RO/DI question?

The friendliest place on the web for anyone with an interest in aquariums or fish keeping!
If you have answers, please help by responding to the unanswered posts.

Squidy07

Aquarium Advice Activist
Joined
Jan 15, 2012
Messages
179
This sounds dum but is the water coming out of the RO/DI unit safe to drink??
 
CleverBs said:
yes of course

I ask because I saw a video by newyorksteelo from YouTube and he said it's not. something about immunity and loss in nutrients.the video is on his channel
 
RO/DI units are made for RVs and that's what people use for drinking water when they are traveling. So yes, it's drinkable. Yes, RO/DI strips 99% of nutrients and chemicals.
 
I have severe medical conditions that require me to drink only R/O. My whole house is run on it. My entire family drinks it, cooks with, bathes in it.. You get the point, and we have never had any issues related from it. In fact it makes my condition livable.
 
If you gonna use your RO DI to run to sink or Ice maker then run it off just RO. No need to run drinking water through DI. Will make DI canister last longer as well. I have a bladder tank in crawl space with check valve on it that supplies my ice maker and RO water spicket. I used to run straight lines to both but since RO such low pressure output I couldn't fill up much from sink or my ice maker trey wouldn't completely fill. So bladder tank adds pressure to line as well as 3.5 gallons of storage. My spring task I'd to set up waste line storage for washing clothes
 
I talked to my ro/di manufacture and they said it's not good to drink the di part of the water. The ro is fine but not the di. Something about the water being to pure and when that is the case it wants to pull nutrients from your body. It is ok to drink some times but it is not made to drink long term. Of course he was talking about drinking the water straight. It's fine when u add something to it.

I have tried to talk to more people about this but I have not had any luck.
 
Here is an excerpt from a peer-reviewed article by Dr. Eugene A. Thiers on drinking pure water:


Is Pure Water Harmful to Your Health?


Arguments against drinking purified water fall into two major types of categories. In the

first category, the argument can be summarized as follows:”Essential minerals are removed from
pure water—and that’s bad.” This is the nutritionist argument. The second type of argument
typically states that “pure water leaches minerals from the body—and that is also bad.” This is
the pseudo-medical argument. We’ll briefly examine the merits of each.
The nutritionist argument rests on the premise that minerals that are dissolved in natural
water are essential for the body, and that is false. What is true is that humans require certain
minimum nutrients (e.g., over 2,000 calories for the average adult) which include trace elements,
such as calcium, magnesium, as well as certain vitamins that are not synthesized by the body,
such as vitamin C, among others. These nutrients are normally ingested in our food through the
process of digestion.
For example, the recommended daily requirements of calcium and magnesium are about
1,000 to 2,000 mg and 300 to 400 mg, respectively, although specific requirements vary by
gender, age, and other factors. Water may provide a small fraction of these requirements. Thus,
if one lives in areas with hard water (which is defined as having 48 to 72 mg/l of calcium) and
one drinks eight glasses per day, which is about 2 liters, one would absorb less than 144 mg
of calcium, or less than 14% of the daily requirements. Drinking one glass of milk contains
between 300 to 350 mg of calcium, which is more than twice as much as the 8 glasses of water,
and a few slices of cheese could provide even more. The point is that the food we eat provides
most, if not all of the daily requirements, and not the water we drink. In fact, since most water
sources are not hard (the range goes from less than 7mg/l for soft water to more than 72 mg/l for
very hard water), the amount of nutrients and essential elements provided by water is rather
insignificant.
The second argument is more difficult to dismiss because it appears grounded on
“scientific” principles, hence its pseudo-medical label. While it is true that relatively pure water
(remember, there is no such a thing as totally pure water) dissolves practically everything, and
that is why it is labeled “aggressive,” it does so only in minute quantities. Yet, numerous
opinions from medical doctors (who have forgotten their chemistry lessons) suggest that pure
water can leach minerals from the body in the same way that pure water leaches various
materials under laboratory conditions.
Fouling is the progressive degradation of membrane surfaces due to particle occlusion.
There are two ways of assessing the above opinions. One way is to point out that there is
hardly any evidence in the scientific literature about such leaching of minerals from the body
(i.e., no clinical data or peer-review articles in respected journals). The second, more effective
way is to point out that the moment the water enters the mouth, human saliva renders it nonaggressive.
Human saliva contains numerous organic compounds that are grouped into 9-10
different classes (e.g., histatins, statherins, lysozyme, amylases, etc.) all of which are highly
soluble in water. The moment water enters the mouth, saliva dissolves and the mixture could not
possibly qualify as pure water. Furthermore, the mechanism for leaching “essential” minerals
from the body is most commonly stated to be through the small intestine, as water and nutrients
are absorbed by the body. Again, this does not make any sense because prior to getting to the
small intestine, any water would have to pass through the stomach, and the stomach adds
substantial quantities of gastric acid and other chemicals as part of its digestive function. To
consider that any water is pure or aggressive after passage through the stomach requires
unbridled imagination, particularly if one considers the effect of mixing such water with pieces
of hamburger or a banana.
Conclusions
Ultra-clean water contains ions, although few of them. The minerals that we need come
mainly from the food we eat, not the water we drink. And pure water does not leach minerals
from our body because as it enters the mouth it mixes with our natural fluids and ceases to be
aggressive.
 
In short. U will find some that say ok and some that say don't. I guess it is really up to you to decide.
 
Hello all, got a question? Just received my RO / DI unit. When not in use should I turn off the water supply going in? Reason I ask is that I have turned off the valves coming out from the unit to the storage bin, but I noticed waste water still coming out. Is gnat normal or should I turn off main supply too?
 
rafatoy said:
Hello all, got a question? Just received my RO / DI unit. When not in use should I turn off the water supply going in? Reason I ask is that I have turned off the valves coming out from the unit to the storage bin, but I noticed waste water still coming out. Is gnat normal or should I turn off main supply too?

Yes turn off supply line. The waste line will constantly run unless you have a check valve and auto shut off on your system.
 
Mpfaff77, yes on both, check valve on the RO side and a auto shut off, just set if up yesterday, bought the 5 stage from BRS
 
rafatoy said:
Mpfaff77, yes on both, check valve on the RO side and a auto shut off, just set if up yesterday, bought the 5 stage from BRS

Ok then has to be not enough pressure. Needs at least 60psi or so for auto shut off to work. I just had this same issue. Make sure lines going into shut off are correct. My was installed backwards from manufacturer.

 
Oh yea my psi is 70 to 75, maybe auto shut is wrong, it came already installed, will that vid show the correct way
 
Ops did I fail to mention that it's not installed to the float yet just an on / off valve, maybe that's an issue? I will see video, thanks
 
rafatoy said:
Oh yea my psi is 70 to 75, maybe auto shut is wrong, it came already installed, will that vid show the correct way

Yes video shows how to install and where lines go and where check valve needs to be. With that psi it should shut off. It also could be faulty auto shut off.
 
Back
Top Bottom