6 ms·

Don't know why you're downvoted. Same. It's $2. Lasts a good week.

eviks 3y ago
could be due to this? > the most commonly detected plastic was polyamide, a material commonly used in water filtration systems and "the most popular membrane material used in reverse osmosis
- instaclay 3y ago
  That's what I was thinking. This makes me think my system is less safe than I thought. BUMMER!! This poster's cost drop on the $2/5Gal made me go down the cost analysis train on my own system. I setup my own robust RO system at home and filter my own water. It uses a 20gal tank so the output is very high when demanded (slow regen, lots of storage). We use about 1400gal of drinking water from this system a year between 5 people and 3 pets (I filter their water too), filter media needs replacing every year. (1400/5)*2 = $560/yr cost if purchased water from "Whole Foods" which I don't have access to. I also use the water in the winter for humidifier units, so that probably boosts my usage a lot. Filter replacement costs are ~$80 per year plus the RO membrane every 5yrs (80/5) 80+16 = $96 per year on media... let's just call it $100 to add margin for o-rings replacement or other tooling or random things. 560 - 100 = $460 savings over "Whole Foods"!! Neat! Not counting the convenience costs too. Original investment for the system: $580. Break-even in a bit over 1 year doesn't seem bad. Its been 4 years since I started doing this, so it seems like I am well ahead already. Input water cost is minimal, I pump ground water so there's no cost other than electricity. There are other costs to my water treatment system that I won't include in the "drinking water" category since that's whole home. I also treat for iron/arsenic, which was a 1.8k filter and costs ~$80 in reagents per year.
  - taftster 3y ago
    Labor cost for sourcing and replacing the filters, o-rings, etc. should be factored in. And of course, sourcing the bottles from Whole Foods in comparison. I like your evaluation here, not criticizing it. But I'm curious about adding the costs for time/material/travel to your costs. For me, I'm not going to run a RO system because I can beat the cost against Whole Foods. I'm doing it because I believe in the RO system (even though the article casts a bit of a knock against the plastic membrane, which is unfortunate).
    - instaclay 3y ago
      Oh, I have no plans of not drinking RO water because of this article. It was just interesting to me. Whole Foods water is very likely RO water too. Both my water and a grocery store water source are probably going to be very comparable as far as quality. Sourcing the filters is extremely easy, I order them in sets of two complete sets every other year, since the cost for order two is slightly less.. then I can order them on some on-sale price instead on on-demand. labor is extremely minimal. I have to replace filters only once per year and it takes about a half hour of time. Labor saved over transporting water from off-site is not in the same ballpark. I was inspired to do this because I tested our well water for arsenic and wasn't happy with the results. It was 30ppb, and it's now 2.5bbp from the tap (after the iron filter, but before the RO filter) I had gotten the RO system in hopes that's all I needed, but after testing the water out of the RO system for arsenic, I was still unhappy with the results. ~15ppb... so likley un-oxinidated arsenic. Adding an iron filter to oxidize the water and remove both iron and