Clean It Up
UK Window Cleaning Forum => Window Cleaning Forum => Topic started by: tompoole on June 15, 2008, 10:22:49 am
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Hi
Can you drink the water. I assume its ok to drink the water after its been through the di resin? I know the ro is used for drinking water , but was unsure about the di resin can any one confirm it ok.
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Would imagine that you would 'want' food grade resin but the question should be why would you want to drink it? ;)
Cheers
Dave.
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I use my unit for drinking water. I simply detach the RO output from the DI input and direct the water into a container which sits on the kitchen worktop next to the kettle.
The water tastes OK. The point is that it tastes MUCH better than the tap water which has a really horrible after taste - probably due to all the chemicals they add.
It makes tea and coffee taste more like real tea and coffee as well.
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why drink ro water, its the minerals in the tap water thats good for you.
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... , its the minerals in the tap water thats good for you.
Agreed, but we eat very healthily - no processed foods. My young family and I consume a rich variety of pure and healthy, highly nutritious foods, that missing out the trace elements in water is of no consequence.
It's the foul taste of the tap water that we object to. I suppose we could disconnect before the RO unit, but that wouldn't be as simple.
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Hi
Can you drink the water. I assume its ok to drink the water after its been through the di resin? I know the ro is used for drinking water , but was unsure about the di resin can any one confirm it ok.
not recommended to drink unless you by pass the resin like wally i think the resin makes it acidic
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Some things in water are good for you - minerals, some are bad - harmful chemicals.
Tds measures level of impurities in water not toxicity. Water in some area does seem to contain more toxins, unacceptably high levels.
Recall hearing once that peoples health was better in hard water areas due to the minerals they got in the water, compared with soft water areas.
Due to modern farming and lifestyle very hard to get optimum amounts af minerals and trace minerals even from organic food. Could always try a high qaulity mineral supplement.
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"Recall hearing once that peoples health was better in hard water areas due to the minerals they got in the water, compared with soft water areas."
I find this very difficult to believe. A healthy, balanced diet will provide all the essential minerals and trace elements that you need. Agreed, mineral water will supply a proportion of your daily needs of minerals, but a sprinkling of sea salt on your green salad would do exactly the same job even better and add essential vitamins as well.
Drinking mineral water on health grounds is risible - a ploy of advertising companies to part fools from their money. For health, in the UK, you need to drink copious amounts of water and eat moderate amounts of a healthily balanced diet. This makes mineral supplements quite unnecessary.
There are, however, areas of Africa where the only water available is ground water - mineral rich - but where malnutrition is rife due to a complete absence of iodine in the environment. In these areas mineral supplements ARE necessary.
It's a complex area.
However, the point of the thread is: is it OK to drink RO water; and yes, it is. ... and IMHO it makes far superior tea!
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i went to that bwca course on wfp, and that craig said it was ok to drink, if you boiled it first. good for tea and coffee, also good for hangovers,as it de toxifies the body, havent tried it though.
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"Recall hearing once that peoples health was better in hard water areas due to the minerals they got in the water, compared with soft water areas."
I find this very difficult to believe. A healthy, balanced diet will provide all the essential minerals and trace elements that you need. Agreed, mineral water will supply a proportion of your daily needs of minerals, but a sprinkling of sea salt on your green salad would do exactly the same job even better and add essential vitamins as well.
Drinking mineral water on health grounds is risible - a ploy of advertising companies to part fools from their money. For health, in the UK, you need to drink copious amounts of water and eat moderate amounts of a healthily balanced diet. This makes mineral supplements quite unnecessary.
There are, however, areas of Africa where the only water available is ground water - mineral rich - but where malnutrition is rife due to a complete absence of iodine in the environment. In these areas mineral supplements ARE necessary.
It's a complex area.
However, the point of the thread is: is it OK to drink RO water; and yes, it is. ... and IMHO it makes far superior tea!
Wally, nowadays the amount of nutrients in food is at an all time low due to over using fields, leaving no nutrients in the soil, combine that with heavy pesticide spraying of crops, and it's just not that good anymore. Chickens grow 6 times as fast as normal chickens, due to all the steroids and other weird stuff they give them in the food.
But yea, RO water tastes good, the DI resin that we use is not for the food industry I think, which would be harmful I've been told.
