Welcome to the UK Window Cleaning Forums

Starting or own a window cleaning business? We're a network of window cleaners sharing advice, tips & experience. Rounds for sale & more. Join us today!

4040 membrane and Pre Filters

jason1965

Active member
Messages
158
Location
southampton
Good evening all, i am about the replace my 4040 membrane, i was just wondering what one would you recommend and also what are the best pre filters ie sediment and carbon block.

 
Good evening all, i am about the replace my 4040 membrane, i was just wondering what one would you recommend and also what are the best pre filters ie sediment and carbon block.
Depending on tap water pressure and flow it would be either an HF4 or HF5. My water pressure is 50 psi and I successfully use an HF5 without a booster pump. At the tap we get 13 liters of water a minute.

A Fiberdyne carbon filter has a pretty good service life and that's what I use. I also use an ordinary 5 micron sediment filter. I have 20" prefilters and buy those prefilters from Gardiners. They sell both sizes.

A fiberdyne carbon block can also be used as a sediment filter if your water is sediment free. In other words, you only need one filter for both sediment and carbon block. Our water sometimes is full of sediment so a cheap sediment filter saves sediment clogging up the expensive Fiberdyne filter. (I have been know to replace a sediment filter every month to 1 Fiberdyne every 3 months.

A 10" fiberdyne filter is good for a service life of 38000 litres according to the manufacturers and a 20" has a service life of 78,000 liters. This is a total of all the water that passes through the prefilters, ie waste + pure. We go through about 78,000 liters every 3 months.

-

 
@jason1965

I'm going to expand a bit on the reason for my Fiberdyne carbon block prefilter choice.

In the early days I ran a 450 GPD RoMan type r/o. I once read somewhere that GAC carbon block filters were better than the ordinary c/b filters available then, so I started using GAC filters. During the time those 3 x 150GPD membranes were in use (6 years) I changed the 10" prefilters every 3 months. We were using slightly more pure water a month than now and the r/o had a 3 to 1 waste to pure preset ratio restrictor. So we used 4 liters of tap water to produce 1 liter of pure.

Today the two of us use about 13000 liters of pure water a month. If we were using a similar amount with the 450 GPD r/o then we would have used about 155,000 liters of tap water in 3 months.

When I set this 4040 r/o up I bought some GAC 20" c/b prefilters as I had always done. When I received them I was shocked to have seen an information label inside advising that the 20" GAC filter I had purchased only had a service life of 2,500 gallons US. If I was going to adhere to the service life recommendation then I would have to replace that GAC filter every 10 days.

I contacted the manufacturer and was told that the service life was 2,500 gallons for both the 20" and the 10" filter. When I queried the service life being the same for both size prefilters didn't make sense to me they didn't bother to respond.

So my experience was that the single 10" GAC filter had successfully processed 150,000 liters of water every 3 months and had protected my membranes for 6 years. But now I was concerned as replacement 4040 membranes are much more expensive than 3 x 150 GPD membranes on the old r/o. I couldn't take a chance on continuing to use the GAC filters.

At the time Gardiners didn't sell the Fiberdyne range. Another supplier had a carbon block prefilter with a service life of 150,000 so I purchased 1 of those. Unfortunately, it was a 1 micron where the sediment filter was 5 micron. I hadn't even got through the first month and the 1 micron carbon filter was totally blocked up with sediment that the sediment filter didn't trap.

Since Gardiners now sell 5 micron Fiberdyne prefilters I haven't had any issues so will continue to use those and replace them according to the manufacturer's recommendations.

