"Rob Halgren" wrote in message
...


This will depend on how much RO water you need. At the rate I am using
water, and at the cost of the water I can by from the local water shop,
it
would take close to ten years for an RO unit to pay for itself; longer
when
I set up my rain barrel, which I'd use all the time except winter. I
won't
be buying an RO unit until my collection of orchids has grown
substantially.
There are a couple stores here that specialize in water treatment systems
for home and small business use, plus some of the big hardware stores
have a
limited selection of systems, and the specialty shops, and some of the
grocery and department stores, sell distilled and/or RO water.


Or befriend a graduate student in the life sciences or chemistry.
They have access to more RO or DI water than you can shake a stick at,
and it is free to them... However, I would suggest that a small RO unit
is not that expensive. I think I bought one several years ago which
produced much more than I could use (15-20gpd) for a little over $100.
Hooked it up to my kitchen sink with a little bit of quick connect
hardware and some ingenuity, and collected the water in a plastic trash
can. Cheap solutions are good. At my local store, distilled water is
over a dollar per gallon, so that pays for itself pretty quickly. If
you can get water for $0.10 per gallon, then perhaps it only pays for
itself in the convenience of not lugging gallon jugs of water around the
city.

I'll have to look for more suppliers. The least expensive unit I saw was
close to C$1000, and, since Orillia water is quite hard, I was advised to
add a water conditioning unit for an additional, paltry C$1000; and the
installation costs would have been more than the cost of the hardware. But
I pay C$0.20/litre for RO water. And I use about 10 litres a week; more if
I am soaking CHC in preparation for repotting.

Alas, the closest university is well over 100 km away.

Cheers,

Ted