Dear IWP

I live in a gated community with over 200 villas. We s a community are very conscious of our environment and practice Rain water harvesting, composting of waste, tree planting etc. However recently some members have started promoting RO treatment for the entire water supplied to the community through our water supply system.

Some of us feel very strongly against it as it is wasteful expensive and environment unfriendly. However we do not have enough data with us to prove our point. I will appreciate if you could help me in my endeavour by providing whatever support you can.

I would like to give some information about the status of our water supply. To begin with the builder had provided an ion-exchange Water treatment system and we used borewell water entirely. There were only few villas occupied and as more villas got occupied we found our water treatment plant was not able to cope up with it.  More over, the hardness of the water increased during dry periods and we had to regenerate the system every day. The highly saline wash water from our system was also causing lot of problem with our landscaping. For the past over six months we are only using sand filters and activated carbon filters and chlorination before water is supplied to the villas.

Most villas have RO water filters in their kitchen which is used for cooking and drinking purpose. Our main problem is scaling in pipes,fittings, floors etc and insufficient lathering.

There is a suggestion that we could go in for a solutions like structured water, e-water, TAC etc where only physical properties are altered. These solutions are very cheap and do not involve any running cost. We understand that there are residential communities where these systems are successfully employed. There is no loss of water or damage to environment. Many like us feel that using RO water for not only drinking but also for flushing commodes, washing cars, floors, etc would only mean wasting of scarce resources like water and power . We also hear about healthproblems and pipe corrosion problems that long term use of RO water can cause due to its low ph.

I am giving below the details of our present water supply arrangement . We consume about 250 to 300 KL/day and as per the domestic water piping network drawing handed over to us by the builder all the buried piping is MS wound with tar-felt. It is 150mm dia at the WTP Discharge end, successively reducing down to 100mm, 75mm, 65mm in stages, until it is 40mm when it finally reaches the backyard of our homes at the old water meter chamber.

From here, there is a 40mm Ball Valve and a Pressure Reducing Valve, after which the entire plumbing lines are of CPVC. 

Thanking you and looking forward to your advise in the matter.

Viswanathan.