
Veteran
ChenBenTz said:
Okay, so apparently what I bought isn't a reverse osmosis filter at all. It's for drinking water.. This sucks.
Click to expand...


If it's an RO filter that adds back water softening salts you may be able to tap the RO filter previous to it going through the next filter.
 
Douglas.Curtis

Douglas.Curtis

Autistic Diplomat in Training
The E-bay listing says it's an R/O filter. What does the manufacturer say? If the mfg says it is not an r/o, I'd get a refund.
 
C

ChenBenTz

Member
Yeah, so I found out the hard way that there are two types of filters - R/O and the kind you use for drinking, making tea, etc.

The regular filters remove SOME minerals but not all, leaving the PPM the same, give or take.

The R/O takes out everything, which isn't good for drinking but great for plants because you want to start off with nothing in the water so you can add nutrients and know exactly what is going to your plants.


BUT I figured out that the only difference between a regular filter and an R/O is the last part - a sort of blue membrane that slowly removes everything from the water like a large magnet - this also significantly slows down the flow.

So, what I did was I replaced the 4th and 5th stages of the new filter with the last stage of the old R/O, which is essentially useless because the first 3 stages are pretty cheap.

This brought down the PPM to what it was before, so I wasted some money but at least it's not worse than before.

Now I've gotta go and buy a new blue membrane thingy which around me costs around $50. That should reduce the PPM to below 30 like it used to be.

Just an FYI for anyone wondering.
 
MJPassion

MJPassion

Observer
ICMag Donor
Veteran
Hey man...


If you bought what you linked to, it is advertised as an RO filter and should produce near 0PPM output water. If this is the case you have a RIGHT to a refund because you obviously did not get what you thought you ordered.
False Advertisement is real.
 
gmanwho

gmanwho

Well-known member
Veteran
There are some ro filters that use a later stage addback canister to add minerals for drinking water. usually its the 5th or 6th stage canister, right after the ro filter output. it probably is clearly labeled.

one of my first smaller ro system had a semi transparent 5th stage canister an u could see the different minerals in it. remove the add back canister from the plumbing circuit an take the poly line right from the ro membrane canister clean output.


another possibility is maybe something is not plumbed right, an the ro waste water is the one you are keeping.

or another possibility is an o-ring or filter is not seated right in the canister an allowing "blow By" water , that should be filtered. go back an check filters inside the canister. look for inconsistency's on the o-rings as well. i've had o-rings twist an or break when reseating a new filter.

Or maybe a cheap "bad filter" is actually degrading an adding into the water.

plenty of possibilities. def check the plumbing an make sure your not taking from the waste water off the RO canister.
 
C

ChenBenTz

Member
MJPassion said:
Hey man...


If you bought what you linked to, it is advertised as an RO filter and should produce near 0PPM output water. If this is the case you have a RIGHT to a refund because you obviously did not get what you thought you ordered.
False Advertisement is real.
Click to expand...

Didn't see that there was a second page to this thread.

Yeah, it says "Filtration Method: Reverse Osmosis" but only once. I don't know if it's enough to warrant a refund.
 
AgentPothead

AgentPothead

Just this guy, ya know?
From my understanding, anything less than 200$ is gonna be chinese made junk in the reverse osmosis category. It might be worth it to bite the bullet and get a better filter. Higher up front cost, but less cost and stress over the lifetime of the filter. Also you should be able to remove the mineralization filter, that's the one adding the stuff back in for drinking water. Might be called an alkaline filter, a PH filter, mineral filter, all sorts of names.
 
Snook

Snook

Still Learning
Veteran
AgentPothead said:
From my understanding, anything less than 200$ is gonna be chinese made junk in the reverse osmosis category. It might be worth it to bite the bullet and get a better filter. Higher up front cost, but less cost and stress over the lifetime of the filter. Also you should be able to remove the mineralization filter, that's the one adding the stuff back in for drinking water. Might be called an alkaline filter, a PH filter, mineral filter, all sorts of names.
Click to expand...
WHAT! which one is that?
 
AgentPothead

AgentPothead

Just this guy, ya know?
Snook said:
WHAT! which one is that?
Click to expand...
It depends on the setup, if it's setup for "drinking water" like he is describing they tend to add some minerals back in using one of the filter stages. If it's just a straight RO filter it will not do that. It just adds another stage so like the ispring drinking water setup uses 6 https://www.amazon.com/iSpring-Capacity-Drinking-Alkaline-Remineralization/dp/B005LJ8EXU while their normal setup uses 5 https://www.amazon.com/iSpring-RCC7-5-Stage-Residential-Under-Sink/dp/B003XELTTG
You'd have to check your individual filter setup to see if they are doing that. Also a quick PPM check should confirm, if it's just RO it will be very, very low.
 
Snook

Snook

Still Learning
Veteran
AgentPothead said:
It depends on the setup, if it's setup for "drinking water" like he is describing they tend to add some minerals back in using one of the filter stages. If it's just a straight RO filter it will not do that. It just adds another stage so like the ispring drinking water setup uses 6 https://www.amazon.com/iSpring-Capacity-Drinking-Alkaline-Remineralization/dp/B005LJ8EXU while their normal setup uses 5 https://www.amazon.com/iSpring-RCC7-5-Stage-Residential-Under-Sink/dp/B003XELTTG
You'd have to check your individual filter setup to see if they are doing that. Also a quick PPM check should confirm, if it's just RO it will be very, very low.
Click to expand...
Shit! I thought I could get it lower. :biggrin:Thanks.:tiphat:
 
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