Solution Colder Weather RO Pressure Problems

We recently had a client that had scheduled a water pole service that required execution on a specific week. It turned out that the scheduled week we encountered temperatures that are not really compatible to an 8 stage RO filter system. Generally, you want temperature in the upper 50's or greater due to the fact that at lower temperatures the RO membranes tend to constrict resulting in lowering water pressure. We knew we could rig up a water tank and pump system that would only require temperatures above freezing to operate. However, we didn't have time to get that all rigged up so we needed a quick inexpensive solution. After some research we determined that we would employ a pump booster into our existing system. We simply place the electric pump in line of our water source. This bumped our water pressure an additional 40 psi. With this boost we could now produce pure water at 70 psi with no problem at 45-55 degrees. Later we will incorporate this into a water tank pump system with pre filtered water perhaps in spring. If you've encountered similar issues here's a link to jracenstein's window cleaning supplies that has the pump we used.

http://www.jracenstein.com/

Troubleshooting RO Filter

Last fall we struggled with our water pole setup on a big job. The problem was that we were unable to get enough water pressure to use the water pole. We were using a 5 stage filtration system a fiber filter, 2 carbon filters, and finally 2 reverse osmosis filters. Since the air temperature was hovering in th 50's, we chalked this problem up to the membranes becoming restricted due to the cooler temperature. We cut back drastically on the waste valve to increase pressure managed to complete the job in "limp" mode. We thus concluded that was it for that filter until warmer weather. We now get into spring and the temperatures have climbed. We return to same job and even though the air is temping in the 70's we again experience the same pressure issue. We once again reverted to "limp" mode and complete the job. After making a phone call to our manufacturer "simpole", Phil after hearing the symptoms concluded that somehow our RO filters must be clogged. The solution would be to dismantle the whole filter system and soak the RO membrane in DI water overnight and reassemble. This makes lot's of sense and we are going to implement this shortly. Have you had any such issues with your filtration systems? By the way we had 40 pounds of pressure going in to the system, but only getting about 20 pounds out. Let us know what you've experienced.

The whole pure water technology applied in the window cleaning industry is gaining acceptance all over the world. However, at some point in time you might run into a unique problem. What problem you may ask? Well, have you ever dealt with a situation where you were awarded the contract on a job, then once starting the job find that the water pole doesn't seem to work? That happened to us last year when we began the cleaning of a hospital in Eastern Kentucky. It seemed that no matter how hard we scrubbed or how many times we did the windows, they continued to look streaky. While operating the water pole it seemed like we couldn't get the glass wet. After much frustration we learned that there are essentially two types of glass extremes we can come into contact with in the field. One is hydrophobic and the is hydrophollic. If these are new terms to you, rest assured they were new to us as well. The term hydrophobic means that the glass hates water. The term hydrophollic means that the in general the glass loves the water and get's really wet. Hydrophollic glass works beautiful with our water pole technology whereas hydropobic doesn't. The reason why? Well for pure water technology to work it requires the dirt molecules to make contact with the pure water where it now is attracted to and latches on then gets rinsed off. But if you can't get the glass wet then you can't entice the dirt molecules to grab on. The solution? You need to first apply a chemical that attracts the dirt molecules after which you can rinse off that chemical and the dirt with it. What product? We used Glass Gleam 4 and it worked great!

If you have had to overcome some challenges in either conventional window cleaning or using pure water technology let us know, we'd love to hear it.