Making use of that leftover RO water

[Inconservatory]

Hi all,

I have recently welcomed an RODI unit into my household. It's a nice houseguest, but boy does it waste a lot of water! I was surprised to find that it refuses about 4 gallons to 1 gallon of purified water (even more now that it's cold outside). Since I have the pleasure of paying for my own water in the house, I would like to make the most of this rejected water. The TDS for the reject water is 29ppm, which doesn't seem so bad for my freshwater tanks, but there's still so much water left over!

I was wondering what you all do with your excess RO water. Is there a way to lessen the amount of rejected water? Would adding a permeate pump help at all?

 

[tike]

It is one of the things that bugs me about the hobby too! The only solution I have is in the summer I save the waste water in large tubs and water my gardens and lawn with it. Once the rainy Northwest weather hits I just let it pour into the ground.

 

[amashun]

i normally use it for laundry

 

[Chichas01]

I've heard that you can buy a booster pump and pump the waste back into your main water supply.
I've also seen a unit that does basically the same thing, but pumpa the water back into your hot water supply. I think it has some one way check valves on it that prevent any hot water from backflowing into your filter which would ruin your RO membrane. I'd love to be able to do this!

 

[roscoe]

The Puretek RODI unit makes 1g for every 1.5g of waste water. I love this unit as it waste a whole lot less than some other units out there. I've made about 1000g or more already and the TDS still reads 00ppm. As for the waste I let the waste drip into my lawn.

 

[jake65]

In the summer I used to let it fill up a 5gl bucket and just go pour it on my lawn and garden somewhere or use it to water the plants inside, but not so much in the winter