How To Make My Own Ro Water?

[Eigdoog]

Hello,

I was wondering how to make RO water? as i would just like to buy the salt and add it to my own water. i was hoping to do so withot buying somekinda item.

Im abit new to marine fish tanks and wanted to save some money on water changes (its £7.50 UK at the LSP for 5 gallons)

Many Thanks Eigdoog
P.S. Sorry for the spelling

 

[Colin_T]

you can't really make R/O water but you can distill water which is about the same if not better.
The closest you can get to making R/O water without an R/O unit is to filter the water through carbon and nitrate/phosphate removing granules.

 

[andywg]

I'm not sure how easy it would be to distill one's own water. Do you have any experience of home distilling and the sort of TDS levels obtained Colin?

 

[Musho3210]

yeah, to make RO water you need the membrane, the membrane has such small pores you need a lot of pressure to get through it. You could make your own unit but why?

just buy a RO unit.

 

[Colin_T]

Distilling water is easy in Australia. Just leave a bucket of water outside in the sun. Have a plastic cover on top and add a weight to it. The weight causes the water vapour that collects on the plastic, to run towards the lowest point. Then you have a plastic bucket floating under this low point. The sun heats the water. The water vapour collects on the cover and runs towards the low point before dripping into the empty collection vessel.

The distilled water is pure with nothing in it.

You can also make a distillation unit from a coffee urn. You drill into the top and plumb it up with some copper pipe, heat resistant plastic tube, stainless steel tube or glass. This runs up, across and down before doing the typical coil to help cool the water vapour. The distilled water then drips into a collection container under the outlet end of the pipe.

The glass beaker from a chemistry lab is the best because nothing leaches from the pipework. But it needs heat to do the job.

 

[garybuk]

Mate shop about! some places even gardon centreas give away free ro water (in the uk)

 

[nanocubeking]

I don't know anyways to make ro water with out an RO unit.

 

[Musho3210]

Distilling water is easy in Australia. Just leave a bucket of water outside in the sun. Have a plastic cover on top and add a weight to it. The weight causes the water vapour that collects on the plastic, to run towards the lowest point. Then you have a plastic bucket floating under this low point. The sun heats the water. The water vapour collects on the cover and runs towards the low point before dripping into the empty collection vessel.

The distilled water is pure with nothing in it.

You can also make a distillation unit from a coffee urn. You drill into the top and plumb it up with some copper pipe, heat resistant plastic tube, stainless steel tube or glass. This runs up, across and down before doing the typical coil to help cool the water vapour. The distilled water then drips into a collection container under the outlet end of the pipe.

The glass beaker from a chemistry lab is the best because nothing leaches from the pipework. But it needs heat to do the job.

that would work... for a half gallon pico

 

[Colin_T]

you just upgrade it to make more water faster. Use a 200ltr plastic rubbish bin and have lid that is slightly angled. Then have a gutter system to take the runoff from the lid into a clean storage container that is reasonably well sealed to limit the evaporation out of that.

 

[andywg]

But have you ever done it and measured the TDS of what you get? In principle it is easy, inpractoce getting pure water may be slightly harder. That's why I asked.

 

[Colin_T]

I have distilled the water but not tested it for dissolved solids. I tested for hardness and PH. It had 0 GH and a PH of 7.0

 

[Musho3210]

test its tds

 

[Colin_T]

I don't have a TDS meter.

The only reason I have a PH and GH test kit is to check the water from where I collect fish. Then I can replicate their conditions in the tank.

 

[mav8989]

The above idea with the coffee urn is cool - but DON'T use copper pipe or copper anything for that matter!!!!!!

 

[DaveW860]

A Local Petshop inmy Area Makes RO Water and Sells it for 50 Cents a gallon. A co-worker and I have been checking out how to do it ourself you can do it its not that dificult however you will use a ton of water to get a few gallon of ro water. It's worth it though I feel. I generally have been using water for my tanks filtered though a brita water filter because there is alot of iron in our water. That seems to work great but I may be trying the RO water creation process in my basement in the very near future.