Reverse Osmosis Installation

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Since we bought our coach about 5 1/2 years ago the Amana refrigerator has had problems. On the last trip it was unable to run as cool as it should have so we decided to quit nursing it back to health after every episode and get a new replacement.

The Amana had an icemaker and water in the door, but because the system was unpurified water from our holding tank or the campground municipal supply we decided to install an RO system dedicated to the refrigerator. We were reluctant previously for several reasons, not the least of which was an RO system wastes 5 gallons for every gallon of water produced.

Adding to our reluctance was the fact it was going to be more work than I wanted to tackle because to access the area behind the refrigerator I have to remove the table and chairs, and then horse the heavy refrigerator into the dining area just to be able to work. Then I had to solve the problem of the water drain from the RO. The short version is I wasn't ready to go to that much trouble. But now that I have to strip the refrigerator in preparation for taking it out and moving the new one in, I am dealing with a much lighter, smaller refrigerator so today was the day to tackle the project.

I bought a Whirlpool system from Lowe's. With tax it cost $182. That was cheap enough. The system is comprosed of an accumulator tank and a three stage RO system. Behind my refrigerator (the only place where there was room in my coach) was some unused space. My refrigerator sits in the space at an angle and behind it is the back side of a lighted display shelf unit visible from our dinette. I mounted the tank on top of the shelf unit in some saddles I made of scrap wood. I secured the tank to the saddles with perforated strapping so it will not come loose. The three stage RO unit was mounted on the rear wall. I drilled into the bus frame structure for the mounting screws. Both units are secure.

The system comes with all the tubing and fittings needed, but I improvised a little. I used the existing refrigerator water line. That line has its own shutoff under a vanity. The picture of that is shown below. The drain was to be my biggest problem, but I lucked out. One of the condensate drain lines for starboard side middle cruise air was close, so I cut a section from the line, added a "Tee", a small length of tubing to create a stand pipe and slipped the red drain tube into the stand pipe. That photo is also shown below. I am aware if we travel in the winter that line will freeze, but that is something I will be aware of. Right now we have no intention of tackling cold or snowy weather.

The entire installation was easy, the instructions were well written and I think we are going to enjoy being able to drink water and get ice from our new refrigerator without having to lug jugs of water from home.

[Gary & Peggy Stevens]

Very Nice Install Jon. Man I sure wish I lived closer to you ! Think of all the things I could have you help me do:)

But then again I probably couldn't afford to keep my bus up to par like yours? :o

I do know that the RO Systems have been improved a lot since we started using them 15 years ago in our homes. Some of them don't waste as much water as you are talking about. Can you send that clean fresh waste water back to your fresh water holding tank to have it circulated again? Just a thought.

Gary S.

[jelmore]

Jon, doesn't that system have components that require periodic service?

[rickdesilva]

Now I know where I'm going to get ice cubes at the next rally.

[Ray Davis]

Nice job. Just as a point of reference, my unit has a RO, however it's located on the side of the water pump bay on the passenger side, basically underneath the fridge. I haven't looked closely, but I believe it taps into the water line right there, and then runs the small water feed line through the bay ceiling, up to the kitchen area?

It's even on a small slide out, and I can just pull out the unit, and change filters. That's a reminder, I should probably do that soon.

ray

[JIM CHALOUPKA]

Jon, I'm surprised your doing this at your age. The human body has a more difficult time utilizing cold fluids.
Warm fluids are easier for the body to metabolize and give relief from thirst and heat stress.
The older one gets the more we have to make things easier to stay healthy.

by the way, Nice Job.

JIM:p:D

[garyde]

Hi Jon. Liberty placed my accumulator tank under and back at the sink. The 3 stage canister is in the water bay. There is the line to the refer and the other line to the accumulator. This is a good thing because mine is a Culligan unit and the fittings to the RO have a tendancy to leak from time to time. I had Culligan come out and change the filters and tune up all of the fittings. One thing I want and don''t have is a sink top spigot for the RO water. I'm going to add that this year.
Also, most new refrigerators come equipped with a water filter.

[flyu2there]

The filters should be changed yearly. I installed a Premier Systems unit, found at Costco, made in Phoenix. There are a variety of different sized units. the little ones that priduce about 8 gallons/day are just fine for most applications.

