Ro flushing

[fishkeeprian]

Hello,

I flush my RO unit prior to using it but do you have to flush after use as well?

Does it affect the water i.e bacterial build up in the unit etc?

Thanks

 

[mcgyvr]

You could if you wanted.. Some very high end systems perform a flush every hour or whatever..
It can help "some" as far as scaling/fouling,etc... Not sure how effective it really is..

I actually never flush my membrane and never worry about bacteria.. The water is all used for the tank and my incoming TDS is in the 60-70 range and decently clean..
My usage is fairly low (maybe 5G-10G a week) and I easily get 1.5 years out of my prefilters and change the RO membrane at 5years..

 

[fishkeeprian]

You could if you wanted.. Some very high end systems perform a flush every hour or whatever..
It can help "some" as far as scaling/fouling,etc... Not sure how effective it really is..

I actually never flush my membrane and never worry about bacteria.. The water is all used for the tank and my incoming TDS is in the 60-70 range and decently clean..
My usage is fairly low (maybe 5G-10G a week) and I easily get 1.5 years out of my prefilters and change the RO membrane at 5years..

Thank you.

I general perform a flush on start up for about 5 mins or so and disgregard the first 1 or 2 litres of water.

 

[homer1475]

I have a flush valve as well as a DI bypass on my unit. When you flush the membrane all that high TDS water gets fed directly into the DI canister. With a bypass, you send that high TDS water down thew drain.



You need a 3 way TDS meter to use a bypass correctly. You bypass the DI until the water coming out of the RO is very low(in my case its 1 TDS out into my DI), then turn your flush valve, and turn the bypass valve and start making water.



With this setup I can go nearly a year before changing my DI. I will admit though I have clean water to start with(only 24TDS at the tap).

 

[sfsuphysics]

You could if you wanted.. Some very high end systems perform a flush every hour or whatever..
It can help "some" as far as scaling/fouling,etc... Not sure how effective it really is..

BRS guys should test this, be curious to know how much more life you can get out of an RO membrane if you have an autoflusher.