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Re: Tap Water Purifier



Hi Sylvia,

The capacity of your cartridge will depend on how hard your water is.  I'm
lucky I have soft water and I get around 350 gallons per cartridge (KH & GH
both less than 1 degree).  I've heard of people who have very hard water
only getting 20 gallons (yikes!).  The secret to keeping costs of
production low is to recharge the cartidges by using the instructions found
at:

http://archimedes.galilei.com/raiar

This web site is from the creator of the process.  I've e-mail he a couple
times and he has recharged the same resins 300+ times with no lose in water
quality (only the color change dyes wear out).

To recharge the resins you need Muriatic Acid (also known as HCL
[hydrochloric acid]) and Lye (also known as Sodium Hydroxide [NaOH]).  The
acid will be easy to find in the paint section of Home Depot type stores,
it is used to treat concrete.  The Lye maybe harder to find, I've found it
in pool supply stores (used to increase pH & buffering) or at craft stores
that sell homemade 'lye' soap kits.  Lye is actually the main ingredient in
'Draino' but you can't use drain cleaners because they also add other
ingredients like degreasers, it must be 'pure lye'.

If memory serves me, it only costs me around $3 Cdn per cartidge recharge.
The first time that you recharge the resins it will take you around 2
hours, because you have to seperate the resins.  After that it should take
you around an hour to recharge them (because you have both resins seperated
already).

These chemicals are quite reactive (but no overly strong) so if you are not
confortable with handling chemicals then I suggest you not try recharging
the resins.  I hope this helps.  Good Luck.

Sincerely,
Victor Eng					Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada
engfam at axion_net