arsenic did the trick. Before I installed new filters, I started sourcing my water from grocery stores by buying 1gal jugs and it was more than tedious. I had new children in the house and I was wanting to avoid having them drink water that may be high in arsenic. With storage, travel, lugging large quantities of water around the store, and having to manage the milk jugs they came in was way more work than I wanted to do every week. It would have been easier if I had access to 5gal jugs, but still more work than the system is now. I had bought 5-10 1/gals each trip. The store also uses an RO system, treating and filtering municipal water from tap on-demand. They don't truck the water in or store it. The regeneration, even with their large system is slow, so filling up 5-10gal jugs took a long time and there was sometimes a line. I did not like doing it. I would guess the time I would save not changing filters once per year would be eaten up by 1 or 2 trips to the store. Pre-filled jugs were available at higher quantities for 3-5x the price.
- hasty_pudding 3y ago
  so the only solution is to purchase a steel tanker truck and drive it out to the mountains and fill it up with hopefully enough pure mountain spring water to last the year.
fullstop 3y ago
RO water is kind of tasteless, though, since it lacks all mineral content.
- yareally 3y ago
  I think you're confusing RO for distilled water.
  - fullstop 3y ago
    No, I'm not. I have an RO filter for aquatic purposes because I want to remove all dissolved solids from the water. These dissolved solids are what gives water its taste. RO water will have about 25 ppm TDS. Distilled brings that down to about 10 ppm. Bottled water is generally around 400 - 600 ppm TDS. You're right in the fact that RO water has _more_ taste than distilled water, but it pales in comparison to the mineral content / taste in bottled water. Also, I shouldn't have used the word "all", so substitute that with "almost all"
- hasty_pudding 3y ago
  Put some flavor powder in it
  - fullstop 3y ago
    That's kind of what I do for my shrimp tank. I RO filter to get the mineral content close to zero, then add a specific amount of minerals to get the TDS to what it would be in their natural habitat. There are RO systems which have a final stage to add minerals back into the water, but I don't know how well they actually work.
evilduck 3y ago
I've never seen anyone toting big heavy and fragile glass carboy to Whole Foods, they're always hauling a lightweight plastic jug into a store that filtered the water with plastic PET tubing, plastic polyamide reverse osmosis filters, and plastic dispenser hardware, and likely taking it home to a water dispenser also predominately made of plastic. Bulk jug refills are cheaper and less wasteful than 12oz bottles but as a mechanism to reduce exposure to plastic contaminants I'm not going to assume it's meaningfully better.
- tankaiji 3y ago
  That’s exactly me. Filling up at Whole Foods into glass bottles that are 1 gallon each. Bottles have handles, so I’m also pouring from them. But yes, the news about RO polyamide are concerning.
- hasty_pudding 3y ago
  if even the filters are plastic then even glass containers wont help! the only solution is to purchase a large steel tanker truck and drive it to the mountains and fill it up with hopefully enough pure water to use for the year.
hasty_pudding 3y ago
I never thought a comment about filling up a water jug would be my most downvoted comment haha

