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WCW for RO Filters?

Are they cheaper at WCW?
Around the same as what Daqua charge maybe a couple of quid cheaper, just means my order will got over £55 and i'll get free delivery... I expected to be inundated with people saying buy from Daqua, buy from Grippa and just hoped someone would say they had bought them from WCW.

@spruce can you just set my mind at ease, are they the correct filters, i'm not making some rookie mistake here am I?

 
Around the same as what Daqua charge maybe a couple of quid cheaper, just means my order will got over £55 and i'll get free delivery... I expected to be inundated with people saying buy from Daqua, buy from Grippa and just hoped someone would say they had bought them from WCW.

@spruce can you just set my mind at ease, are they the correct filters, i'm not making some rookie mistake here am I?
You asked. ?

The Spectrum sediment filter is ok.

The 20" Spectrum carbon block has a service life of 12,000 liters according to the manufacturers spec.

A 20" Fiberdyne carbon block has a service life of 75,700 liters.

The cost of the filter from WCW is £15.50 + Vat

The cost of the Fiberyne  from Grippa is £29.82 + VAT.

I need to replace the Spectrum c/b 6 times to the once for the Fiberdyne filter. The Fiberdyne costs twice the price of the Spectrum.

6 X £15.50 is £93.00 + VAT

1 x £29.82 is £29.82 + VAT.

Buying 2 Fiberdyne filters will give you free delivery from Grippa.

Buying 4 Spectrum filters will give you free delivery from WCW. To compare apples with apples with free delivery costs you would have to buy 13 Spectrum filters. Those 2 Fiberdyne filters with give you a service life of 151,400 liters.

Personally, I know which route I would take. I honestly don't get why Doug sells Spectrum carbon block filters. The 10" has a service life of 6000 liters.

.

 
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The 20" Spectrum carbon block has a service life of 12,000 liters according to the manufacturers spec.
In all honesty I had never noticed this. It even clearly says on the Daqua site. This is the original carbon block I was sent with my RO. I have been ordering the 20'' Fibredyne from Gardiner's at a discounted rate as they were selling off their stock. I'm pretty sure the sediment filter WCW are selling is the same Gardiners were selling off at a fiver for a while too. Glad I asked now!

Might as well order 6 sediment filters from WCW with my other stuff and 2 carbon from Grippa, that will cover my next 150k litres. Thanks dude, appreciate it!

 
What bewilders me about @GrippaTANK is they don't sell sediment filters, but what I like about their site is they have all the specs for the filters they do sell and they are good quality with a decent service life, yet Daqua and other distributors don't have all the specs for each item listed on their sites. 

 
What bewilders me about @GrippaTANK is they don't sell sediment filters, but what I like about their site is they have all the specs for the filters they do sell and they are good quality with a decent service life, yet Daqua and other distributors don't have all the specs for each item listed on their sites. 


Unfortunately this is where research plays a part. I don't buy much these days from suppliers I haven't much experience with.  I will only recommend suppliers I've had extensive dealings with.

GAPS water have lots of spec info on their site and in most cases also include a manufacturers spec sheet in PDF format we can download.

Over the years I have a settled on which supplier I use for what item and which items I'm happy to search for and buy on Ebay. I always used Gardiners for their prefilters and well as the majority of other things. I was gutted when I saw they were focusing on their core business and discontinuing the sale of some lines. But I can fully understand the reasons behind it.

I've been 'caught' in the VAT trap. The one example is with Exceed. When I purchased my first Univalve Steve had sold out of stock and one of the suppliers was advertising stock at the same price as Exceed. But Exceed wasn't VAT registered and the supplier I purchased them from was.  So the price wasn't the same - it was 20% more. Steve also includes the o rings in the price where the other supplier charged them separately per item. Buying 3 cost me about £20 extra from that supplier.

(Whilst that's not a big amount in todays economy it represents around 3 x £10 house cleans if I take running costs less wages into consideration. Its a bigger deal for me as I don't have the physical ability or energy to go out there and knock a few extra house cleans off to make up for it. (I did an exercise a few years ago with regard to the cost of cleaning our customer's windows. When considering the actual annual expenses incurred in running my business less wages, I discovered that 42% of each clean was the cost to me for parking the van up outside. This includes water processing, van running costs, wfp running costs etc.))

