Domestic Reverse Osmosis (RO) - Low Water Waste

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Haven't installed one. Nearly all the suppliers I have contacted have told me their units dump three litres of water for every one litre of treated water produced (1:3), but then when asked for a data sheet they all change their figure to between four and six litres dumped for every one litre produced. So I doubt these figures are even the truth, I've heard figures of up to ten litres dumped if your only part emptying the tank.

I'm therefore assuming it isn't possible to get an efficient domestic reverse osmosis unit, pumped or not. I'm not ok with dumping up to ten litres of water to make one litre of drinking water, so I'm going to keep looking. I'll just install a single carbon filter if I can't find something soon.

If you find an efficient domestic RO unit, I'd appreciate if you could please post it on this thread.

Thanks for this, but still no hard evidence of water saving. I'm thinking that an RO unit is probably overkill for most households on a council mains water supply, so I'm thinking of going with a ceramic activated carbon filter and heavy metal filter.

I only want to remove chlorine and any organics as my water seems to turn bad when left sitting and so I think I am going to go for a Doulton Duo Undersink Filter Kit with ULTRACARB and CLEANSOFT Filters, Tap and Fittings as they can supply filters to cater for any water and they are based in the UK. All their filters are made in the UK also, so thats a little more reassuring considering most other suppliers are supplying unbranded filters.

I will likely be buying from Amazon UK as there is a saving and a much nicer tap supplied with the UK kit compared to the ugly caravan type tap being supplied with any Irish seller. I'd get over the cost saving if sellers in Ireland were supplying the nicer tap, but their not.

I'll be making a move on this this week, so if I don't come across an alternative I'll be ordering the Doulton.

Without knowing the country your referring to I cannot say whether public fluoridation is necessary in the water supply because levels are naturally high enough (e.g. Finland, Sweden, China), or if your country chooses to dose their population via higher dosed fluoride in toothpaste or even in your salt and/or milk.

Its a medical fact that if children do not get access to fluoridated water (either natural or artificial), these children suffer far higher rates of tooth decay with rotten teeth at near third world levels in developed countries. All you need to do is start using Google Scholar instead of Google for your research and you will see the reason nearly every national dental association recommends dosing water with fluoride where levels are not high naturally.

Personally I'm delighted that my government chose to protect my and the nations children with safe, effective dosing of fluoride. I'm an engineer in a plant for the biggest soft drink maker in the world and if you saw what goes into your can of pop, or the stuff that goes into preserving food it would churn your stomach. Do you drink beer or wine or eat smoked foods. Trust me, these are what you should be worried about, not some populist nonsense. We have seen the effect of this kind of nonsense and the MMR vaccine with an explosion in measles outbreaks. Parents who don't dose their children with the MMR should be arrested.

I've lived in New York and we have a place in Italy and I can assure you I'd drink old bath water from an Irish tap before I'd drink tap water from these places. Not to mention when you go on holiday to many parts of mainland Europe the water is considered not safe to drink from the tap.

Anyway I'm digressing. If it's just a taste issue with your water, then a high quality activated carbon filter will suffice for you and full RO is totally unnecessary. Dumping 5 to make 1 is best case and could be up to 30 depending on your supply pressure. There are negative aspects with RO also you know.