BTW these things all need minimum of 40 or so psi water pressure to operate at peak effeciency. The water pumps, at least in my coach, fall well below that value, so it doesn't do too much when not hooked up to an external water source. Should you be really into the "green" one can install a pump that will take the waste water from the system and return it to your water tank....the waste water goes through the filters first and is separated at the membrane so it is cleaner than what is already in your tank. Check out Watts Premier for all of that add on goodies available.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

If I could have located it so I could change elements without pulling the refrigerator I would have. I lack space anywhere it made sense to place it and thus ended up there. The only other logical location would have been the space under the vanity that has the water supply shut off, but there was nothing I felt strong enough to secure the three element unit, plus it lacked room. With this location, with the refrigerator out of the way I have all the room in the world.

But it is not such a bad spot because I am using the one we have at home as a guide to my maintenance schedule. We have had our unit at home for 10 years. I periodically have brought the RO unit for testing and despite it being 10 years old now it is still functioning properly. (The local Culligan people can test the elements) I have changed the first element once in ten years and that was about 2 years ago. I have not yet changed the RO element. We use the one in the house for ice, drinking water, cooking water, and coffee so the life of the one in the bus is going to be much greater.

I preceded this unit with two house sized in line filter elements, both being carbon to trap sediment and remove chlorine so I think we will be OK. The acid test will be measuring recovery rate and taste over time.

I can get my refrigerator out in about 5 minutes so servicing it will not be much more of a pain than accessing the Cruise Air filters.\

I do not want to return the discharge water to the holding tank. We will start out with the system fully charged and the refrigerator full of ice. We don't dry camp much so we probably will have no issues with quantity of water available.

[dale farley]

Nice job Jon. I am sure there are others that want a demonstration, so you can use my bus for that demo install at the next rally.

[flyu2there]

The surest way to tell if your membrane (RO) needs replacement is by the sudden over production of "purified" water. I have had one unit fail in ten or so years, multiple applications. When the membrane fails, it blows out and you no longer are forcing water thru the unit, hence you will see a volume increase to what other faucets are producing.

My unit in the bus has three pre filters, two sediment and one charcoal....they are the ones that hang on the rack. After passing through those filters water is then directed to the RO membrane and finally finishes with an additional filter prior to going into the accumulator tank. The air side of that tank is critical, too little pressure and the water does not want to come out, too much pressure and the water does not want to go in....this is another item that Watts advises checking on annually, just a schrader valve. While these systems are very simple, there are a couple things that must be done with some degree of regularity to keep them operating......pre filters (and I suspect that yearly might be a bit of an overkill for a bus that is not used full time), the pressure in the accumulator as I have noticed mine tend to flatten out, or lose pressure.

I think most of these coaches have a water pressure regulator built into the system where external water connects, if not, probably would not be a bad idea to install one.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Rather than deprive anyone of the opportunity to get first hand experience I will gladly supervise. Please provide a comfortable chair, a cool beverage, and in case I get a little sleepy, try to minimize the noise.

I can say I spent significantly more time looking for alternative places, and trying to determine the best way to deal with the waste water discharge. While I am not totally satisfied with sharing the AC condensate drain, except for the possibility of freezing (it passes throught the condenser for OTR bay which is open to outside temps) I am pleased with the outcome so far. I am currently making water using my house untreated water which has a nasty sulphur smell. If Di is happy with the RO water I'm happy.

[truk4u]

Nice job Jon! John is concerned about pressure because the CC has that whimpy camping world pump, won't be a problem with the Liberty Headhunter!:D

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Actually Captain John has every right to be concerned.

My Liberty pump cycles between about 30 and 42 PSI, the back-up Shurflow (otherwise known as a wimpy pump) cycles between about the same pressures, it just does not have the flow rate, and like most coaches the municipal water pressure is regulated to about 40 PSI, although I can remove the regulator. I think all of our coaches as equipped have pressures which average below the specified range.

I have been flushing the system and actually it produces RO water in more than adequate quantities for my intended purpose using just the bus water system and not my house supply. The lower pressure only seems to impact the rate of production which at specified pressures of 40 to 100 PSI is almost 15 gallons per day, a quantity I cannot imagine us ever using.

[flyu2there]

You are doing good Jon, hook the thing up to your shower and watch the wrinkles disappear!