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If you think about how pure water cleans - you've stripped all of the dissolved solids out of it, so it wants to return to it's impure state, it absorbs dirt. That's why it is supposed to clean better than normal water.
On the flip side, when you drink pure water, it is dangerously low in minerals, and can therefore absorb the nutrients from your body, with obvious results.
There is a condition in trees as a result of reverse osmosis, where tree has its nutrients absorbed out of it, because of lack of nutrients around it. Not sure of the specific's of this, my father-in-law mentioned it as he's a tree surgeon, so it's probably not a good idea to make a habit of drinking pure water!
Also, think of the stuff that can grow very quickly in water that's sat around. Can you be sure that your water hasn't got anything lurking in it? I wouldn't drink from my system, the water is sat around in a hot garage most of the time, without all of the chlorine that the water companies put in to keep it potable.
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Think Legionnaires' disease it can be deadly and there is a very real risk of getting it from drinking water from your tanks.
read about it yourself to get the facts:
www.cdc.gov/legionella/patient_facts.htm (http://www.cdc.gov/legionella/patient_facts.htm)
Ian
p.s it does not taste nice without all the added rubbish anyway, buy a bottle a take tap water with you to drink ;)
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Think Legionnaires' disease it can be deadly and there is a very real risk of getting it from drinking water from your tanks.
Ian
p.s it does not taste nice without all the added rubbish anyway, buy a bottle a take tap water with you to drink ;)
yeah that's scary. worth thinking about though!!!
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I'd agree that drinking water out of the tanks is a very dodgy idea for precisely the reasons mentioned. However, don't worry about reverse osmosis happening in your body - it doesn't. Drinking pure water will not "suck" nutrients out of your body.
There is a condition in trees as a result of reverse osmosis, where tree has its nutrients absorbed out of it, because of lack of nutrients around it.
No there isn't. Reverse osmosis doesn't occur in nature. Osmosis occurs in nature. Indeed, if it didn't, life wouldn't exist since liquid transport wouldn't occur across cell walls.
What is known to occur is that trees have nutrients sucked out of them because the ground water surrounding the roots has an excess of nutrients. This is why putting an excess of fertiliser in the soil will actually kill off the plants.
I know that it is counter intuitive, but that is how osmosis works. Look it up on wikipedia - it's fascinating stuff.
And drinking normal amounts of pure water taken directly from the RO unit just to slake your thirst is fine. To repeat, drinking water from a storage tank is probably most unwise.
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I'd agree that drinking water out of the tanks is a very dodgy idea for precisely the reasons mentioned. However, don't worry about reverse osmosis happening in your body - it doesn't. Drinking pure water will not "suck" nutrients out of your body.
There is a condition in trees as a result of reverse osmosis, where tree has its nutrients absorbed out of it, because of lack of nutrients around it.
No there isn't. Reverse osmosis doesn't occur in nature. Osmosis occurs in nature. Indeed, if it didn't, life wouldn't exist since liquid transport wouldn't occur across cell walls.
What is known to occur is that trees have nutrients sucked out of them because the ground water surrounding the roots has an excess of nutrients. This is why putting an excess of fertiliser in the soil will actually kill off the plants.
I know that it is counter intuitive, but that is how osmosis works. Look it up on wikipedia - it's fascinating stuff.
And drinking normal amounts of pure water taken directly from the RO unit just to slake your thirst is fine. To repeat, drinking water from a storage tank is probably most unwise.
What a wally!!! ;)
Are you a tree surgeon as well now? ;)
I'm certainly not. I think I may have got mixed up with water and nutrients. R/O does occur: "The effect of drought is particularly acute for newly transplanted trees and shrubs since they are already devoid of a sizeable portion of their water-absorbing roots - the roots being lost in the digging and transplanting process.
In addition to the potentially catastrophic effect of reverse osmosis and loss of water absorbing ability of roots on plant health and survival, other responses of a plant to drought may also occur. Closing of stomates is usually the first response. There is some evidence that abscisic acid, formed in roots in reaction to soil water deficits, is transported to leaves and initiates the closing of stomates. Recovery from stomatal closing is slow and may not return to normal for hours, days or weeks despite availability of water. Increase in abscisic acid production also leads to an inhibition of bud and leaf development, and to promotion of leaf abscission."
taken from: www.umassgreeninfo.org/fact_sheets/plant_culture/longterm_drought.htm
But this is irrelevant, and I'm just going to say I read that drinking 000 water isn't good for you beacuse it absorbs nutrients, rather than leave them where they are.
