New start up water waste concern

[Gazandrew]

Hi Guys, I'm new to this but basically I'm ex Royal Navy looking to start my own business and I've been doing abit of research via the usually channels i.e you tube, tiktok etc. Anyway I'm just wondering about the water waste in converting to pure, now I'm not a massive tree hugger but I do like to do my bit and I've read that for every 1 litres of pure there's roughly 5 litres of wate. Now I'm just wondering is there any reason why you can't have say 2 350 litre tanks, one as a feeder header tank feeding the pure but the waste going back into the header tank rather than down the drain? Sorry if this is a stuppid question but my previous occupation was military satellites so I'm on abit of a learning curve. Cheers all.

 

[Iron Giant]

@Gazandrew you're in Teesside with a high tds maybe 300+ppm this wouldn't work I don't think as the waste water is always a much higher tds maybe @spruce can enlighten us as he is over Saltburn way I think. 

 

[Part Timer]

You can get systems that run close to 50/50 but most are 60/40 waste to pure.

 

[dazmond]

check your tap tds first with a tds meter..if its under 100tds you can get away with just using DI ONLY which is a lot more convenient,quicker and no waste water!

im lucky as my tap tds is 024 so ive only ever used ion exchange resin in my 11 years of water fed pole cleaning....i wouldnt of bothered if i had to faff about with an RO system(id still be on the ladders!)

 

[AW Services]

Hi Guys, I'm new to this but basically I'm ex Royal Navy looking to start my own business and I've been doing abit of research via the usually channels i.e you tube, tiktok etc. Anyway I'm just wondering about the water waste in converting to pure, now I'm not a massive tree hugger but I do like to do my bit and I've read that for every 1 litres of pure there's roughly 5 litres of wate. Now I'm just wondering is there any reason why you can't have say 2 350 litre tanks, one as a feeder header tank feeding the pure but the waste going back into the header tank rather than down the drain? Sorry if this is a stuppid question but my previous occupation was military satellites so I'm on abit of a learning curve. Cheers all.

Good morning & welcome to GCHQ sorry I meant the forum.

If you wanted to recycle and recirculate your waste it could be achieved providing you had enough space to store it in IBC tanks and have a system with alot of technology to stop the production cycle then recirculate it via a pump as you'll have certain pressure requirements to meet.

Like anything pure water window cleaning related it hangs on your budget your space requirements and demand in respect of how much water will you need and use.

The first steps to get going are as follows

establishing your mains water pressure by the means of a handheld tester which screws onto your tap

Secondly water quality is measured in parts per million and you'll need an industry recognised handheld TDS-3 HM digital tds tester

Once you've got those vital numbers you can Taylor a system around them.

There's a few Ex Mod here but we kept our feet dry

 

[spruce]

Hi Guys, I'm new to this but basically I'm ex Royal Navy looking to start my own business and I've been doing abit of research via the usually channels i.e you tube, tiktok etc. Anyway I'm just wondering about the water waste in converting to pure, now I'm not a massive tree hugger but I do like to do my bit and I've read that for every 1 litres of pure there's roughly 5 litres of wate. Now I'm just wondering is there any reason why you can't have say 2 350 litre tanks, one as a feeder header tank feeding the pure but the waste going back into the header tank rather than down the drain? Sorry if this is a stuppid question but my previous occupation was military satellites so I'm on abit of a learning curve. Cheers all.

In the early days of wfp cleaning Merlin r/o's were set to a 5 waste to 1 pure ratio. But they were never designed as suitable to process water for window cleaner use as the membranes were also very inefficient. They didn't need to be as they were designed for American kitchens as a third tap. There are some r/o's that have a preset waste restrictor set at 3 to 1, but most have a valve/tap that you can adjust.

As @Iron Gianthas posted we have our r/o set at around 55% waste to 45% pure. Water on Teesside is lower than 150ppm. I've seen it at 80ppm, but it depends on where the water board is drawing water from at that particular time. Our backup water supply comes from Keilder dam in the Scottish boards, but our water in Saltburn can also be drawn from small dams on the Moors such as the Lockwood Beck Reservoir.

Recycling waste water is rather complicated. Again as @Iron Giant states, the water going to waste is removing 95 to 98% of the dissolved solids in the water. Your waste water will have a much higher tds than your tap water. Recycling waste will need a pressure pump and you are then adding more stress on the membranes as they have to work harder. At some point you are going to have to dump the waste water you are storing as the tds will be too high. (For example, the water in Hartlepool comes from wells and bore holes. Their water tds is around 550 so very hard. Some cleaners put their water through a 'water softener' to remove some of the minerals (metals) in the water before processing it through their r/o's. (A water softener doesn't soften the water; the salts remove the mineral ions in the water and replace them with salt ions which are much kinder to r/o membranes. But again, this is all to do with 'economies of scale.' Are you going to spend thousands on a specialized softener to save £120 on some replacement membranes?)

If you are going to start a business of window cleaning then you need to focus on starting this business and forget about the intricacies of saving water imho. If you keep thinking of the finite details like this then you will never get started.

I'm all for protecting the environment so please don't get me wrong. My question; can you ever waste water? Obviously, water waste comes at a cost and we don't want to waste money. But are we damaging the environment by putting our waste water down the drain? It's all part of earth's water cycle. What you are saving is the supply of fresh, processed water. This is obviously important if you live in a desert. Coming from Africa I'm all too well aware of this.

So I don't believe our waste water is damaging to our environment. Look at it from another angle. At 150ppm you could still save water by completely purifying your water with resin. That way every drop of water is used, none goes to waste. However, this is more costly and the used resin has to be disposed off.

