Blog Post

Hidden Dangers With Your Reverse Osmosis System

  • By Tony Hoffmann
  • 26 Aug, 2020

Specific items to be aware of in order to protect your home and self

     Many of our customers have an RO (reverse osmosis) system in their home. Most of them are installed under their kitchen sink. Please see our previous blog articles about reverse osmosis systems and why they are worthwhile and why it is important to maintain them. If you already have one you know how wonderful the water is. The taste, the purity, and the clarity. It tends to turn us into water snobs. When we go to our relatives home or to a restaurant we can certainly tell the difference in the quality we are drinking. However, there are certain inherent dangers in an RO unit that we would like to make you aware of and present some solutions to those issues.

     Several months ago, one of our customers returned from a four day trip out of town to find there house seriously flooded. They returned on a Sunday evening to find the main floor with water all over it. The carpets were soaked, the furniture was water damaged, the sheetrock on the ceiling in the basement was falling off, as well as on the walls, and it was just shy of a swimming pool. She called us immediately and I went over there with serious trepidation anticipating massive liability as we had changed their filters six months prior. 

     Upon detailed examination we found that the 1/4" plastic tubing that lead from the cold supply beneath the kitchen sink, that fed the kitchen faucet with water, had a tee on it  that supplied the RO with water. It had split open leaving a 3/8" gap. That hole could feasibly spurt out 1 - 4 gallons per minute (GPM) of water. If it had done just 1 gpm of water that would be 1,440 gallons of water in a 24-hour period. In four days, if it had split the night they left, it would have poured out 5,760 gallons of water. Now, we don't know when it split, so it could have been fewer than four days, but we also don't know exactly how many gallons per minute of water the split was allowed out. Surmise it to say, it was a lot more water than they wanted pouring into their home when no one was home.

     Sadly for them it caused a lot of damage, close to $50K, serious inconvenience, a large claim on their homeowners insurance and possible cancellation of their policy. Luckily for us, we were not liable for the damages, because we were not culpable for what happened. When I saw the split in the tubing, I knew that it would not have split under normal water pressure in the home. I put a pressure gauge with a lazy arm indicator on their hose bib and left it on over night. When I first connected the gauge it read 80 psi. I already knew at that point that their PRV (pressure reducing valve) had failed. PRV's are designed to be set between 25 psi and max of 75 psi, I was reading 80 psi during the evening.

     I returned the next morning and discovered that the indicator showed 210 psi! That is 4 times the average psi that should have been going into their home. As a matter of practice we always check the psi in the home when we do our service work specifically for such a reason. A PRV can fail at any time and with out any warning. Most people simply view the increased pressure in their home as a bonus and get use to it not realizing the potential damage the high pressure is causing.

    So danger one, is high pressure to your RO unit from a failed PRV, or no PRV in your home. You should make it a regular practice to check the pressure in your home. You can go to your local hardware store and purchase a simple pressure gauge with a lazy arm indicator for $12-$18. Then attach it to a hose bib or water heater and get a pressure reading. Your pressure should be between 50 and 65 psi. Since a PRV can fail at anytime, even potentially between readings, unless your dutiful enough to check it consistently and frequently. What you can do to ensure your RO is safe is install a 1/4" inline PRV just to the RO unit. This will limit the pressure to your RO unit to 60 psi. An Ro only needs 20 psi to produce water, however the more pressure the more water production. However it doesn't need to be higher than 60psi on a residential application. An installation of this simple devise will give you peace of mind not to mention potentially saving you hundreds, if not thousands of dollars.

     Recently we were at a customers house changing the filters in the Ro system. Their system was not producing much water and their membrane was not rejecting any TDS (total dissolved solids) which is the method of knowing whether or not your RO unit is producing purified water. Upon removing the canisters in which the sediment filter and pre-carbon filter were we found some serious slime build up. It was a gelatinous mass that had built up in the filters as well as within the RO manifold blocking the ability of the water to flow freely throughout the ports. The membrane had also been contaminated with this gelatinous mass. What was the gelatinous mass? Bacteria. We thoroughly sanitized their RO system killing the bacteria and restoring their water production as well as water quality.

     Studies have shown that your RO system should be sanitized every 6 months in order to be as free of bacteria as possible. However, most customers do not want to pay a service company every  six months to come out when they're already balking at having to shell out money every year. Truth be told, if you compare the cost of unlimited purified water via a reverse osmosis system, with the cost of regular filter changes and maintenance, with buying bottled water, it is actually less expensive to service your system properly. The bacteria has the potential to make you sick. So sanitizing your system regularly is key to maintaining a microbiologically free water source.

