[Steve_Richardson]

Hi all,

Like most I've been battling with the freezing weather here in Shropshire, although no snow!

Been using a heater in my shed where I store my filters and water butt. The other day the filters were frozen enough to stop it all working, but no enough to freeze the water in the actual glass filters at the bottom. I ran the heater, dipped the pipes in a bucket of hot water and got it all going.

After a few minutes I noticed a thick black gunge (or could be dark green) coming from the end of the waste pipe. It only squirted out a bit and then carried on making pure water at a lovely (and a year best) 1TDS.

Anyone else ever come across this before?

Also today (before I realized the water was frrreezing in my hosereel) I had the same black gunge, although not as much, at the end of my pole hose.

Is this the thicker water cleaning out the filters/pipes or something?

[Spruce]

Hi
Not experienced anything like that in the 5 years we have done WFP.

We do experience a little Algae growth in the van tanks in summer as light does get in. We usually find it in the strainer of the pump which we periodically clean out.
We may also have a little in the IBC tank for, although it's stored in a dark garage, its not dark when the garage door is open.

But this won't explain the muck in the waste pipe of the RO. If you have a clear waste pipe then maybe some algae has be growing inside it and ejected out. When our RO was in the sun outside the back door for a time before it was plumbed into the garage, algae grew on the inside of the clear resin housing, but it was minimal.
The muck won't have come from the untreated water as it should have be filtered out in the sediment filter and if it came from the chlorine filter it would be sent through to waste as the ro membranes would filter it then.

Our pure water TDS in winter appears to be better than in summer which I put down to the water being denser when cold, but this will reverse when the summer is here. I say 'appears' because I haven't taken readings of water temperature and TDS over an extended period to prove this - it's just a gut feeling I have.
Spruce

[Steve_Richardson]

I think you are correct. I forgot that the clear-ish waste pipe I have used to be running outside permanently and would no doubt have algae a bit inside it. What with the thicker or icier water going through I reckon it's given it a good clean.

Had a similar gunge come from my pole today as I had my pump on for ages without drawing in any water (by mistake...I thought it was all frozen...!!). Again it pulled some algae from either the pump or the pole's clear hose and ejected it.

Oh well, all works ok now and cleaner too :-) 

[Spruce]

Hi Steve,

I have just changed all the filters and resin on my 450gpd RO unit today which hasn't worked since the middle of Dec. I noticed that there was a slimmy growth in the resin filters around the top seal which looks very much like black algae. I didn't see anything in the sediment or chlorine filters, although the rubber seals did feel a little slimmy as well.

When I started the system on flush I also got a jet of black slime out of the RO waste, so this was also in the membrane housings.

I let the RO settle down for a while and the TDS slowly settled back to normal.

So most of us who haven't used our RO for a while this winter will probably experience the same situation, but without knowing it. I am sure that it will flush itself 'clean' once the RO is back to normal working.

Spruce

[[GQC] Tim]

I find this very fascinating. The little RO's seem a lot more frost resistant judging from your two experiences. 4040s do not seem so forgiving.

[Steve_Richardson]

I've found my large container that I keep my filters in almost full with water a couple of times. What I can deduce is happening is that the water in them is freezing a bit, then expanding, then blowing off a small pipe that is on the back fro flushing the RO. Then the feed that goes up into my water butt sucks the pure water back into the filters which then leaks into the container.

Fortunately before it overflows the level drops sufficiently in the water butt to go below the reach of the feed in pipe!!