 
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In all honesty I had never noticed this. It even clearly says on the Daqua site. This is the original carbon block I was sent with my RO. I have been ordering the 20'' Fibredyne from Gardiner's at a discounted rate as they were selling off their stock. I'm pretty sure the sediment filter WCW are selling is the same Gardiners were selling off at a fiver for a while too. Glad I asked now!

Might as well order 6 sediment filters from WCW with my other stuff and 2 carbon from Grippa, that will cover my next 150k litres. Thanks dude, appreciate it!


Which carbon block filter to use is a rather contentious subject. I was once told that a 10" GAC filter was better than an ordinary 10" carbon block as it lasted longer.

In those days we had no other info, just that statement. In the days of my 450gpd r/o when I replaced membranes I swapped over to GAC filters and religiously changed them every 3 months. Those membranes lasted 6 years. 

When I purchased my 4040 I ordered GAC filters. It was a label inside the filter that gave a service life of 10000 liters. I was shocked because I knew the 2 of us used around 10 times more than that every 3 months using the old r/o. (My r/o waste valve was fixed at 3 waste to 1 pure.)  As chlorine destroys membranes I had to concluded that we have a very low concentration of chlorine in our water. This r/o was purchased second hand and was a year old. The cleaner I purchased it from kindly replaced the prefilters before he sold it to me. This was the first time in a year that the prefilters were changed. Unfortunately the membranes were also damaged and I had to replace them a few months later. That cleaner lived a few miles for me, so I presume was being supplied with the same water - not totally guaranteed though.

How do the manufacturers spec up the service life of their carbon block filters? I don't know exactly but they would need to consider the maximum safe limit for water chlorination to base their figures on. @doug atkinson once stated that the further you are from a dosing station the weaker the chlorine content is of your water. He sited an example of a study done in the south of the country which identified this. It could well be that the chlorine concentration in our water is very weak and this is the reason why those GAC filters preserved the life of those 450gpd membranes for as long as they did. I did ask the local water board where our dosing station is and they hadn't a clue. When I asked what the chlorine content of our water was they didn't know that either. I was told that the water they were delivering was safe to drink as they had to meet quality standards for drinking water which they do - obviously they would say that.

We have an NVQ window cleaning qualification and the company that did the training course use/d cheap carbon block filters. They had a few cleaners out on the road and they only changed prefilters every 6 months. According to them they were happy with their membrane longevity.

So in my experience, I just stick to the manufacturers guidelines and that's the only advise I give to anyone who asks. That's worked for me so far. My 4040 membrane is now over 6 years old and still performing at 98% efficiency. Maybe my Fiberdyne prefilter is good for 150,000 liters or even 250,000 liters with our water chlorine content, I don't know. 

 
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@spruce

do you use a sediment filter before your fiberdyne carbon filter?

if so which do you buy? 

I have followed this thread and fancy giving these a try.

when you change the filters do you flush out first before connecting to membrane if so a couple of hours or so? 

Many thanks in advance

 
I was told by Varitech when I first switched to WFP 10 years back to always flush the pre filters for around 5 minutes before connecting to the membranes. I’ve always done this ?

 
So in my experience, I just stick to the manufacturers guidelines
I've been doing this. Got one of those metres you mentioned a few months back. I religiously change the sediment filter every 25k and the carbon every 75k.... Well that is until now, currently on 26k, the filters are due for delivery tomorrow. I've got enough in the IBC for tomorrow anyways.

 
Thank you. 5 minutes is quicker then.

@P4dstar what meter is that you mention please?
Think i've confused you here dude, i'm replying while engrossed in the match ?

I've heard what Steve says mentioned before, flush them for 5 minutes not connected to the membrane... Too much effort to disconnect them for my liking. I flush them for a few minutes connected to the membrane with the gate valve completely open and then just carry on as normal. I have looked into the flushing advice from quite a few sources. The overall advice seems to be to flush for as long as 4-5 hours when you first set it up, basically keep going until you get above 95-98% reduction in TDS. If the system is left for longer than a few hours not running then you should flush it for 20 minutes and at least once a week you should flush for an hour.