[Jon Wehrenberg]

My shower is not wrinkled.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Now the rest of the story.

The dinette was stripped, the passenger seat was removed, the old refrigerator had its doors and shelves removed, a new windshield was ready to be installed and me and the bus went to Russell Coach where Rob Russell and our new refrigerator was awaiting me.

Out came the the old refrigerator. I usually like to work alone but it was clear from the moment four of us grappled with the refrigerator to take it out asking Rob and his crew to help was a wise decision.

The old one came out through the windshield easy once we figured the best way to lay it down and roll it so it would go through the window opening. Having a fork truck intstead of my Bobcat with forks made a difference also the pallet on the fork truck was much more stable than my Bobcat forks would have been.

We knew the new refrigerator needed a higher opening. Without going into the painful details Bill from Russell Coach slowly and carefully machined a higher opening for the refrigerator. He measured several times and cut once. Then we found the side to side opening had to be widened despite both the old and new refrigerators being the same width. At the end of the day we had the refrigerator sitting in place, temporarily secured for the ride home and nothing got scratched or damaged.

Once home I pulled the new refrig out of its opening, connected the water and plugged it in and started it up. Everything worked as planned so the final step would be to create and install angle brackets to permanently secure the new refrigerator in its opening. It is done and I do not ever want to go through this again. I know Truk also recently installed a refrigerator and I hope his went easier. The actual hard part was done by the Russell coach guys and that was to resize the opening without damaging the Vitricor and they did a great job. Everything else was just time consuming or grunt work, the heavy duty grunt work well beyond anything I could have done without their help.

I would recommend Rob Russell and his crew to anyone that needs cabinet work, interior repairs or work, or maintenance work. Although his niche is entertainer coaches right now I can tell you that if you want to get a maintenance program set up for your coach he is the man to work with. I was not aware but in addition to the knowledge he has gained by having a fleet of Prevost coaches on the road rolling up 80,000 miles per year each, he also has 1,000,000 miles plus under his belt driving them. If anyone can tell us what items we need to maintain, replace or pay attention to, and when he is the man. I hope he can become our expert in-house POG maintenance advisor.

[truk4u]

Glad it all worked out Jon, it's a tough job. If it wasn't for my son and two son-in-laws with good backs, I could never have done it myself.

I had a similar problem, the new fridge is 3/4" higher than the old one and I also had to enlarge the opening. Fortunately, I was able to make the cut and it looks just like original.

The new digital fridges are fantastic and power use is almost nothing. I'm going to repeat myself here one more time for anyone tackling this job. The new energy efficient refrigerators will not work with old style inverters that are not pure sine wave.

[rfoster]

Jon: Man on man --I am glad you hooked up with Russell Coach to get that job done. I did volunteer to help, but......I only have the brains, not the strong back.

Sounds to me like they did a great job and that is good to know - (they are close by) the next time I break my foot.

How many miles on the refrigerator?

[phorner]

Jon,

Great job on the RO installation! And, I'm glad to hear that the refrigerator replacement went well. Sure sounds like a LOT of work that needs to be carefully choreographed.

Hopefully, this will be the last time you ever have to deal with this....except for maintaining that pesky Cruisair filter (and now the RO unit) behind the fridge!

[Jon Wehrenberg]

The Cruise Air filter is accessible through a panel at the bottom of the pantry. The RO unit, when compared to the unit in our house will get virtually 10% of the use so if I access it once every five years to replace the elements I will be surprised.

To address Tom's warning, I cannot speak about other brands but we installed this refrigerator:

http://www.bosch-home.com/us/products/refrigeration/refrigeration/freestanding-counter-depth-side-by-side/B22CS80SNS.html?source=browse

and it works on shore power or inverter. Our inverters are the original Heart Interface Freedom 25 inverters.

I can say this about the Bosch, and it was the deciding factor. We cannot hear it run. I'm not saying it is quiet, I am saying it is silent. It was pricey, but the only noise we will hear are ice cubes dropping into the bin. And I don't yet know what it's power consumption is compared to the Amana that was removed, but I suspect it will be considerably less, something that should give us a lot of time on batteries.

