Water purification issues.

Gardiner have stoped selling them, and grippertank want £10 p&p who else seen the 10 inch ones?

Try Doug at daqua ?

GAPS water had them at a similar price to Gardiners. Not sure about their postage charges.

If you spend £50 + VAT with Grippa then delivery is free.

Surely you can find some other stuff you need to swell your order to get free delivery. I always used to order a number of prefilter sets when ordering from Gardiners.

Dragbag said:

Gardiner have stoped selling them, and grippertank want £10 p&p who else seen the 10 inch ones?

Click to expand...

Daqua Carbon Filters  £38.40 for 4 is the best price I have found inc vat and delivery, I was supposed to change my carbon filter last Thursday only got round to it yesterday and realised I've got none left, I most likely won't get them till Monday 7th of Jan but not much I can do. @Dragbag not sure were you looking on GrippaTank website but the cheapest 10" carbon filter on their site is £19.72  which used to cost £14.40 including vat on Gardiners site 

@spruce I wondered if you could enlighten me the Spectrum ECB 10" says it has a Chlorine reduction rate of 6,000 litres so does that mean through my standard R/O which I think has a 2/1 waste to pure ratio that I would be changing the above carbon filter every week if I was putting 6,000 litres of water a week through my R/O including pure and waste, I produce 300 litres of pure 4-5 days a week every week ?

Is this what you mean?

https://waterfedpole.com/water-fed-pole-equipment/water-purification/filters-membranes.html

This is where I buy my filters from

Iron Giant said:

@spruce I wondered if you could enlighten me the Spectrum ECB 10" says it has a Chlorine reduction rate of 6,000 litres so does that mean through my standard R/O which I think has a 2/1 waste to pure ratio that I would be changing the above carbon filter every week if I was putting 6,000 litres of water a week through my R/O including pure and waste, I produce 300 litres of pure 4-5 days a week every week ?

Click to expand...

Hi Iron Giant.

IMHO they are expensive rubbish. You are right; if you produce 300 liters 5 days a week with that pure to waste ratio, a service life of 6000 liters will mean changing filters every 6 or 7 working days.

I've still got a 20" GAC filter under my desk that has a 2500 gal service life (US gallons to liters = 10000 liters.) That was absolutely useless to me as we were using 14000 liters of water (waste and pure) keeping 3 cleaners going.

This was the reason why I sought out a quality carbon block and the Fiberdyne unit suited me. It was also another reason why I went to a 20" prefilter housing and the 20" unit has twice the service life of a 10". I hate changing prefilters and changing mine every 76,000 liters is tollerable. It was a 5 micron which was better than a 1 micron. (I bought a 1 micron carbon block filter which boasted a service life of 150,000 liters. It cost me £50.25 (just looked it up) but it was unserviceable after about 30,000 liters as it was blocked up with sediment. I use a 5 micron sediment filter so this c/b filter was blocked with sediment from 5 micron to 1 micron. I won't use a 1 micron again.

As window cleaners we have no idea what the chlorine content of our water is. @doug atkinson said once that the further we get from the dosing station the weaker the chlorine content of our water is. I would suggest that our prefilters may have a slightly longer service life than stated as the manufacturer will be using the worst case senario when calculating service life of their filters. But I have found sticking to the manufacturers guidelines means my membrane has lasted well. Its was 6 years old last September. (Fitted Sept 2012) and still producing at 98% efficiency.

spruce said:

Hi Iron Giant.

IMHO they are expensive rubbish. You are right; if you produce 300 liters 5 days a week with that pure to waste ratio, a service life of 6000 liters will mean changing filters every 6 or 7 working days.

I've still got a 20" GAC filter under my desk that has a 2500 gal service life (US gallons to liters = 10000 liters.) That was absolutely useless to me as we were using 14000 liters of water (waste and pure) keeping 3 cleaners going.

This was the reason why I sought out a quality carbon block and the Fiberdyne unit suited me. It was also another reason why I went to a 20" prefilter housing and the 20" unit has twice the service life of a 10". I hate changing prefilters and changing mine every 76,000 liters is tollerable. It was a 5 micron which was better than a 1 micron. (I bought a 1 micron carbon block filter which boasted a service life of 150,000 liters. It cost me £50.25 (just looked it up) but it was unserviceable after about 30,000 liters as it was blocked up with sediment. I use a 5 micron sediment filter so this c/b filter was blocked with sediment from 5 micron to 1 micron. I won't use a 1 micron again.

