Hi; I wish I knew. I just finished installing a RO system with a
de-ionizing (DI) cartridge, so if I want water for drinking or preparing
food I have the little faucet up on the sink, and if I want DI water, there
is a small spigot down underneath. The water from the little faucet tastes
better than the water straight form the tap - which is pretty good
anyway. The water from the DI spigot tastes even better to me, though I
have been told that it was supposed to taste "flat" because it was without
all those wonderful dissolved minerals. Perhaps I have built up a backlog
of them or something<g>. Anyway, I normally measure the conductivity of my
water before I start a batch of CS - I drop the top with it's silver wires
down onto the jar, and measure the amount of current that passes through
the water at the beginning or the process. Generally the Distilled water I
get around here measures about 0.2 millamps to begin, and the CS at the
finish seems to be pretty good; clear, slight bitterness on the back of the
tongue and a typical Tyndall effect with a little laser pen, but not
noticeable sparklies ;i.e., bigger particles.
Sooo, I poured myself a jar of the 'plain old' (how quickly we grow used to
luxury!) RO and dropped the top onto the jar: Yikes!! 1.57
milliamps. Tried again, jar Real clean; 1.55 milliamps. Hmmmm, like I
said, maybe I have a backlog of those dissolved minerals in me already. So
then I rinsed the jar out with the DI water a few times and took a sample,
dropped the top, read the meter - 0.07 milliamps. twenty times better, a
Definite Improvement; did it again, 0.05 milliamps.
Well, as any perfectionist will tell you, there could still be some sneaky
dissolved persistent organics that somehow snuck past the carbon block
filters and the RO membrane to contaminate the water with non-conductive
dissolved petrochemical nastiness. Or not. My particular water source is
in the pacific coastal mountains, in a relatively unpopulated area devoid
of commercial agriculture, so I have a pretty clean source for
starters. It is fairly acidic as ground water since it does pick up
soluble minerals.
I'm making my second batch of CS as I write this, so my opinion may change
with experience, but so far, with the addition of a de-ionization (resin
bead) cartridge it works for me. YMMV.
Take care, Malcolm
At 11:44 AM 11/18/02 -0500, you wrote:
I have been asked the question whether it is OK to use reverse osmosis
water for making CS. My first response was I don't think so, but maybe I
am not as informed about this as I could be. Is there a definate answer
to this and if so why?
Thanks for your help,
Nancy...