I'll stick to good old fashioned tap water that is fine and goos where I live!!!!!!!!!
Thank you and goodnight.
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No, I'm not a tree surgeon, I'm a physicist - and whoever wrote that most certainly ISN'T a scientist or, if he/she is a scientist, uses scientific language very sloppily.
And confusing "water" with "nutrients" is a pretty big error!!!!
What the article really means is that osmosis is occuring in the opposite direction to that which is normal. This is precisely what I said.
This is not reverse osmosis - it is osmosis in the reverse direction ie from the plant to the soil.
I repeat, reverse osmosis does not occur in nature. For reverse osmosis to occur, there would need to be a decrease in entropy which is contrary to the second law of thermodynamics.
When we use reverse osmosis, we have to supply energy whcih we actually take from the water company in the form of a pressure drop across the unit - so the second law of thermodynamics is not broken as entropy increases.
And drinking water from an RO unit in moderate quantities will do no harm whatsoever and will most certainly not leach nutrients from your body.
And it makes better tea!
And my wife notes that it leaves far less scum in the tea cups.
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I am going to give a simple replyt to this matter from my view point:
drinking 000 tds water will on the way down absorb as it goes down making it a pointless task in the first place.
I dont think :-\ it will kill you if doing it for years. ( i dont think anyway can say different for a fact)
my reason for this is simple, I clean windows and the pure water I use absorbs dirt into it etc, if drinking it will absorb what it can on the way down your body.
and apart from what I already posted earlier about the illness that can happen would you really drink from an unclean tank/glass etc I sure as anything would not.
Ian
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Dont drink it if its gone through the DI, you'll end up sh@tting through the eye of a needle. I know, the other year when it was real hot I didnt think it'd matter but jeeezz I was going three or foar times a day and it was brown but as runny as what came out the tank
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Dont drink it if its gone through the DI, you'll end up sh@tting through the eye of a needle. I know, the other year when it was real hot I didnt think it'd matter but jeeezz I was going three or foar times a day and it was brown but as runny as what came out the tank
Far far to much info there fella :-X
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Hi
I use my 110 landrover for mant things as well as window cleaning, just wanted to know if i could safely use the water for drinking making tea cooking and washing save me swapping water over when i go camping & green lanning. at the weekends.
tom
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Hi
I use my 110 landrover for mant things as well as window cleaning, just wanted to know if i could safely use the water for drinking making tea cooking and washing save me swapping water over when i go camping & green lanning. at the weekends.
tom
The concensus seems to be that you shouldn't use it for drinking if it's been (i) through the DI unit and (ii) stored in a can for any appreciable time.
Water taken directly from the RO unit is fine for drinking - and is about the same purity as rain water (003) or mountain stream water (020).
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What a wally!
How does 2nd law of thermo dynamics apply here then? A tendancy towards disorder.
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What a wally!
How does 2nd law of thermo dynamics apply here then? A tendancy towards disorder.
Precisely - but don't forget that the law applies to the Universe as a whole. It is possible to create order in one spot in the universe - but at the expense of creating more disorder elsewhere. Thus freezing water causes the molecules to become ordered, but the energy cost of doing that is more disorder in the power station as the fuel to create the electricity is burned.
I don't really think that we need to concern ourselves as it does get complex.
Please just believe me that reverse osmosis doesn't occur in nature and that the person who wrote that article was either ill-educated in science or just plain sloppy in his language.
And the laws of thermodynamics aren't inventions of scientists. They are observations of the way in which the universe works and mathematical descriptions of the workings of the universe. They cannot be broken since the universe would be a different place if they were broken.
And drinking RO water is fine!
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What a wally!
How does 2nd law of thermo dynamics apply here then? A tendancy towards disorder.
Precisely - but don't forget that the law applies to the Universe as a whole. It is possible to create order in one spot in the universe - but at the expense of creating more disorder elsewhere. Thus freezing water causes the molecules to become ordered, but the energy cost of doing that is more disorder in the power station as the fuel to create the electricity is burned.
