Kessil

let's talk about water conservation.

xinumaster

xinumaster

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Electricity has gone up, gas is at $4.17/gal which is expected to go as high as $5/gal by summer. And now ppl in alameda are mandated to save on water. I'm sure this is going to happen in the south bay too.

Right now my RODI is only producing 25% clean water and 75% goes to waste. And even if get 50% clean water I think that is still not good. So, right now I'm thinking of Kati Ani water filtration. How good is this type of water filtration? Or is there any other water filtration that is better than RODI?
 
Well I'm going to go on a bit of a rant here... so bear with me :)

I'm really disgusted with the "need" to conserve water, our city leaders tell us to conserve water conserve water, yet they have zero problems with building all sorts of new housing, allowing population levels to soar (because that's all money!) yet as population grows, mother nature doesn't magically make more water available. Sure there's a shift from year to year but this is a problem that can not be fixed by conserving, because lets say everyone does conserve, what about 10 years from now when there's more people using that water? We're already conserving as much as we probably can, but gotta tighten the belt more, and more and more. It's a vicious cycle that can't be fixed through conservation efforts.

Now what to do with that water? Well lets say you let the city take care of it by dumping it in the sewers, our treatment plants filter it and screen it, and while I wouldn't want to drink it as such it's more or less clean enough for the environment. Now what does a city like San Francisco do? It dumps it out in the ocean, and they are literally wasting all that water because now it's gone. I believe in SoCal they're even talking about using that treated water, and sticking it through some additional filtration and putting that back into the mix as usable water. Personally I say we put all the treated water back where we got it. Or maybe someplace else in the mountains, mother nature is the best filter there is.

Ok enough ranting :D

My "waste" water goes to my garden, that means I don't have to water as much as some people might, others have mentioned using it for laundry, it's perfectly good water, hell it's perfectly safe for consumption too probably cleaner than what came out of your pipes in the first place since it went through other sorts of pre-filters. So if you simply plumb your "waste" line into your sewage then yeah you're wasting all that water. Hell I'm thinking of using my 300g rubbermade for the waste water (until I can turn that into a fish tank :D) it has a hole low, I can plumb in a gate valve, cover the top to keep mosquitos down, hook a hose up and then go around my yard watering everything.

KatiAni systems are good too, it's basically just the prefilters plus the DI part, and the resins are separated so you have to recharge them, I thought about doing that for a while as well (plus you make water so much quicker!) but you have to be careful about the recharging process as you need a strong acid to recharge one, and a strong base to recharge the other. Muratic Acid is what's commonly used I believe, and you can pick that up at a pool supply store, Red devil Lye I believe is the other one, however I don't think they make that anymore, and I'm unsure what the active ingredient that gives it the kick that you need (Sodium Hydroxide?) but I remember looking in Lowes/Home Depot for a suitable replacement but I couldn't find any, of course I didn't try that hard to find it.
 
dont plants need water ?

if you start to look around you will see that most new construction developments are using "waste" water allready . you can tell buy the purple colored plumbing and fixtures . its been aproved for use on landscape in almost all of the counrty .

we just did a project w/rain water catchment system . all of the water from the roof of the house is plumbed into 10,000 gal storage for use on landscape.

you can switch to "dual use" toilets you could even plumb your waste water from RO to your toilets
 
Plants need water.


Take a mass of plants that can feed 1 person for a year.
How much water, harvesting energy, land use, Carbon foot print etc did it take?

Now instead of feeding it to a person, take this plant matter to feed cattle.
The amount of meat you produced will probably feed the person for a month, required additional land usage, more CO2 emissions, more water, more waste, more facilities, more engergy to process etc etc.

Mind you, I am not veggie.
 
I got my rodi waste water drip to my flower bed but it is very inefficient -- still lots of water is wasted because only one area (the flower bed) is irrigated and my lawn is not.
 
Tony is totally right... Stop eating meat is better energy wise too of course. I'm not a veggie either but I make a point of eating more fruit and veg... just noticed my trader Joes apples are coming from Chile ::)
 
I run just DI. Cheaper and easier than RODI without the waste water. My TDS climbs to 80 in the winter, but no problems.


It takes 2500 gallons of water to make 1 pound of beef.
 
But isn't that going to exhaust your DI quickly without pre-filter? Maybe I should do that too; just remove the RO membrane from my RODI system. That would probably save me a lot of water going to waste. I think I read somewhere that the RO membrane was added to extend the life of the DI.
 
It sounds obvious (but naming isn't always intuitive), but DI removes free ions like sodium and chlorine, but leaves behind solids like organics , precipitates such as Calcium carbonate, and inorganic like chloramine?
 
Perry, maybe you can tee off the waste water line of your RO unit and send it to different parts of the yard? As to your lawn, those are huge water hogs, don't get me wrong, a nice green grass is very nice in deed, but if you remove the grass and plant local species, you'll save a ton of water on watering.

Mikey, that's really cool, however what would the cost of a 10kgallon storage tank run ya? Didn't know about toilets either though, super cool. I figure most of the water used in the house is more or less clean, just maybe a little soapy or what not, probably can be reused all over the place.

Rich, do you recharge your resins? or simply replace?
 
Perry, don't forget the TDS in SJ is very high. Worry about wasting water?? Using it to wash clothes, take a bath ;D ..


I don't like meat... I love seafood :D ..
 
The current stats out state that the average household uses 10,000 gal a month .

My brother uses 2,500 gal a month or less . I use about 3,000 gal a month not including my tank water.

Tiger Woods uses 300,000 gal. a month .I think Im doing pretty good on water conservation .
 
I buy all of my water from a water store that has an RO unit that has a 10% waste to 90% clean ratio (so does Mikey for his tank as well).

Wanna save water? get rid of your lawn, don't use products made from cotton grown in Ca (cotton growers get a subsidy, loosing money is good for them and cotton is thirsty), don't eat rice from Ca, DON'T GOLF, go to car washes that recycle their water, vote for the secession of Northern California from Southern California (Ecotopia, or better yet Nine Nations of North America). There's a million ways, but lets be real for a second, we care, that's why we discuss issues like this. It's that people that don't care (the sheep that breed like rabbits), that can make our efforts futile.
 
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