     When we examined this customer's system, we found that the company who had installed the reverse osmosis system installed a non airgap faucet. This means that there is a cross connect, between where the drainline is connected and the RO unit itself, increasing the potential for contamination. Plumbing code states that an airgap must be installed 1" above the flood plane. This means that there is a physical separation between the drain system and the fresh water system. 

     So danger two there is no airgap installed on your RO system. The solution is to either replace your current non airgap faucet with an airgap faucet or install an aftermarket airgap beneath your sink. This 1/4" devise easily fits in between the reverse osmosis' drainline as it comes off the RO unit and prior to it being attached to the drain tubing below your sink. It mounts easily to the wall of the sink cabinet. This is a less expensive option and it is easily adapted to your RO system. We also recommend when you install this airgap to also place a water alarm beneath the sink as well since most people are not careful with what they put down the drain and the drainline connection from the RO can get plugged up.

     About a year ago we had gone to a home and changed the filters in their reverse osmosis system. As a company we recommended that the o-rings in their system and in the fittings surrounding their system are changed every 3 years. This is not a manufacturers requirement but one that we require as a company. It has been our experience that after about three years the o-rings become flat, they start to dry out, and they are a disaster waiting to happen. With the amount of "stuff" people cram under their sinks there is a high probability that some of the RO lines are being bumped, twisted, and moved about. If the o-ring is flattened or dry, movement of the tubing causes the tubing to move within the fitting where the o-ring is sealing off the water. This creates a gap between the tubing and the o-ring and the seal is broken and the result is a leak.

     We, of course, do not force our customers to do exactly what we say, so we always give them the options, explain the why, and let them decide if they want to spend the money or not. In this particular case, the customer chose not to change the o-rings. Several months later they developed a leak on a 3/8" John Guest tee. As luck would have it, that tee was right above a hole in their kitchen cabinet base where some piping came up through. The water leak followed the tubing till it made a bend and then dripped off there straight into the hole. By the time they discovered the leak it had been going on for months and the bedroom directly below the kitchen was flooded. The mattress was completely drenched as were the carpet and sheetrock. As luck would have it again, the bedroom was never used except when their flight attendant daughter had a day layover and used the bedroom. She walked in late one night and entered the room with her bare feet and surprise! Water.

     So danger three do not leave the old o-rings in forever. I can't stress enough how important it is to change the o-rings in the system periodically. It is so much easier to change a few o-rings than to deal with the damage as a result of a flood because of a $2 dried up o-ring. Again time, hassle, money, inconvenience. 
  
     This story is a more positive one. I had just left a customer and had changed their filters and serviced their RO unit. I asked them if they would like to purchase a water alarm. They were hesitant so I gave them the usual horror stories of floods and disasters and the expenses of a flood especially if they were not home or unaware. Reluctantly they purchased one and stuck it under their sink. I left the home and was about half a mile away when I get a call from the same customer saying the water alarm had gone off and water was shooting out under the cabinet. I raced back and was able to shut off the water, replaced a bad quick connect fitting where the metal retaining grippers no longer held the tubing as it should have and it blew off.

     The scary thing was the tubing could have blown of then, or in a couple days, or in a week, who knows. As luck would have it they decided to get the water alarm, were alerted right away as to a problem, and disaster was quickly averted with no damage at all. A more happy ending to a potentially disastrous story. In my own home, my water alarm has gone off 3 different times alerting me to a water issue which I was able to resolve before it became a bigger problem as it had done on two previous situations where I ended up replacing my entire kitchen cabinets and the wood floor and the other the entire wood floor. One was from a garbage disposal leak behind the cabinets where the drainline had been kinked by the installers and over time had split. The other from the 1/4" tubing on the refrigerators ice maker and water dispenser which leaked under the fridge, rolled to the back, and then under the flooring. Hence why we began offering water alarms.

     So danger four. Anything that contains water in it, has water running through it, over or around it, will leak. It is not a matter of if, but when. The question is, is it better to be prepared for the inevitable and to act swiftly when it happens, or just leave it all to luck and life? Spending a little extra money for an early warning system simply makes sense. You are six times more likely to experience home water damage then a burglary. So if it were me, I'd have one under my kitchen sink, next to my water heater, by my refrigerator, next to my toilet, and by the washing machine. 

     Having clean, clear, pure water is a vital aspect to your health and home. It makes life better. Taking some simple precautions to ensure that the dangers associated with such a system are minimized will make the experience much more enjoyable and will give peace of mind. You don't have to take my word for it... but I would, as I have 40 years of experience in the water treatment industry and have serviced literally tens of thousands of homes and have seen hundreds of preventable disasters. As the saying goes, "Its better to be penny wise than pound foolish."


     
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