RO, killing two birds with one stone

[Tarpon001]

Hey all. I'm slowly and carefully working toward my first reef tank. I'm halfway done with the stand, don't have a tank yet and I'm reading books and following the forums here. Anyway, I'm on a budget and that's why I'm doing a little bit at a time. The next big thing to purchase after the stand is done will be a RO system, but I want to approach this in an unusual way. Rather than dedicating the RO to the tank I would rather install it under my sink to a small tap, so that I can also use it for drinking water. I was looking on the web and I found several 3 and 4 stage systems with reserve tanks that produce 25-50 gpd. I don't hear a lot of people going with this option and I wanted to make sure there I wasn't making a mistake in doing this before I plop down the $. I'm just not sure why more people aren't doing this because you can get good drinking water and water for your tank.

Thanks

 

[bertoni]

Lots of people do that. I just drink tapwater, because it's fine in my area, but I drink RO/DI for a while.

 

[rustybucket145]

If you just go RO, you can do this, if you go RO/DI you're not gonna want to drink that. First of all it tastes nasty, second it is deficient of minerals necessary to keep us humans healthy. After a while of drinking RO/DI you will begin to have health problems.

You could run the RO line to the tap and the DI line to a separate location for the tank.

 

[bertoni]

I've never seen any actual data that showed RO/DI water was a problem for drinking. The taste isn't all that bad, and the mineral content of water doesn't seem to be very significant. Tapwater does have some fluoride in it for your teeth, though. There are tons of threads on this topic in the chemistry forum, if anyone wants to do some reading.

 

[simmons797]

Drinking RO/DI water will not in anyway cause you to have health problems. The only thing tap water provides that you may miss is fluoride (which isn't a big deal if you use toothpaste with fluoride and goto the dentist).

 

[reefergeorge]

I've been drinking rodi for years. Tastes great

 

[rick12]

is the bottled water you by for the water cooler at the office acceptable. i know it is RO but not sure if it is DI

 

[jdieck]

For drinking just T off RO from the line after the membrane and before the DI. Connect this line to the pressure tank and from there to an activated filter (polishing) and from there to the faucet for drinking.
Use the line after DI for your RO/DI reservoir.
If you do not wat the pressure tank to empty into the DI line when the reservoir valve is open then install a check valve in the line feeding the pressure tank.
See the drawing on the right of thi simage from the filterguys.