RO water from the store dispenser ?s

zachjohnson65

zachjohnson65

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Mar 31, 2007
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Staunton, VA
Ok I'm doing some research before i get into saltwater. I have learned that RO water is best. My LFS does not use or sell RO water. Tells you how good they are!!! I have a few questions for people that buy RO water.

How much per gallon do they charge?

I have found a local grocery store that has RO water for $1.50 for 5 gallons. You just need to provide the bottle. Funny because there is a machine inside that costs $7.00 for 5 with a bottle exchange.

Can i test to see what is good or bad RO water?


Thanks, Boxfish (aka Zach)
 
Hmm...I want to say my LFS had around that for pure RO but it was maybe 20 cents more per gallon for RO premixed with salt.

Perfect RO should have 0 ppm TDS, although not many systems are that good and most people don't have a TDS meter. I think with SW the easiest test would be with a hydrometer/refractometer but I'm not posistive.
 
Testing RO water from a machine with a hydrometer or refractometer isn't going to show much of anything (unless there's so much dissolved in the water to alter the specific gravity enough to give a reading). A TDS meter would be good to use, but it'll only tell you if there's something dissolved in the water, not what is in the water. Some things that could be dissolved in it would be ok, others definitely not.

The LFSs around here sell RO water for $0.50 / gallon and mixed sw for $1.00 / gallon.

While using RO water can be ok, RO/DI is best to use.
 
fsn77 said:
A TDS meter would be good to use, but it'll only tell you if there's something dissolved in the water, not what is in the water. Some things that could be dissolved in it would be ok, others definitely not.

The LFSs around here sell RO water for $0.50 / gallon and mixed sw for $1.00 / gallon.

While using RO water can be ok, RO/DI is best to use.
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Solubility (dissolved) is the same thing as being in the water for all intents and purposes. If it weren't soluble, it would either precipitate or gas out. The only issue I have with TDS meters is that even at 0 ppm TDS, sometimes there is enough low level dissolved substances to be an issue. That's why I go the extra mile with my resins.
 
Thanks for the correction on the hydrometer/refractometer. I'm a freshie so I'm not well versed on SG.

I do agree that RO/DI is going to be better than RO, usually. Some systems might be so inefficient that it wouldn't make much difference ;)
 
Well RO is better then tap right? I'm thinking of doing the store bought water for a year or two and then convincing wife to get a home unit.
 
Amphiprion said:
You'll spend more per year doing that than purchasing a unit. Very nice units can be had for less than $150 USD. Take a look at www.bulkreefsupply.com and their RO/DI selection.
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Yeah, but he'll spend it $1.50 at a time, instead of all at once, which is a lot easier to deal with when the wife is against buying a unit. When I did saltwater a few years ago, I bought an RO unit that attaches to a faucet. It was great, till I let the 5g jug run over a few times and had that mess to clean.. After I broke my tank down, I put the RO in storage and eventually gave it away. Now I'm doing a salt tank again, but this time I'm buying my RO from the Culligan dispenser at Walmart.. $1.85 for a fillup, and I don't have the 3:1 waste of water (for every 1 gallon of good RO you get, you waste 3 gallons down the drain.. That means, it would have been 300 gallons total to fill up my 75 gallon tank..), hassle of cleaning up the overflows, nor the annoyance of my wife gripe cuz I left the thing hooked up while she's getting ready for work.. Not to mention, no inital cash investment..
 
Buying it or making it, there's still the waste of water in the RO process and you're paying for it in either case.

Buying RO (which is rarely as high in quality as RO/DI), be it from a water dispenser or a LFS, is not without some risk. There's no guarantee that the store is properly maintaining their RO unit. Testing it each time becomes even more important, and if a batch is not good enough, a higher price alternative has to be improvised. If it's not known the batch was bad before getting it home, then another trip to a store is needed, costing one more time and money.

Overflows are easy enough to prevent, and it's only water... As long as it's not overflowing onto carpet or a wood floor, it's an easy clean up. There's also overflow alarms that can be purchased for less than $20 if for some reason overflows are a chronic issue. I've seen people place their water jugs in large inexpensive Rubbermaid bins to catch any water if they happen to let the jug overflow, set their jugs in the shower / bath tub, or install the RO/DI unit in their garage.

Like anything else in this hobby, there's an initial cash investment. It's so inexpensive to make RO/DI compared to buying it -- it costs me just over $0.20 / gallon to produce, all costs included. If someone has a particularly small tank, investing in a RO/DI unit may not be cost effective, simply because of how little use it would receive and how long the cost savings lead to the unit paying for itself. Each time someone is buying RO from a store, they're spending money on water that they could otherwise be spending on something else for their tank.
 
Mods are all over this thread with really good answers. They say exactly the pros and cons I experienced with Grocery store dispensers.

To recap:
Store Dispensers are NOT always tested for quality. Pre-filters may be bad and leaching silicates into the water (My experience). Store water is RO, not RO/DI, so at best your looking at a TDS of 20 on a good day (Good, but not great). For me, it is 25cents a gallon or 5 gallons for $1 at the dispensers. Look around town, I have found they vary in price. You should test your grocery store water for TDS, Phosphates, and Silicates before you use it for top off/mixing salt so you know what is going into your system and at which point the source is. At some point it does get to be more of a pain, and more expensive to buy from the store vs getting your own RO/DI unit.. usually around 1 year is break even.. or for hard headed people like me, 7 years of store RO water before I finally bit the bullet and bought a home unit. ;)
 
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