Wondering about collecting rainwater and filtering it for drinking. Potential future water crisis... Going off grid, you never know do you?
Has anyone got a set up? If so what have you got and are comfortable drinking it.
Don't know anything about their use for domestic drinking water, but reverse osmosis is use for desalination of e.g. sea water, where significant pressure is required to in effect filter out the salt and force fresh water back through a semi-permeable membrane against the natural osmotic pressure. Do domestic reverse osmosis devices use a similar pump system? If not, how do they work?
I've got a small filter carbon/reverse osmosis that I initially purchased to provide water for tropical fish but now only use it to get water for cleaning windows*.
Most of the water into the filter goes down the drain and 25 to 30% is filtered water. It's some time since I set it up but seen to recall that a minimum water pressure was required which was not a problem with mains water.
*De-ionised water leaves no residue of the windows when the final rinse is just left to dry off. I first clean with a brush on a pole with mains water with a very little detergent. I then rinse off with de-ionised water from a large garden sprayer and long wand, and just leave the windows to dry. No streaks or spots from the suspended minerals etc, are left on the windows.
You only need some water sterilising tablets for wilderness survival.
I have a couple of water butts for the garden that at a pinch I'd be prepared to drink with suitable boiling. After that I'd be uncapping my neighbours well. I don't really fancy the water that accumulates in my garage pit which has a scum of old engine oil and drowned mice floating on top!
I think that answers my question. I suppose the salt content of tap water is pretty low (using the word 'salt' in general terms, not simply NaCl), so very little osmotic pressure or the reverse needed to purify it further. But is it then really reverse osmosis, or just plain micro-filtration?
However, what I'm told is now the case is that rain water is now so full of crap that if it rains with a significant wind, the windows are dirty again and streaked very quickly. OK so this sounds like the old joke about if you never dust the dust protects the surface underneath, but I do feel that Window cleaning is often done far too often. Brian
Mine is a three stage filter, large particulate, then carbon followed by reverse osmosis. It is the latter stage that only outputs 25% of the water put into the filter - the rest takes a different path as waste (in my case attached to a hose for watering a flower bed).
I have a cheap TDS Meter - Digital Water Tester which always reads zero when testing the output water.
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