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Urgent Help Needed!

Darren Baker

New member
Messages
9
Hi all i am new to this forum so im hoping you guys can help me out.

Iv encountered a problem that no window cleaner or RO specialist has come across that i have contacted.

I have called and visited many cleaning businesses and aquariums to see if anyone can help but to no avail.

I started wfp 3 years ago and all was hunky dorey... 2 months ago i moved home, after 2 weeks my tds spiked from around 12ppm to 30ppm then 50ppm 100ppm etc.

I gathered that since iv had the RO for 3 years the membranes must be knackered. So i changed the prefilters and the 3 membranes ( i have the 450gpd system) All was not well, to my horror after spending £150 it did not improve the tds one bit, in fact it was worse.

I then realised that the waste water was hardly running, it was just dripping out where it should be a 1:1 ratio.

I contacted the guy i bought it off and he sent me a new flow restrictor as this seemed to be the problem as the system was flushing fine.

I installed the new flow restrictor, it ran fine for a week then boom same again, hardly any waste water.

I got fed up of this game so splashed out on a brand new 450gpd RO. It came last week, it ran brilliantly producing water at a good pace and at 15ppm. Yesterday i turned it all on and de ja vu tds went up to 30ppm again. Waste water is dribbling out.

My house tds is about 450ppm which is lower than my last home. If the flow restrictor is getting clogged i cant understand why surely the prefilters will take anything like that out of the equation.

I am really pulling my hair out here i have zero money and zero water, please please please help me.

Regards

Darren

Bakerswindowcleaning.co.nr

 
Each time you turn off the RO the sediment will settle and so when you turn it on (for around the first minute) the tds will spike to anything over 100ppm, this will then subside and go back to your production tds... take a reading after 5 minutes and see what you have.

it doesn`t matter whether its had 1000 litres through it or not each time it is turned off for any amount of time you will get a tds spike, when it is turned back on.

Put a manual flow restrictor on it and set the ratio / pressure to what you want. Or open the one you have to near but not quite full flush, if you have a pressure valve you want it to be around the 80-100psi.

 
Thanks for your post yes i understand that, but i ran it for 2 hrs last night and it didnt improve it only gets worse.

Extra info it takes around 1min 5secs to fill a liter jug up of purified water. I measured how long it took to fill 250ml of waste water last night which took 45secs. 2hrs later when i went to turn off the system it was taking 1min10 for 250ml of waste water however pure water remained the same time. So it would seem that the restrictor is getting worse. But why is it doing this? /emoticons/sad.png

 
Take the flow restrictor off run for around 5 mins and you should get a good flow from your waste. Add restrictor back on, your system may have air in it.

 
It does have a flush valve on which bypasses the restrictor but im going to try everything suggested. I removed and ran for 10 mins with no change the restrictor is now almost completely blocked i can run the system with the flush valve half open which works fine and gives a tds of 15 however i did this with the last ro and it worked for about 2 weeks and then completely died giving a tds reading for 150ish, so i am sure the same will happen.

 
You may possibly need a water softener?

Even though your tds is now lower in your new house, there may be more of certain things in you water that may have you may have had a lower concentration of in your last house....

These maybe clogging up your pipes/restrictor....

Only an idea, to be honest it does seem wierd.

The other thing is, are there any long term waterworks in your area?this can effect your water, but again it shouldnt really in the way you describe

 
Cheers for your replies guys. Im in Sible Hedinham in Essex. I don't have a water softner so might as well buy one and see if that helps. To my knowledge there is no water works in the area. Crazy question but i don't suppose there's a possibility you can have too much pressure is there? My pressure gauge is showing 80psi without booster where my last home was around 40psi. I imagine the more pressure the better but im fast running out of ideas!

 

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