_

 
Thank you Spruce so much for the time and effort of replying to my question, it must be my prefilters that are rubbish, i bought 6 prefilters 3 sed and 3 c/b for £35, that works out at just under £6 each, i do live in a hard water area, my tds from tap reads about 286, and last week i changed both prefilters and already the sediment filter is really dirty, and the water ratio from waste to pure is about 5 waste to 1 pure, so its taking ages to produce pure water, i will get some 5 micron Fiberdyne prefilters, and hope that improves water production. When i produce pure water i do have the waste tap fully open like you suggested , but still only getting a little of pure, i dont know what else it could be. I did buy the system from the cleaning warehouse less that 15 months ago, but to be honest i would never use them again or buy one of there systems. They are good for supplies but for systems rubbish i had no end of problems, the day i bought it, i got home started to fill up and it leaked everywhere, and bear in mind i live in Southampton and they are in Wolverhampton, i had to drive back to get it sorted, then they float switch didnt work, and the tank over flowed, then the leisure battery didn't charge, and had to manually charged it. They told me to contact spring and were not really interested, Spring were really good sent me two new controllers, then i went on holiday, parked my van at Gatwick, go home from holiday and then van battery was flat, i took the van to a friend of mine, who looked at all the electrics that the cleaning warehouse had done, and he told me that, the whole thing has been wired up wrong, and every thing was draining my van battery. But i guess thats what happens when you think your getting cheep deal. But hey ho you live and learn.

 
And one more thing i forgot to mention about the cleaning warehouse di resin bottle, when i changed the resin for the firtst time, i unscrewed the lid and the riser completely fell apart. the list goes on and on. :specs

 
I think you may find your water production rate will improve if you throttle back your waste a bit - close the waste valve more. 5 to 1 ratio is too much imho. Take a reading of the water produced from the r/o and keep adjusting the waste valve until you find the r/o's 'sweet spot.' It sounds to me that you are running on flush mode.

Try to set the r/o up so you are producing 1 liter of pure to 1 liter of waste. A good way is to fill to plastic milk containers at the same time. Leave it to run and then take a reading. Open the valve slightly and take another reading after another few minutes.

The idea is that you want the least water to waste for the lowest ppm of pure produced. Finding that will improve the rate you produce pure water.

When you remove the riser tube from your di vessel with resin in the vessel, the riser tube will most likely fall apart. Wet resin is like quicksand.

When replacing the resin follow the video that Alex Gardiner has on his website and you can't go wrong.

As long as the riser tube fits snuggly into the head then all should be ok. There is an o ring in the head that holds the tube and that should be intact.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Hello Spruce this is what i have done, when the waste tap is fully open i get no pressure reading and there is no noise coming from the ro membrane, only a very very little water going into tank, i guess this is back flushing the membrane, when i close the waste tap there is now a noise like water rushing through membrane, and i get 40 psi pressure, and there is now water going into the tank, it dose not seem to me that i have any play with the amount of water being produced, it either produces a little water, or when i close the tap a little from fully open the water production slows down to hardly anything. the sediment filter was new last week and was the carbon filter and new resin put in yesterday.

 
And one more thing i forgot to mention about the cleaning warehouse di resin bottle, when i changed the resin for the firtst time, i unscrewed the lid and the riser completely fell apart. the list goes on and on. :specs
If that happened return it back as it is not fit for purpose. You will get a reading of 000 probably to begin with but your resin will not perform to it's capacity. You end up throwing away good resin.

I analysed these vessels that a lot of suppliers sell and they are not fit for purpose. This data I have passed onto other suppliers who I work with closely and they have now recogonised the fault and have stopped supplying them.

For the past few weeks I have been trialing and brand new vessel which the concept is what I have been looking for. Yield from the resin matches the specification and ease of changing resin is so easy.

This is a high priced product so price will be a lot higher and hopefully will have it available soon once I have completed my other tests.

 
With regards to your membrane it sounds as if it is blocked probably with calcium deposits or if you had a burst water mains. Try flushing for a good 20 mins.

If this does not speed up production then a new membrane is required.

To eliminate the filters connect the ro unit to the mains and if water production increases then there may be a fault with the filters. If not new membrane required.

 
If that happened return it back as it is not fit for purpose. You will get a reading of 000 probably to begin with but your resin will not perform to it's capacity. You end up throwing away good resin.
I analysed these vessels that a lot of suppliers sell and they are not fit for purpose. This data I have passed onto other suppliers who I work with closely and they have now recogonised the fault and have stopped supplying them.

For the past few weeks I have been trialing and brand new vessel which the concept is what I have been looking for. Yield from the resin matches the specification and ease of changing resin is so easy.

This is a high priced product so price will be a lot higher and hopefully will have it available soon once I have completed my other tests.

This sounds something along the lines of the 'new' Unger Hydropower di vessel.

