RO/DI plumbing waste water to rain barrel

[goby]

Hi,

Ok, so I am in the process of rebuilding my RO/DI setup and figured it was time for some enhancments.. I hate the idea of all the waste water just going down the drain, and want to plumb it to some 55gallon rain barrels that I have.

My thought is to run the waste water line up into my attic and out the side of my house where the rain barrels live. currently the RO unit is mounted on the wall in my laundry room up about 1ft from the ceilng. At some point I was told that I want to keep the product line from having too much head pressure when i plumbed the unit to make product water into my garage by going thru the ceiling.

Does this apply to the waste water line as well? I will need to go up about 2 feet, and then a 10ft horizontal run, then i will put some PVC pipe thru the wall and down to the rain barrel and fish the waste water line thru that so that UV and outher exposure doesnt ruin the RO tubing.

does that seem reasonable? am I going to run into problems having som pressure on the waste water line to get it up and out of the house?

Thanks!

[viper12775]

I fill my pond with mine. 1 foot vertical 20 foot horizontally no problems I've ever seen

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[goby]

ultimately, the rainbarrels will be used to top off my pond :) thats the idea!

I just want to make sure the vertical run wont create added backpressure, thus forcing more water over the menbrane than the flow restrictor alone..

[Buckeye Hydro]

The real answer is measurable, at your house.

Temporarily run your waste water tube up and over - it doesn't have to be in the exact place you want to finally route it, but just somewhere that will mimic the same vertical change in elevation, and horizontal run.

Then measure your waste water to purified water ratio. If you're around a 4 to 1 you're golden.

The extra head pressure and length on the waste tube just restricts the waste water flow a bit. My guess is you'll be fine.

Russ

[Ron Reefman]

Trust Russ, he's helped me a lot.

BTW, I have a big RO/DI system because I have 600g of salt water (4 tanks) in the house. I save my reject (I won't call it waste) in a cistern in my garage and use it in the washing machine. It's saving me about $25 to $30 a month on my water bill. Not so much a huge savings, but I hate wasting perfectly good water.

[ADVRESOURCE]

It's good water. Better than city water. Can reuse to rinse reactor media, sand, rock. You can T it off to storage tank. Good idea.

[Buckeye Hydro]

It's good water. Better than city water.

Well, yes and no.

It has had sediment removed by going through the sediment filter
It has had chlorine removed by going through the carbon block

-but-

The RO membrane pulled out about 20% of the pure H2O, so the dissolved solids are that much higher. This is why you'll hear water treatment nerds (I resemble that remark) call the waste water "concentrate."

Russ