As window cleaners we have no idea what the chlorine content of our water is. @doug atkinson said once that the further we get from the dosing station the weaker the chlorine content of our water is. I would suggest that our prefilters may have a slightly longer service life than stated as the manufacturer will be using the worst case senario when calculating service life of their filters. But I have found sticking to the manufacturers guidelines means my membrane has lasted well. Its was 6 years old last September. (Fitted Sept 2012) and still producing at 98% efficiency.

Click to expand...

Brilliant thank you, I do make some purchases in haste early on a morning as an order for 4 already placed  and @doug atkinson   knows my past record ? I think I will put in a second order for 2 of  the Pentek Chlorplus-10 Filter with a spec of   Capacity: Chlorine Reduction 189,200 litres at 2ppm to 0.5ppm
Capacity: Chloramine Reduction 9,450 litres at 3ppm to 0.5ppm and contact Doug to cancel the first order,  The carbon filter mentioned in the title of this topic I only changed once every 6 months as my low tds is 45ppm with a high of 79ppm this summer overall in multiple years never had an issue with  a rise in tds or production rates apart from my nightmare earlier this year, I had the same R/O membranes at my last house 6 miles away for over 4 years I don't ever remember changing pre-filters in that time 

Just reviewed the filters in question after my reply a few minutes ago so this last paragraph is an add-on and my head is spinning ?I don' have issues with sediment as you do so thinking the highest service life for chlorine could be a better option for me as I have always chosen to have a separate sediment filter as a precaution which is likely overkill as my sediment filter can be like new after 6 months plus and beyond 

Iron Giant said:

Brilliant thank you, I do make some purchases in haste early on a morning as an order for 4 already placed  and @doug atkinson   knows my past record ? I think I will put in a second order for 2 of  the Pentek Chlorplus-10 Filter with a spec of   Capacity: Chlorine Reduction 189,200 litres at 2ppm to 0.5ppm
Capacity: Chloramine Reduction 9,450 litres at 3ppm to 0.5ppm and contact Doug to cancel the first order,  The carbon filter mentioned in the title of this topic I only changed once every 6 months as my low tds is 45ppm with a high of 79ppm this summer overall in multiple years never had an issue with  a rise in tds or production rates apart from my nightmare earlier this year, I had the same R/O membranes at my last house 6 miles away for over 4 years I don't ever remember changing pre-filters in that time 

Just reviewed the filters in question after my reply a few minutes ago so this last paragraph is an add-on and my head is spinning ?I don' have issues with sediment as you do so thinking the highest service life for chlorine could be a better option for me as I have always chosen to have a separate sediment filter as a precaution which is likely overkill as my sediment filter can be like new after 6 months plus and beyond 

Click to expand...

Again Doug sells the ECB20 carbon block that is suitable for 12,000 liters.

At £13.00 each + VAT that works out much more expensive than a 20" Fiberdyne with a service life of 76,000 liters. Grippa has the 20" Fiberdyne at £28.40 + VAT.

I would have to replace that ECB20 six times to the Fiberdyne's once if I go by the manufacturer's recommendations. This means that my cost would be £82 to the Fiberdyne's £28. I haven't considered postage costs in this from Grippa but I would order 2 and get free delivery. I also understand that delivery costs are included with Daqua's price. My conclusions are not 100% accurate but give me a good direction.

.

RWCleaning said:

Is this what you mean?

https://waterfedpole.com/water-fed-pole-equipment/water-purification/filters-membranes.html

This is where I buy my filters from

Click to expand...

They don't tell you anything about that filter. I wouldn't use it personally, but that's me. I want to see the specs of what I'm buying tbh. I would be asking what they are hiding.

I think without carefully checking all the specs it's almost a bit of a minefield in the past I never really checked the specs of pre-filters and just bought with confidence that they all had or have a good serviceable lifespan for our industry and uses, looking over Grippatanks website they have no separate sediment filters so I assume the combined sediment/carbon filter will become the norm moving forward, you would think that after almost 11 years of been a wfper I would be more switched on ?

Iron Giant said:

I think without carefully checking all the specs it's almost a bit of a minefield in the past I never really checked the specs of pre-filters and just bought with confidence that they all had or have a good serviceable lifespan for our industry and uses, looking over Grippatanks website they have no separate sediment filters so I assume the combined sediment/carbon filter will become the norm moving forward, you would think that after almost 11 years of been a wfper I would be more switched on ?

Click to expand...

One could always contact Grippatank and ask them for a price for a seperate sediment filter if you were going to buy their Fiberdyne filters.

