Martin, maybe you can answer this… several years ago when my system was new I pulled the membrane to change it out and found what looked like hundreds of thin tiny shards on the input side. Looked like glass shards. I ended up taking the entire unit back to Watts (at their request) to look at the system, I was having other issues with it. They were not able to tell me what that was or what caused it other than ‘there’s something in your water’. any idea what that could have been? and interestingly enough, its never shown up again when I change the membrane.
That’s odd. Maybe they were fiberglass filaments from a wound sediment filter?
no, no fiberglass in the sediment filter. Think broken glass pane. that’s what they looked like. never been able to find out what it was other than a guess that one of the ‘salts’ of the water source crystalized.
That was quite helpful.
Sodium is not good for your garden or municipal waste-water treatment systems. Always use environmentally friendly potassium chloride in the water softener prior to the RO filters. Never sodium.
I use K-Life, but there are other brands available.
Sorry, NO.
While you do have a point that potassium is a recognized nutrient for plant growth, it too becomes toxic at some point. Regardless of what we do, ion-exchange is not a good thing to do, with respect to the environment. However, its a cheap and effective way to provide a more desirable outcome…for the user.
Sometimes compromises suck. This is one of those things.
RO systems do tend to have an issue with waste water but if you do some digging and read reviews like here https://popular.reviews/reverse-osmosis-system/, there are models that waste considerably less water during the filtration process.
Just a tip of the hat and a big thank you to estrauss for this post.
Also, to the brilliant Martin Brungard whose Bru’N Water I have use probably since it’s initial release.
(I confess I have used it for years without monetarily contributing until several years later.)
I come from before the Papazian era when we brewed awful tasting beer and forced ourselves to enjoy it.
With Papazian we brewed much better beer by the seat of our pants with tap water.
Enter A.J. DeLange and for several years I used his alkalinity reduction with calcium hydroxide method.
I then hit my phosphoric acid addition phase for several years.
Like most my water is very hard and very alkaline.
I read this forum post when it was first posted and ear marked it for future reference.
Then I promptly forgot about the post.
Then two articles by Martin Brungard in Zymurgy (July/Aug 2019 and Jan/Feb 2020) re-sparked my interest.
Thanks to his excellent articles I revisited and have re-thought my brewing water issues.
I purchased the iSpring RCC7P after reviewing this post.
(It adds a pump to boost performance - less waste water.)
This system was easy to install and works flawlessly to produce water pH 7.0
I did add a “14 gallon” closed system storage tank.
My only words of wisdom here is it will only store 9 gallons of water even at 5psi pressure.
I look forward to brewing beer this year with this new system.
Brewing doesn’t have to be rocket science, but it certainly can be if you desire.
I love the science of brewing beer.
Pardon my beer ramblings.
Thanks again to these people for their contributions to the science of brewing.
Also, for helping me make better beer.
Cheers!
If you read the fine print in the system manual, or in the manual for your RO membrane, you’ll likely find reference to “softened water.” We worked with a commercial customer sometime back who bought an RO system from a vendor that focuses on the hydroponics market. This vendor advertises a seemingly magical RO System that operates at 50% recovery (a 1:1 ratio of waste water to purified water) without regard to feedwater quality. The unsuspecting RO system user was ruining his expensive membranes in only a few weeks.
We have other customers who have been using the same membrane successfully for over 10 years.
The quality of the feedwater significantly affects the life span of the membrane.
Russ
Mine is about 5 years and the TDS is still in the mid teens. I go through an ion exchange softener first then through a four stage RO system. No problems so far. I bought replacement cartridges a while back and they are still in the box. I only use this water for brewing and as a tap at the sink (which rarely gets used), so at most it is filtering 15 gallons every 2 weeks.
no water softener at my house.