I don't really think that we need to concern ourselves as it does get complex.
Please just believe me that reverse osmosis doesn't occur in nature and that the person who wrote that article was either ill-educated in science or just plain sloppy in his language.
And the laws of thermodynamics aren't inventions of scientists. They are observations of the way in which the universe works and mathematical descriptions of the workings of the universe. They cannot be broken since the universe would be a different place if they were broken.
And drinking RO water is fine!
Wally!
Yup. Ok.
As I said, it's my father in law who's a tree surgeon, not me, and I don't pretend to know all about these things!
Perhaps the term "R/O" regarding tree's etc is just a descriptive term, ie centrifugal force (is not a force!).
I was genuinely interested in how 2nd law of thermo what-nots applied here, that's all. ;D Not trying to be argumentative! :D :)
Anyway, you are obviously a smart guy. I just wonder.. with all your knowledge about the universe.. would you readily tell me it all came about by chance?
J
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wally could you tell me where you studied physics?
I studied engineering at University of Edinburgh (more than a few weeks ago I might add), member of the IME, got my doctorate from Kings college, lectured for a year at MIT, worked far too long in aerospace.
Much happier ( and financially better off!) now.
I studied a lot of what you studied (or prob would have studied), thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, statics, pure maths, quantum physics (granted its got a lot more to do with chemistry - which I also studied to a lesser degree but thats a different story).
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This sounds like a question about the Big Bang Theory.
Is there any hard evidence for it? More than you could shake even a very large stick at. All the scientific evidence points towards a Big Bang.
Is there any truth in it? - Difficult to say with certainly.
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wally could you tell me where you studied physics?
I studied engineering at University of Edinburgh (more than a few weeks ago I might add), member of the IME, got my doctorate from Kings college, lectured for a year at MIT, worked far too long in aerospace.
Much happier ( and financially better off!) now.
I studied a lot of what you studied (or prob would have studied), thermodynamics, fluid mechanics, statics, pure maths, quantum physics (granted its got a lot more to do with chemistry - which I also studied to a lesser degree but thats a different story).
Wow!!
I got my degree from University of Birmingham. Did all that stuff plus a bit of Phys Metallurgy and a LOT of astophysics. Now that is mind blowing - integrating in 27-dimensional space and lots of non-trivial answers! Wanted to go on to a PhD in Astronomy at CalTech but got sidetracked.
Much happened and now I'm a happy window cleaner.
And - just to stay on-topic - use water from my RO unit to make tea and to drink with meals ... and it's delicious!
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RO Units are actually used widely in food industry, and to supply drinking water.
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Bleugh...
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According to the manual, Merlins are designed originally to produce drinking water? They've just been borrowed by the window cleaning industry for better purposes ;) I guess this means most RO units will be OK?
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legenairs de is only in tanks air con wher worme water is in the uk , dusent make you go to loo ,
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Dont drink it if its gone through the DI, you'll end up sh@tting through the eye of a needle. I know, the other year when it was real hot I didnt think it'd matter but jeeezz I was going three or foar times a day and it was brown but as runny as what came out the tank
sorry ,but that is so funny :D
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Just read this post. I wondered why jewel cleared off.
I think it's not a physics, but an English Language question. As users of reverse osmosis systems we use the phrase as a name or a noun which describes what the system (including the pump or the pressure from the water company) does. The writer who used the words about tree roots used the words as a descriptive phrase, osmosis working in the opposite direction being to his mind reverse osmosis.
You are very lucky to have someone as pedantic as me on the forum.
Further more, the poor biologist, who you sited as either a non scientist or a user of sloppy language would be incandesant to hear you talk about cell walls, when in fact what you mean is semi permeable membranes.
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Just read this post. I wondered why jewel cleared off.
Further more, the poor biologist, who you sited as either a non scientist or a user of sloppy language would be incandesant to hear you talk about cell walls, when in fact what you mean is semi permeable membranes.
actually in biology they talk about plant cells having cell walls, they are completely different to animal cells in structure.
not being smart or having a go but I just asked my brother in law who happens to be over visiting (he's a micro-biologist).
I'll shut up now.
