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Old 12-04-2008, 09:28 PM   #4 (permalink)
rob o
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Join Date: Mar 2008
Posts: 1,796
Quote:
Originally Posted by Arubalisa View Post
We have the next best thing here at our house...a reverse osmosis water system. RobO could you explain in plain language how it works? All I know, to me it tastes the same as the desalinized bottled water from Aruba. ...and fwiw, I am not the water snob , dh is.
Water is water....be it from Aruba (desalinated ocean water) or elsewhere. Pure water somewhat tasteless...the taste comes from various dissolved constituents/minerals. So....just keep tasting until you find one thats suites you. Economically, it wouldn't make much sense to export Aruba water.

Personally, I like tap water. The source water is usually good, it's the old, poorly maintained pipelines that deliver it to your home that may make it less than desireable to you.

Reverse osmosis is, in plain language, a fancy name for filtration. It's filtration through a filter with microscopic openings, called a membrane. If the openings are small enough, you may actually remove things that are (almost) dissolved.

Why "reverse"? If you have a salty water separated from a pure water side by side separated by only a membrane, the pure water would naturally flow through the membrane trying to dilute the salty water, equalizing what's known as "osmotic" pressure...this is "osmosis". In reverse osmosis, you apply pressure to the salty side, forcing the liquid through the membrane, over to the pure side. The direction of flow is in the reverse direction of natural osmosis, hence the name "reverse osmosis". The membrane retains the salt. Like I said, it's a fancy name for filtration.

Arubalisa...tell dh that RobO said that a household water filter is the same thing as a household reverse osmosis unit, you can just charge 4x the price by giving it the name "reverse osmosis"! . Then again, if he's happy....then it's worth it!
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