Link below for that meter, worthy investment! The link below is not where I got mine though, Gardiners sold them until a few weeks back;

https://www.vyair.com/6710m-66-digital-flow-meter.html?gclid=CjwKCAiAgrfhBRA3EiwAnfF4tgCaFfVXfAVjJqhQrw1TvoHh97YhOIiQPU-r5JmsLb_lc9NUOJihuBoCvPMQAvD_BwE

 
@spruce

do you use a sediment filter before your fiberdyne carbon filter?

Yes, because our water is full of sediment. Some window cleaners do not have the problem we do so don't need a sediment filter. The carbon block does both jobs. Merlin and PRF r/o use a Fiberdyne filter for both jobs.

if so which do you buy?

Any 5 micron filter. Our Fiberdyne c/b filter is also 5 micron. Every bit of sediment bigger than 5 micron will get trapped in the sediment filter. Anything smaller than 5 micron will pass through the Fiberdyne filter as well so it never gets blocked up. I'm not totally fussed about where the sediment filter comes from. Any commercial r/o supplier will have them. My main concern is a quality carbon block filter.

I have followed this thread and fancy giving these a try.

when you change the filters do you flush out first before connecting to membrane if so a couple of hours or so?

I remove my prefilters from the cabinet and change the innards on a table outside. After I wash the housins out and replace with new prefilters, I let the water from the outside hose run through it for 5 minutes or so. Its only when replacing a membrane that you need to flush that for a bit longer to get any preservatives from the membrane.

Once I have run the water through the filters I will empty them a bit and then replace them back in the cabinet.

Many thanks in advance
Answers in red.

 
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I remove my prefilters from the cabinet and change the innards on a table outside. After I wash them out and replace with new prefilters I let the water from the outside hose run through it for 5 minutes or so. Its only when replacing a membrane that you need to flush that for a bit longer to get any preservatives from the membrane.

Once I have run the water through the filters I will empty them a bit and then replace them back in the cabinet.
I can't picture how you're getting a flow through them? You taking the whole housing out and rigging something up?

 
I can't picture how you're getting a flow through them? You taking the whole housing out and rigging something up?


Both filters are joined together and fixed to a plate which hooks onto the wall of the cabinet they are stored in. I have a hozelock stop connector on the end of a length of hose that feeds the r/o prefilters from my solenoid valve. Thats easy to uncouple.

The outlet from the carbon block prefilter is also a quick disconnect coupling so I remove the whole prefilter assembly as one unit. I unscrew the filter bowls on a table outside.

Once reassembled I just fit the garden hose pipe to the Hozelock stop connector and open the garden tap.

 
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Both filters are joined together and fixed to a plate which hooks onto the wall of the cabinet they are stored in. I have a hozelock stop connector on the end of a length of hose that feeds the r/o prefilters from my solenoid valve. Thats easy to uncouple.

The outlet from the carbon block prefilter is also a quick disconnect coupling so I remove the whole prefilter assembly as one unit. I unscrew the filter bowls on a table outside.

Once reassembled I just fit the garden hose pipe to the Hozelock stop connector and open the garden tap.
Gotcha, mine is all connected with JG fittings and pipe. I could probably just disconnect the JG connection from the filter out and whack some pipe in to dump the water for a few mins. I'll give it a go tomorrow!

 
Thank you @spruce and P4dstar. 

I might have to buy that little gadget, I have the inline TDS meter that spruce recommended, this works a treat.

Many thanks for the above info.

 
WCW very kindly sent filters, delivered this morning. Sent me 6 x 10'' filters instead of the 6 20'' filters I ordered. In fairness I called them and they are arranging collection and delivery of the correct ones for Monday and only took a few seconds to sort out, not ideal though!

 
WCW very kindly sent filters, delivered this morning. Sent me 6 x 10'' filters instead of the 6 20'' filters I ordered. In fairness I called them and they are arranging collection and delivery of the correct ones for Monday and only took a few seconds to sort out, not ideal though!
Numptys??

 

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