Sounds like you're trying to make excuses to yourself for not using anything but tap water. Do yourself a favor and shell out a few hundred dollars get a good ro/di unit and call it a day. As I recall my Kent Maxxima 60 wastes 3 gal to 1 good gal of water. That means if you do biweekly 10% water changes on a 200 gal tank you have used 80 gallons in a month. that is nothing compared with the savings in problems you can have with some municipal water system water. You could probably save that much water by turning your shower off 20 seconds earlier each day.
just my .02
What precautions should I take when using muriatic acid and lye? Is it just to wear gloves?Doug1 said:Larsson, if you are thinking of DI onlt the Aquarium Pharmacuticals Tap Water Purifier is avalable on line cheap. The problem with DI only is that that the slats and other solids that bond to the resin will limit its life span. Thats why DI after an RO unit last so much longer.
Depending on how hard your tap water is a TWP can last from 50-200 gallons. A common trick is to get 2 of them and hook them in series, then replace the first one as it gets exhausted.
FWIW the recharging process is not so bad if you are equiped to deal with the chemicals, the hardest paart is the first time you have to seperate the anion from the cation resins, after that you will have them in seperate cartridges so I used a IV style bottle with the lye solution and muriatic acid to recharge each one seperatly. The biggest hassle I had was the cartridges themselves tend to leak after a few cycles.
Also if you are on muni tap water you might get a household inline carbon filter and install it on a T line in the laundry room, you can then adapt the faucet with a barbed cap that fits the hose on the TWP. The TWP has carbon and polyfilter disc inside but the other carbon filter will deal with chlorine before the DI