There are also a number of suppliers that sell 5 micron sediment filters on Ebay. I'm not a Vyair fan but they sell them on Ebay from time to time as well. I recently saw someone selling Spectrum sediment filters - I would have no issue buying those tbh.

We did wfp training a good 6 years ago now to get an NVQ certificate as proof to council job worthys that we were trained specialists ? in window cleaning. The company that was employed to actually do the training only changed their cheap carbon filters every 6 months, and according to them they were happy with their membrane life. So if this was true, then in their case they didn't have an issue using those cheap filters.

The first setup I purchased had a 1 year old r/o included. The seller replaced the filter set for the first time in a year for me. Those membranes only lasted another 6 months. I replaced the membranes and changed prefilters every 3 months using a sediment and a GAC filter. I had read that GAC filters were better than carbon filters.Those membranes lasted 6 years. The original seller lived near me so used the same water supply. The last GAC filters I purchased came with a label clearly stating a service life of 2500 gallons. Now the questions started; did these filters always only have an unspecified service life of 2500 gallons (US) or did they have a drop in manufacturing quality or were they forced to specify this service life to cover themselves?

This is what started my quest for a longer lasting chlorine removal filter.

I actually find this water purification topic quite interesting. I follow several sailing yachts around the world. Most have on board r/o systems to filter sea water. They use much smaller diameter 40" membranes (2" rather than 4" in our 4040's) with high pressure pumps (around 600psi). They are estatic with product water of 150 to 200 ppm after filtration. They reverse flush their membrane/s and filters after use of their r/o. They also use inline chlorine block filters. This is to protect the membranes against chlorine that maybe in their flush water if they have topped up their tanks with inshore water when refueling with diesel. 

.

Hi everybody, noob to the forum here. 

Have been window cleaning in total now for 22 years. Employed for 10, sole trader for 5 and partnership for 7 and counting. 

We have 2 vans on the road, one holding 850 litres and the other 600. We are on average using around 5500 to 6000 litres a week. 

We have a 2000 litre static in our lock up with 2 pre filters (sediment and carbon) with a 40” Aexon membrane to finish. Resin canisters are in our vans to polish off for final product. 

When we first bought our system from “RO Man” we were producing (after membrane) around 2 - 5 TDS. When we replaced the membrane after around a year (recommended) and sediment every 3 and carbon every 6 months (might of been the other way around) we have found that we cannot get our TDS, after membrane, any lower than 40, which also rises relatively quickly to around 80. This in turn is ripping our resin apart extremely quickly and obviously costing us an arm and a leg. 

Is is there anything we are doing incorrectly or is it simply because the amount of water we are producing this is normal. We do live in the South-East where the water is prodomontly one of the hardest regions. 

If so, is there any recommendations of heavy duty membrane products in the market that we need to solve this problem

Thanks in advance, Jason

What carbon filter are you using @BG Cleaning Ltd? What pure to waste ratio is your r/o working at?

Eastbourne I believe is a hard water area. If you are running at 2 waste to 1 pure you will be using 18000 liters of water a week (pure + waste) which goes through your carbon filter removing chlorine.

If you are using a Spectrum 10" carbon filter then its chlorine removal service life is 6000 liters. This means you should be replacing that filter every couple of days. Once the carbon filter has reached the end of its service life it will allow chlorine through to the membrane. Chlorine destroys membranes.

This is the very reason why we went to 20" Fiberdyne carbon block filters. The manufacturer advises a service life of 76,000 liters. This means you will need to change it every 4 weeks.

.

As I never found traces of sediment I am not overly bothered and I do check them every 12 weeks what I do find unusual about sediment filter specs is in some cases there is none and on Vyair site it says 12,000 litres 3-6 months which I assume is for domestic household use, but are they fully spent when they have changed colour like in the image I have maybe had a sediment filter go brown in 10 years mine usually go more of an orange colour which I assume is rust particles, Vyairs price on Ebay is good at £7.95 for 3 and free delivery.

I guess ultimately its the quality of water that needs to be processed and the amount of water been processed, where as the yachts you follow their water production is minimal compared to ours and they simply want clean drinking water to keep hydrated. 

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. We are using Spectrum 10” carbon filters from Window Cleaning Warehouse. Our pure to waste ratio is around 60/40 (40% pure) Do you have a link to the carbon filters that you use and do you have any recommendations for sediment filters?

Regards, Jason. 

Only sediment once, but the waterboard was working just up the road doing some major repairs at the time. 