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RO water will hydrate you much faster than tap water, however it won't actually provide you any discenable amount of vitamins and minerals as obviously they have been removed, it is good to drink though as the main function of drinking water is rehydrate and thats what drinking ro water does quite fast.
DI water is not really safe to drink primarily because of the chance that some of the di grains (which are polystyrene) are present in the water - they are toxic and should be avoided.
Further note DI water is so bland its disgusting. I've tried it although RO water does make lovely tea etc and is good to drink, rehydrates you very fast - after all that is what the technology was originally intended for when NASA developed ro technology about 30 years ago.
If you do decide to drink ro water remember to flush the membranes regularly, keep the prefilters clean and fit a post-carbon filter, this is a caron filter which goes inline AFTER the ro membranes, it improves the taste of the water and stops bacteria, viruses etc from getting into the water you drink.
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Where does this idea of RO water leaching minerals from your body come from?
It absolutely will not do this!
For a start, by the time the water has trickled down your throat etc into your stomach it has probably picked up plenty of stuff to make it impure.
And even if it goes into your stomach as pure water, it will mix with the other contents of your stomach and pick up plenty of stuff.
And even if it didn't do that, it would be drawn into your body through osmosis.
Repeat - RO water will NOT draw minerals from your body.
Rainwater, which is perfectly fine for drinking, is typically 003 ppm tds. Water from an RO unit is typically between 009 and 030 ppm tds.
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If you do decide to drink ro water remember to flush the membranes regularly, keep the prefilters clean and fit a post-carbon filter, this is a caron filter which goes inline AFTER the ro membranes, it improves the taste of the water and stops bacteria, viruses etc from getting into the water you drink.
You don't need one of them after your RO, it's part of the pre filters, they do exactly the same. That's why you have a Carbon block, and Carbon granulated filter, they need to remove that before it goes through the membranes.
RO's are for food industry.
RO water leaching minerals from your body is simply hilarious.
Like people say pure water is aggressive. Pfff, I should have a sign near my shed saying, 'Beware of Pure water'.
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I don't have any hard evidence that drinking RO water isn't harmful.
I'm basing what I say on the fact that it is simply water with stuff taken out and nothing added. It is similar in chemical composition/purity to rain water or mountain stream water (before the goats have peed into it!).
And I'm saying that drinking the stuff cannot leach minerals from your body because osmosis doesn't work in that direction.
* (there) is no proof that (drinking RO water) is good for you they will take your money whether it’s good or bad for you!
>>> True
* The medical crowd have know for decades that long term drinking of RO has detrimental effects to your health, they say its ok for a few weeks to detoxify your body of poisons.
>>> What medical crowd?
* ...there is evidence now to prove RO water being consumed over a long period does cause damage to your body.
>>> What evidence?
* Coca Cola is made using RO water with all the problems it has caused to peoples health, some of the medical problems they discovered are directly from the RO water not the other Ingredients.
>>> What problems and who discovered them?
I'm really not trying to be difficult here. I genuinely want to know the answers. If you know stuff that I don't, then I respect that and I'd like to know it for myself. The last thing I want to do is to defend my corner if I'm completely wrong!
I love learning new stuff and welcome being put right when I'm wrong about something.
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If you do decide to drink ro water remember to flush the membranes regularly, keep the prefilters clean and fit a post-carbon filter, this is a caron filter which goes inline AFTER the ro membranes, it improves the taste of the water and stops bacteria, viruses etc from getting into the water you drink.
You don't need one of them after your RO, it's part of the pre filters, they do exactly the same. That's why you have a Carbon block, and Carbon granulated filter, they need to remove that before it goes through the membranes.
RO's are for food industry.
RO water leaching minerals from your body is simply hilarious.
Like people say pure water is aggressive. Pfff, I should have a sign near my shed saying, 'Beware of Pure water'.
If you would read what I'm saying a little bit more carefully you would see I'm not talking about GAC/PAC or indeed carbon block filters, I'm talking about carbon POST filters, they go AFTER the membranes, they have a different function to GAC/PAC/Carbon block filters.
Time and time again people don't bother to read carefully what was posted before.
tell you what go ring june @ gapswater and see what she tells you. She is an expert in these matters.
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This info might be useful:
www.waterfiltersonline.com/comparisons.asp