Let's see your RO setup

[srice]

I've got my process nailed down pretty well and I think the biggest variable left is my water supply. My supply is drawn from a lake and it does vary during the year as we see drought and rainy conditions. Rather than trying to chase a moving target, I've decided to go ahead and install a RO system. I'm not really that interested in adding one to my kitchen sink. I think I would prefer something in the basement which filled a 15-20 gallon food safe barrel so that I could start up the system the day before I brew and have plenty of water on hand when I started in the morning.

Is there an issue with intermittently using a system like this (probably brew 2-3 times a month)?

The supply isn't a problem, but I am trying to figure out the best drain setup.

 

[blazie151]

RO systems are terribly inefficient (netting around 1-3 gallons of RO water for every 5-10 gallons wasted) and require quite a bit of water pressure to work properly, much more than you'd get from an inexpensive pump and way more than you'd get from a gravity-fed or even city water supply. Basically, they can be costly and probably more than you need to get the results you want.

When I was going nuts researching water quality and consistency I finally settled on some Berkey Black elements with the optional fluoride filters in a home made gravity fed setup using 2 5-gallon food grade buckets from Lowe's and a spigot off Amazon. Been using it for around a year now and my cost is something like $0.003/gallon. I've even moved from Florida to Indiana and the water tastes exactly the same even though the water out of the tap smells and tastes dramatically different. The elements remove so much of what's in the water that I added some mineral stones to the bottom bucket to get the flavor and balance closer to Fiji water.

The only methods to get more dissolved minerals out of the water than Berkey filtration does are distillation; which removes almost everything but requires significant heat and thus high power requirements, and RO; which removes absolutely everything but requires very high water pressure, is terribly inefficient, and requires more maintenance. One last thing to keep in mind is that RO water is so pure it's actually not recommended for consumption because pure water is such a power solvent it can actually leech minerals out of your body when you drink it. That's why commercial and pre-built RO systems almost always have a re-mineralization process, which re-introduces some minerals to the water by way of mineral stones (which I already use in my filtration system).

Basically, if your looking for consistent, clean, and convenient water, get a Berkey system or build your own like I did, and if you want the water to taste a certain way re-introduce some minerals to it or balance the PH using minerals you can purchase easily online. If your really picky you can even re-create your favorite water based on it's mineral composition which can be found here... http://www.mineralwaters.org/

 

[ajdelange]

What you do with an RO system depends on, of course, how much you want to spend, how much water you want when and how much tinkering you want to do. If your brewing requirement is modest then you can indeed collect water from a 'home' system over a period of days and collecting it into a rain barrel is fine (as long as it is clean and free of plasticizer or anything else that might stink up the water. At the other end are 'whole house' systems that supply the water from a higher throughput unit to an atmospheric tank from which it is pumped into a pressure tank or directly to a pressure tank. These are just like the bladder tanks used with wells except that they are made completely on non metallic materials as RO water is quite corrosive. With such a system you can pipe the water around your house/brewery just as you would well water provided that the plumbing is non metalic. As PEX seems to be becoming so popular in houses these days this should not be a problem.

The low $ home systems are inefficient with respect to water collected vs. water wasted and many run at less than 20% (4 gallons wasted per gallon produced). This is done in order to obviate the necessity for softened feed water. With softened feed water and suitable RO system configuration (pump and concentrate outlet throttling valve) efficiencies up to 50% and a bit above are possible. With a feedback valve (some of the concentrate is fed back to the input) efficiencies of above 80% are possible with the cost for that being somewhat lower rejection (i.e. more ions in the output stream).

With low volume, even low volume with high efficiency, waste is not a problem. If you are a large brewery putting out a large volume of concentrate at 5 times the TDS of the supply water your municipality may have a few things to discuss with you but for the few gallons that even an active home brewer produces the concentrate load on the waste water treatment plant won't even be noticed.

There is no more problem with storing RO water for a long time than there is with well water. I would think nothing of drinking water from my well's bladder tank after being away for 4 months and I would think nothing of drinking water from my RO systems bladder tank after 4 months absence. I do drain my atmospheric tank, however, and its vent pipe is protected by a screen which prevents the entry of bugs.

As the title is 'Let's see your RO setup' I include the following link to a photo:
http://www.pbase.com/agamid/image/124857348
Please understand that this insanity was the result of a retired engineer just having a ball doing a home brewing project and that lots of the stuff in this system isn't really necessary. The skid, at the right end of the bench, is the essential device and can produce 500 gallons per day. This was sized to allow me to collect the 200 gal I need for a typical brew day in a few hours. The system also supplies my lab.

Intermediate sized (GPD and bells and whistles) systems from the reef aquarium hobby are very popular with home brewers. I sure someone will post a link to one of the supplier's website.

 

[grathan]

I ran tubing from under the sink to downstairs. Nice filtered water from faucet, fridge, and a valve for brewing.

 

[Leithoa]

One last thing to keep in mind is that RO water is so pure it's actually not recommended for consumption because pure water is such a power solvent it can actually leech minerals out of your body when you drink it.

You've been lead astray. True RO and DI water have few/no minerals in them but even if you drank exclusively water(and who does?) the minerals you got from your food would far outweigh any that the water might pick up. Also as soon as you touch the water it ceases to be pure and the complex mechanisms of solution chemistry start their show.
The reason for commercial installations adding minerals back is the same reason brewers do: water tastes funny all by itself.