Another last minute RO build

[dsaw]

I bought the major components last year (membranes, housings, pumps); but the season was a bust due to the arctic blast we got followed by 50+ degree weather so I didn't get very far in putting it together. Although in hindsight, I never could have finished it in time anyway. I've been at it now for 4 weeks (waited too long to start), and doubt I'll have it ready by tomorrow night to take out to the sugarbush (1 hr 20 min remote from home) tomorrow night or very early Sat. morning; but I'm close. It'll have 2 XLE-4040's (not installed yet) in parallel. Booster pump is a 3/4 hp, high pressure pump is 2 hp. Should move 10 gpm at 250 psi, 12 at 220. It's plumbed through the flow meters. Haven't started electrical. If it goes out this weekend, it'll just have circuit breakers for on/off switches. I've got an extra motor starting box I can add later when I get more time.

It's uglier then intended. In the interest of time, I just notched the SS 1/8" plate to mount everything. 1st time I've TIG'd SS, and while not pretty welds, much stronger then they looked (after having to grind a few out). This projected finally forced me to purchase a Drill Doctor. I bought a brand new set of Milwaukee Cobalt bits, and they didn't last through 1/4 of the holes needed to be drilled; even with actual cutting fluid and stepping up the bit sizes.

I know the pump choices are a bit odd, but the booster was from an industrial surplus outfit, and the high pressure one I think came from e-bay; so both were new, but much cheaper then listed prices.

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[Dennis H.]

Good job on putting that together in short time.

I like the LARGE gauge, man you can see that from way off.

[dsaw]

Yes, I love that gauge. Should be able to read it from 30' away. E-bay of course, $39 delivered; can't imagine what list price is on an 8 1/2" Ashcroft gauge.

[Urban Sugarmaker]

What kind of pumps are you using?

[Bucket Head]

Does'nt look that ugly to me. Nice job. And easy-to-read gauges are a good thing to have!

[DoubleBrookMaple]

Well Done! I am ready to test mine, and jealous of the power yours has over mine. I will upgrade down the road I think, but I may not need the capacity.

[dsaw]

The low pressure is a Myers 3/4 hp 71-20, the high pressure is a Myers 2 hp 10MPB200. Not perfectly matched. The booster pump is a 20 gpm pump, so 10 gpm high pressure pump is the lower limit on the booster's "recommended" scale. Beggars can't be choosers. In my case, running small batches through the machine in 1-3 hrs, I don't think the mismatch will hurt much. And between the two, the low pressure one is cheaper to replace. I'm planning to recirculate a few times.

I finished some more plumbing and did the basic electrical; so I think I'll take it out tomorrow and see if I can get it going. Murphy's law says I'll end up one part short of what I need to get it going.

I'm glad I bought the big pieces last year and forgot the costs, the little stuff to get it going is killing me. I saw a different post where they said they easily spent $500 on plumbing, and I'm right with him. If I had taken my time and planned better it probably could have been a bit less; but in a rush it's best to order extra.

[dsaw]

I haven't had an opportunity to run the RO in anger due to warm weather last week, and this week will be too cold; but I did try and run some water through it (I bought used housings which came with random membranes in them, so I used them for leak testing). Found some leaks; but the biggest problem is that the high pressure pump kept cutting out on me. Not sure if it has a high pressure cut-out? It's not mentioned anywhere in the instructions, but they also show a picture of using the pump hooked to a pressure washer type sprayer; which implies it has a way to turn off when the sprayer is off (high pressure). The booster pump built pressure to about 70 psi, but the HP pump only got up to about 150 psi before kicking out. Guess I'll have to call them. It does clearly state that that HP pump can take up to 80 PSI incoming pressure.

[dsaw]

Relaunching my old thread; I finally tried my RO out for real this weekend: and it failed. It didn't totally fail, but didn't live up to plan. The high pressure pump won't run for more then about a minute. or two It gets hot, and if I crank the pressure up, some internal limit switch starts clicking (and the manual is of no use for details). I'm planning on calling Myers this week to see if they can help. I'm thinking the main culprit could be electrical. Not sure if it's that I'm running a 3/4 hp 110 pump with a 220v 2 hp pump on the same drop resulting in one of the 110 lines being imbalanced; or that my being far from the main grid amplifies that situation. I had a brand new tankless water heater I couldn't get to heat all the way, sent it back to the factory, tested fine, they sent me a different item, same problem; so there could be a problem with my electric supply (although the voltages look fine).

I ended up just running it on the feed pump. I could run it until I got to about 5% before it stopped doing much; considering I'm starting with 1.5%, it was still a huge improvement.

[mellondome]

Sounds like you have an electrical supply issue. How far are you running from your service? What size wire are you running to your sugarhouse?

[dsaw]

The RO is in my pole barn with 200 amp service. I split the 1st floor into 1/2 living qtrs and 1/2 garage. I added a subpanel 40' from the main panel fed w/#8 wire. I then ran #8 to a socket another 20', and the RO has a homemade #10 cord with a welding plug. I'll take by good meter out this weekend, but I couldn't find any problems when the water heater was acting up. However, this might be easier to diagnose since it's a dumb load; the water heater had a controller telling it how much current to draw. No one had lived here for 15 to 20 years before I bought it a few years ago, so there's a chance something went a bit haywire in-between. The power to the transformer supplying the pole barn is buried about 1/3 of a mile from the road.

[bowhunter]

Check the voltage if you can to see how low it is. If the heater isn't working correctly and the pump motor is kicking off you probably have low voltage. You could also be kicking the overloads on the HP pump motor if you're exceeding the horsepower rating for the motor, but I suspect low voltage is the primary culprit. If you're going from 1.5% to 5% with the feed pump you might be able to get by with that this season. You're still removing about 2/3 of the water and reducing your boiling time by 2/3.

[dsaw]

Fixed the problem, had some wires crossed. Runs fine now: just in time for no season left. Only barely got below freezing this past week once; most of the week was 50's-60's. Everything was cloudy and smelly, so dumped it all. So bummer of a year, but finally got all my equipment lined out.