When I go down to Cambridge my van system, with booster pump, can only get it down to early 20's when at home I'm down to 8, yet the TDS in the water is only early 400's compared to early 300's. 

In the summer, with the weather, everyone's TDS shot up. Check your water pressure, if this has dropped then you'll really struggle. 

BG Cleaning Ltd said:

Thanks for the reply, much appreciated. We are using Spectrum 10” carbon filters from Window Cleaning Warehouse. Our pure to waste ratio is around 60/40 (40% pure) Do you have a link to the carbon filters that you use and do you have any recommendations for sediment filters?

Regards, Jason. 

Click to expand...

I would go to Grippatank they seem to be the only ones I can find now selling the better spec pre-filters that Gardiners always sold, I have just bought two of high-performance carbon filters with a service life of 75,000 litres although they recommend having a 10 micron sediment filter which is unusual me thinks as the bigger the micron the bigger sediment particles can pass through, I am going to ring them first thing next week when the reopen unless @spruce can enlighten us 

@BG Cleaning Ltd & @Dragbag I have merged your topics otherwise we will be covering the same subject over 2 posts  

Iron Giant said:

I would go to Grippatank they seem to be the only ones I can find now selling the better spec pre-filters that Gardiners always sold, I have just bought two of high-performance carbon filters with a service life of 75,000 litres although they recommend having a 10 micron sediment filter which is unusual me thinks as the bigger the micron the bigger sediment particles can pass through, I am going to ring them first thing next week when the reopen unless @spruce can enlighten us 

Click to expand...

A ten micron filter doesn't make sense to me either way. But I can only see it by my situation. ATM 5 micron works fine for me. The Fiberdyne c/b filters are 5 micron so what you say seems perfectly logical to me that particles less than 5 micron will pass through the sediment filter and also the c/b so that wouldn't get blocked up.

Iron Giant said:

As I never found traces of sediment I am not overly bothered and I do check them every 12 weeks what I do find unusual about sediment filter specs is in some cases there is none and on Vyair site it says 12,000 litres 3-6 months which I assume is for domestic household use, but are they fully spent when they have changed colour like in the image I have maybe had a sediment filter go brown in 10 years mine usually go more of an orange colour which I assume is rust particles, Vyairs price on Ebay is good at £7.95 for 3 and free delivery.

I guess ultimately its the quality of water that needs to be processed and the amount of water been processed, where as the yachts you follow their water production is minimal compared to ours and they simply want clean drinking water to keep hydrated. 

View attachment 15386

Click to expand...

My sediment prefilter looks similar to that after about 3 months. Sometimes its not quite as bad but its quite slimmy and difficult to hold with my finger tips when it get 'transported' to the rubbish bin.

All the window cleaners in our area seem to complain about the same thing.

The yachties do use quite a lot of water. Most of these current boats are quite luxurious. here's an example of a Hallberg-Rassy 54 monohull.



They also use fresh water to wash the boats decks down to get rid of salt.

BG Cleaning Ltd said:

Hi everybody, noob to the forum here. 

Have been window cleaning in total now for 22 years. Employed for 10, sole trader for 5 and partnership for 7 and counting. 

We have 2 vans on the road, one holding 850 litres and the other 600. We are on average using around 5500 to 6000 litres a week. 

We have a 2000 litre static in our lock up with 2 pre filters (sediment and carbon) with a 40” Aexon membrane to finish. Resin canisters are in our vans to polish off for final product. 

When we first bought our system from “RO Man” we were producing (after membrane) around 2 - 5 TDS. When we replaced the membrane after around a year (recommended) and sediment every 3 and carbon every 6 months (might of been the other way around) we have found that we cannot get our TDS, after membrane, any lower than 40, which also rises relatively quickly to around 80. This in turn is ripping our resin apart extremely quickly and obviously costing us an arm and a leg. 

Is is there anything we are doing incorrectly or is it simply because the amount of water we are producing this is normal. We do live in the South-East where the water is prodomontly one of the hardest regions. 

If so, is there any recommendations of heavy duty membrane products in the market that we need to solve this problem

Thanks in advance, Jason

Click to expand...

I forgot to add.

I'm afraid your Axeon membrane needs to be replaced. Imho Axeon is one of the best membranes available. I have an HF5 as our water pressure is 50 psi at the r/o inlet. I don't have a booster pump. The membrane has served us well and I will buy another when it become necessary to replace it.

The reason for your prefilters is purely to protect your membrane. Changing prefilters won't improve the quality of the pure output.