 

[AW Services]

In the early days of wfp cleaning Merlin r/o's were set to a 5 waste to 1 pure ratio. But they were never designed as suitable to process water for window cleaner use as the membranes were also very inefficient. They didn't need to be as they were designed for American kitchens as a third tap. There are some r/o's that have a preset waste restrictor set at 3 to 1, but most have a valve/tap that you can adjust.

As @Iron Gianthas posted we have our r/o set at around 55% waste to 45% pure. Water on Teesside is lower than 150ppm. I've seen it at 80ppm, but it depends on where the water board is drawing water from at that particular time. Our backup water supply comes from Keilder dam in the Scottish boards, but our water in Saltburn can also be drawn from small dams on the Moors such as the Lockwood Beck Reservoir.

Recycling waste water is rather complicated. Again as @Iron Giant states, the water going to waste is removing 95 to 98% of the dissolved solids in the water. Your waste water will have a much higher tds than your tap water. Recycling waste will need a pressure pump and you are then adding more stress on the membranes as they have to work harder. At some point you are going to have to dump the waste water you are storing as the tds will be too high. (For example, the water in Hartlepool comes from wells and bore holes. Their water tds is around 550 so very hard. Some cleaners put their water through a 'water softener' to remove some of the minerals (metals) in the water before processing it through their r/o's. (A water softener doesn't soften the water; the salts remove the mineral ions in the water and replace them with salt ions which are much kinder to r/o membranes. But again, this is all to do with 'economies of scale.' Are you going to spend thousands on a specialized softener to save £120 on some replacement membranes?)

If you are going to start a business of window cleaning then you need to focus on starting this business and forget about the intricacies of saving water imho. If you keep thinking of the finite details like this then you will never get started.

I'm all for protecting the environment so please don't get me wrong. My question; can you ever waste water? Obviously, water waste comes at a cost and we don't want to waste money. But are we damaging the environment by putting our waste water down the drain? It's all part of earth's water cycle. What you are saving is the supply of fresh, processed water. This is obviously important if you live in a desert. Coming from Africa I'm all too well aware of this.

So I don't believe our waste water is damaging to our environment. Look at it from another angle. At 150ppm you could still save water by completely purifying your water with resin. That way every drop of water is used, none goes to waste. However, this is more costly and the used resin has to be disposed off.

I agree totally with regards to water waste, being mindful and trying to forfil an environmental ethos is going to be extremely hard expensive & technical.

It's one area of the trade that is virtually impossible in my opinion

 

[ched999uk]

One thing to remember is that if you return the waste water to the sewers then it will be recycled easily. If you use it to water your garden then it will take longer to get back into 'the system' and probably require more processing. The other thing to consider is when you actually clean with the pure that just falls on the ground or evaporates, so again eventually returns to 'the system'.

If you are going to be environmentally conscious then worry more about any chemicals you might use and select ones that fit with your ethos. Think about your vehicle, fuel (maybe go electric), tyres, to name but a few aspects.

I would say that considering the environmental aspect of the work isn't a bad approach and if marketed well might gain you extra customers!!! Maybe think about that when you name your business - @Green Pro Clean Ltd sort of fell into this as his surname is Green I believe. 

 

[spruce]

A local company's name is Clean Green Recycling as that is what he does. His surname isn't Green. ?

 

[Pjj]

I don’t see that it’s waist full as it all goes back into the ground and is 100% recyclable , obviously there is a cost involved but if just paying for  the water and not the sewerage charge it’s not that bad considering  the potential earnings per tank of water 

 

[scottish cleaning service]

I don’t see that it’s waist full as it all goes back into the ground and is 100% recyclable , obviously there is a cost involved but if just paying for  the water and not the sewerage charge it’s not that bad considering  the potential earnings per tank of water 

I think over 70% of the earth is water so we will never run out of the stuff. The problem is the cost of desalination plants to process the water.

 

[Pjj]

I think over 70% of the earth is water so we will never run out of the stuff. The problem is the cost of desalination plants to process the water.

We don’t desalinate in this country but a lot of parts of the world do I go all over the world diving and many of the countries we visit have massive desalination plants as well as on the boats , it’s ok for washing  not keen on drinking it ???

 

[scottish cleaning service]

We don’t desalinate in this country but a lot of parts of the world do I go all over the world diving and many of the countries we visit have massive desalination plants as well as on the boats , it’s ok for washing  not keen on drinking it ???

I though London gets its tap water from the Thames where over spill sewerage goes in when heavy rain hits the area. ? 

 

[Iron Giant]

I'm all for protecting the environment so please don't get me wrong. My question; can you ever waste water? Obviously, water waste comes at a cost and we don't want to waste money. But are we damaging the environment by putting our waste water down the drain? It's all part of earth's water cycle. What you are saving is the supply of fresh, processed water. This is obviously important if you live in a desert.

Very well put indeed.

If the powers that be are concerned then build more reservoir's to serve the growing population, with all the rain we get now it seems like headlines on the news about hosepipe bans etc are a thing of the past. 

 

[Davy G]

Very well put indeed.

If the powers that be are concerned then build more reservoir's to serve the growing population, with all the rain we get now it seems like headlines on the news about hosepipe bans etc are a thing of the past. 

I've been saying for years, "They should deepen the existing reservoirs". They won't do it till they have to though as they are private companies driven by profit.

They'll probably declare a public emergency when the time is right for them to get away with it, and we the tax payers will be made to pay for their upgrading as "it's unforeseen emergency circumstances". 

Remember where you heard it first.?
 

 

[Iron Giant]

I've been saying for years, "They should deepen the existing reservoirs". They won't do it till they have to though as they are private companies driven by profit.

They'll probably declare a public emergency when the time is right for them to get away with it, and we the tax payers will be made to pay for their upgrading as "it's unforeseen emergency circumstances". 

Remember where you heard it first.?
 

A Chinese company own our regional water company and I think Southern water they are all about the profit