could be due to this? > the most commonly detected plastic was polyamide, a material commonly used in water filtration systems and "the most popular membrane material used in reverse osmosis

instaclay 3y ago
That's what I was thinking. This makes me think my system is less safe than I thought. BUMMER!! This poster's cost drop on the $2/5Gal made me go down the cost analysis train on my own system. I setup my own robust RO system at home and filter my own water. It uses a 20gal tank so the output is very high when demanded (slow regen, lots of storage). We use about 1400gal of drinking water from this system a year between 5 people and 3 pets (I filter their water too), filter media needs replacing every year. (1400/5)*2 = $560/yr cost if purchased water from "Whole Foods" which I don't have access to. I also use the water in the winter for humidifier units, so that probably boosts my usage a lot. Filter replacement costs are ~$80 per year plus the RO membrane every 5yrs (80/5) 80+16 = $96 per year on media... let's just call it $100 to add margin for o-rings replacement or other tooling or random things. 560 - 100 = $460 savings over "Whole Foods"!! Neat! Not counting the convenience costs too. Original investment for the system: $580. Break-even in a bit over 1 year doesn't seem bad. Its been 4 years since I started doing this, so it seems like I am well ahead already. Input water cost is minimal, I pump ground water so there's no cost other than electricity. There are other costs to my water treatment system that I won't include in the "drinking water" category since that's whole home. I also treat for iron/arsenic, which was a 1.8k filter and costs ~$80 in reagents per year.
- taftster 3y ago
  Labor cost for sourcing and replacing the filters, o-rings, etc. should be factored in. And of course, sourcing the bottles from Whole Foods in comparison. I like your evaluation here, not criticizing it. But I'm curious about adding the costs for time/material/travel to your costs. For me, I'm not going to run a RO system because I can beat the cost against Whole Foods. I'm doing it because I believe in the RO system (even though the article casts a bit of a knock against the plastic membrane, which is unfortunate).
  - instaclay 3y ago
    Oh, I have no plans of not drinking RO water because of this article. It was just interesting to me. Whole Foods water is very likely RO water too. Both my water and a grocery store water source are probably going to be very comparable as far as quality. Sourcing the filters is extremely easy, I order them in sets of two complete sets every other year, since the cost for order two is slightly less.. then I can order them on some on-sale price instead on on-demand. labor is extremely minimal. I have to replace filters only once per year and it takes about a half hour of time. Labor saved over transporting water from off-site is not in the same ballpark. I was inspired to do this because I tested our well water for arsenic and wasn't happy with the results. It was 30ppb, and it's now 2.5bbp from the tap (after the iron filter, but before the RO filter) I had gotten the RO system in hopes that's all I needed, but after testing the water out of the RO system for arsenic, I was still unhappy with the results. ~15ppb... so likley un-oxinidated arsenic. Adding an iron filter to oxidize the water and remove both iron and arsenic did the trick. Before I installed new filters, I started sourcing my water from grocery stores by buying 1gal jugs and it was more than tedious. I had new children in the house and I was wanting to avoid having them drink water that may be high in arsenic. With storage, travel, lugging large quantities of water around the store, and having to manage the milk jugs they came in was way more work than I wanted to do every week. It would have been easier if I had access to 5gal jugs, but still more work than the system is now. I had bought 5-10 1/gals each trip. The store also uses an RO system, treating and filtering municipal water from tap on-demand. They don't truck the water in or store it. The regeneration, even with their large system is slow, so filling up 5-10gal jugs took a long time and there was sometimes a line. I did not like doing it. I would guess the time I would save not changing filters once per year would be eaten up by 1 or 2 trips to the store. Pre-filled jugs were available at higher quantities for 3-5x the price.
hasty_pudding 3y ago
so the only solution is to purchase a steel tanker truck and drive it out to the mountains and fill it up with hopefully enough pure mountain spring water to last the year.

fullstop 3y ago

RO water is kind of tasteless, though, since it lacks all mineral content.

yareally 3y ago
I think you're confusing RO for distilled water.
- fullstop 3y ago
  No, I'm not. I have an RO filter for aquatic purposes because I want to remove all dissolved solids from the water. These dissolved solids are what gives water its taste. RO water will have about 25 ppm TDS. Distilled brings that down to about 10 ppm. Bottled water is generally around 400 - 600 ppm TDS. You're right in the fact that RO water has _more_ taste than distilled water, but it pales in comparison to the mineral content / taste in bottled water. Also, I shouldn't have used the word "all", so substitute that with "almost all"
hasty_pudding 3y ago
Put some flavor powder in it
- fullstop 3y ago
  That's kind of what I do for my shrimp tank. I RO filter to get the mineral content close to zero, then add a specific amount of minerals to get the TDS to what it would be in their natural habitat. There are RO systems which have a final stage to add minerals back into the water, but I don't know how well they actually work.

evilduck 3y ago

I've never seen anyone toting big heavy and fragile glass carboy to Whole Foods, they're always hauling a lightweight plastic jug into a store that filtered the water with plastic PET tubing, plastic polyamide reverse osmosis filters, and plastic dispenser hardware, and likely taking it home to a water dispenser also predominately made of plastic. Bulk jug refills are cheaper and less wasteful than 12oz bottles but as a mechanism to reduce exposure to plastic contaminants I'm not going to assume it's meaningfully better.

tankaiji 3y ago
That’s exactly me. Filling up at Whole Foods into glass bottles that are 1 gallon each. Bottles have handles, so I’m also pouring from them. But yes, the news about RO polyamide are concerning.
hasty_pudding 3y ago
if even the filters are plastic then even glass containers wont help! the only solution is to purchase a large steel tanker truck and drive it to the mountains and fill it up with hopefully enough pure water to use for the year.

hasty_pudding 3y ago

I never thought a comment about filling up a water jug would be my most downvoted comment haha