 
Thanks Doug for your help, to be honest i wish i never set eyes on the cleaning warehouse, one thing i have learnt is that i will only buy from people who have done or do wfp work, dont get me wrong the people at cleaning warehouse were nice enough, but not one of them had any experience of actually doing it. And i found out later that the guy who fitted it, had only been there 1 week and before that he was a security guard.

 
This sounds something along the lines of the 'new' Unger Hydropower di vessel.
Even better than Unger Hydropower Spruce

Some companies selling the Unger product are selling in incorrectly and informing customers it will work with your water when 100% it does not. There are companies that are sales men!

On another note have a look at Zimfest, would be good to meet up if you could make it.

 
Even better than Unger Hydropower Spruce
Some companies selling the Unger product are selling in incorrectly and informing customers it will work with your water when 100% it does not. There are companies that are sales men!

On another note have a look at Zimfest, would be good to meet up if you could make it.
The trouble is that it takes a dedicated few (extremely few) suppliers like yourself to uncover equipment issues that manufacturers probably know about anyway. And of course there are salesmen that have no scruples or just believe what the manufacturer claims. I'm an enduser so I would have little idea if that di vessel in my possession is working 100% correctly or not.

There has been much excitement with window cleaners complaining that resin quality isn't what it used to be. I don't know. I have a 6 liter di vessel and according to the resin calculator I need to replace my resin every 22 weeks. However, the last batch was replaced after 9 months and the batch before was replaced after a year. So to me my di vessel is working fine. (My tds reading after r/o is 2ppm and I use about 13000 liters of pure a month.)

I last replaced the resin over the long Easter weekend this year along with prefilters when the output from the di vessel was at 1ppm. When I took the riser out of the vessel the riser tube and lower diffuser remained behind as the o ring in the head doesn't offer much grip on the tube. I stirred the remaining water and resin up in the vessel and took another reading with my tds meter. It was 001 ppm. So to me the resin in the vessel was all used up. What amazed me was that the colour of the spent resin was virtually the same as the new MB115 I put in.

Once all together and running the vessel is polishing that tds off to zero. So to me I don't have a di vessel issue as I haven't noticed anything out of my ordinary. I'm also aware that many can be influenced by one person's comments so you need to keep a level head as to whether there is a genuine concern or an invoked one.

Thanks for Zimfest heads up - looks interesting but I won't get there tbh.

The old Mufulirians had a website

The Mufulira Community Website - Keeping up-to-date & in-touch with Mufulirians.

and had a meet up in Joburg once every couple of years. Whilst it was slightly different in that its object was to provide a meeting place for old friends who worked and lived in Mufulira on the Copperbelt, a large percentage of those attending didn't meet anyone they knew. So the meet fizzled out. The main problem was that the old ones had died or were too ill to travel and the younger ones were just too young when they lived there. My Dad knew everyone in Mufulira, but I was too young in the late 50's and early 60's to know very many.

We had an evening of Zimbabwean songs and market stalls at the Middlesbrough town hall probably 15 years ago now. (My sister in law did much of the promotion of the event). I found it quite enjoyable but many of the locals who attended out of curiosity didn't enjoy it as they didn't understand the culture behind it. How do you get a local Yorkshire-man interested in a Sadza ne Nyama demonstration? I didn't understand what the singers were singing about as I didn't know an indigenous language, so for me my enjoyment was probably more nostalgic and the atmosphere. And they sold Castle Lager at the event as well. /emoticons/smile.png

The African dancing reminded me so much of the time we used to spend at the Victoria Falls.

I do have a note to call in and see you one day if I'm up in Scotland and passing through your way.

 
Last edited by a moderator:
Well if you change your mind 18th - 22nd August @ Beechwood Park, Derby. Not far from you and you will probably find some old school friends

 
Even better than Unger Hydropower Spruce
Some companies selling the Unger product are selling in incorrectly and informing customers it will work with your water when 100% it does not. There are companies that are sales men!

On another note have a look at Zimfest, would be good to meet up if you could make it.
agree ! Hydro power only Works when you hardly opens the fawset , had one before i bought a 4021 and a 11 kg DI Vessel from you . Im So happy with it ! :thumbsup: Just told my brother to buy one from you today /emoticons/smile.png

 
Back
Top