What RO/DI system do you use?

[old salty]

I have a Typhoon III that I purchased upon the advice of AZDesertRat. Then Spectrapure came out with their unit with a REALLY low introductory price. AZDR advised people to jump on this, and I did NOT follow his advice. Now that they are selling for what they sell for, I am kicking myself in the arse a few hundred times over. I tend to go through quite a lot of DI resin; with my bigger tank in the making, I will be going through a lot more. This only makes me kick myself even harder as a nice Spectrapure isn't in the budget.

I think I may invest in a booster pump to increase the psi to the RO filter. Right now it's at 50psi and I think 70 would be ideal (or so I've been told.)

 

[Peter Eichler]

<a href=showthread.php?s=&postid=10456805#post10456805 target=_blank>Originally posted</a> by AZDesertRat
You could not be more wrong. You are paying for a 100% hand tested and guaranteed 98+ % RO membrane and proprietary DI cartridges like the MaxCap and SilicaBuster which no one else offers. These are proven to be superior over and over in lab tests. Every other RO vendor in the business combined do not do anywhere near the bench and beta testing of components that Spectrapure does. All that testing pays off in the performance and longevity of their systems. I am not conected to them in any way but unless you have tried one of their units you have no idea what they are capable of. There is no "similar unit" offered by anyone anywhere.

From what i've heard the 90gpd unit that Spectrapure offers is simply a 75gpd Dow Filmtec membrane rated at 60psi rather than 50psi. Sure, 60psi imay be claimed to be the industry standard, but I can assure you that 60psi in the average home is anything but standard. In other words they're using the exact same membrane and have the same production as many other 75gpd RO/DI units. Spectrapure is not manufacturing the membrane nor the resins or catridges for their unit, they're putting them together like every other company as far as I can tell. They claim that they test each membrane and reject the ones that don't perform up to their standards, but something tells me Dow has a pretty good manufacturing process to keep them consistent. FYI, I used a Spectrapure unit in the past and I have no complaints, but I don't find them to be superior to some of the less expensive units on the market using the same membrane. Can you provide any proof that i'm wrong?

By all means, if you buy into the hand tested thing get a Spectrapure unit. If you don't then get a 5 stage unit with the same membrane and basic meaterials and pay close to half the price. Even adding a second DI cartridge would make other units considerably cheaper than the Spectrapure. However it's important to note that you won't have the inline TDS meters.

 

[AZDesertRat]

There is no "buying in to" the hand testing thing. Its fact! I have visited their facility numerous times and witnessed this in action. They are not normal Dow Filmtec membranes. They are from Dow but they have received special treatment from day one. They have been tetsed by Dow first, wetted in a special solution, tested by Spectrapure and again stored wet before use if they pass their testing. No hype, no vodoo, just 100% hand tested and guaranteed 98+% unlike any other vendor. And it works, I'm averaging 99.23% without DI after 11 months, thats pretty good proof.
Yes their resin comes from common sources but they blend resins unlike any other vendor. Thye take advantage of things like pH changes within the resin bed which no one else does. You cannot get their blend or performance elsewhere. Try it, I believe you would like the difference.

 

[fsn77]

We bought ours from melev about 18 months ago. We like it and it was a good value.

 

[sneeyatch]

watergeneral ro6100-di

 

[Nano Chris]

I went with a Captive Purity system from Marine Depot, works good for me.

 

[lilprincess]

We've had melev's for about a month now and are happy with it. I think its a 100gpd, we get 5g of ro/di water every hour and 15min. Tap has a starting TDS of 18. Resulting RO water has TDS of 5 and after DI, TDS is at 0.