[hhoppe]

Jon: We replaced a unit in our old coach and I know the fun part. Last week I had to repair a leaky freon charge valve and put on new caps. All went well using the Sears Refrigerator Repair man. I was dreading a full change out like you went through. Did you have to deal with paint to match and panels to match the old units appearance? Liberty painted our present unit to match it's surroundings and has matching door panels.
Good job Jon thanks for sharing.
Paul H: The repair on the way to OKC did not hold, A loose Shraeder valve and a hole in the cap allowed the leak. Thanks for your able help on the road. The wood platform did again come in handy.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

Harry,

We got a Stainless Steel (door) unit. My biggest fear that it would look out of place because the other one was painted and had vitricor panels appears unfounded.

First, our floor plan does not let us see the refrigerator head on from a distance so we only see the door edges for the most part. Then we realized after I took the protective plastic from the doors that the stainless picks up the color of the surrounding vitricor to the extent that the refrigerator does not appear mismatched.

I like the vitricor clad and painted refrigerator we took out better than the look of the replacement, but the new one looks OK. We will get used to it.

Your schrader should not leak and the cap should not be the seal. I hope the Sears repair guy did the right fix.

[truk4u]

Harry,

Our old fridge had the Laminate panels that matched the interior in our bus. I was able to find almost an identical Laminate and glued the panels to the new fridge. If you have to change it out in the future, let me know and I'll help you find a match to your interior. If Liberty painted it instead of using matching panels, you should be able to match the paint.

Finished product...

5884

[garyde]

Hi Jon. The two things I notice with my Reverse Osmosis and Ice Maker;
The water pump will run intermitantly to filter water thru the Membrane to the holding tank when the Ice Maker is running. Then, the ice maker fills with water. finally, the ice dropping into the holding tray. That's all I usually hear.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

This installation raises a number of considerations I have to look into.

At the low side of my pump pressure range my RO stops or slows considerably. I am going to see if I want to or need to bump that up so my range in the bus shifts from about 32 to 42 up to about 40 to 50. I don't see a downside, but I want to think more about it before I do anything. Anybody else contemplating an RO system also has to be thinking about this.

My original thinking which we may try for a while is to hook up to my house water supply and maintain a constant pressure for about 2 days prior to a trip and fill the ice tray and the RO unit. Then when connected in a campground go back on municipal water again. I'm leaning towards adjusting pump pressure but need to give it more thought.

We usually leave our pump on at all times and do not rely on campground pressure or volume. I am not sure I want to subconsciously want to hear ice cubes and pump cycling while I am sleeping.

I still do not know how we will store the bus between trips. We would only leave power to the inverters and the outlets in the bus. We would not be connected to water and the pump would be off. I haven't even given thought to whether we leave the refrigerator on, or off, if we keep the RO system and water system pressurized or if we drain the RO and turn off its supply. Obviously we will turn off the icemaker and dump the tray.

What does everyone do? Freezing or keeping the coach warm is not a concern, and since it is about 15 steps from the house I am able to monitor things daily if I desire. It is a rare day when I am not out in the garage either to get one of the cars out or just puttering around.

[ajducote]

Jon,

Take a look at this link.
http://www.rvwaterfilterstore.com/Pumps.htm

The section :
2. Boosting Pressure for Reverse Osmosis Systems

It might help you decide what to so about pressure.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

I cannot guess what others are doing but I am reasonably certain I am not alone in having my water pressure, as provided by municipal water, regulated to 40 to 42 pounds. Liberty has a regulator on the incoming supply line on the house side of it, not the tank fill side of the system. At that constant system pressure my RO system works fine. I am sure boosting the pressure will produce more water faster, but my issue is not with making RO water, but whether I want to rely on municipal or house water pressure, or if I want to increase my total bus system pressure so I can use the pump exclusively.

A 10 PSI bump up in pump pressure does the job. That eliminates reliance on external supplies. But then when I am living on my holding tank supply, such as on a cross country trip with overnight stops in rest areas I am wasting 5 gallons of my limited supply to produce 1 gallon of water. Right now I have more questions than answers. I guess I am going to have to try different things and see how we are most comfortable. We rarely dry camp, but we do on occasion drive for 3 days to get to a distant destination and rely 100% on our holding tank and pump.

[truk4u]

Jon,

If you manage to boost your pump pressure, then I assume all your issues with the RO will be solved. If not, why not just install a by-pass valve in your plumbing that would take the RO out of the loop while on pump water? I know you have 2 whole house filters and the fridge filter, so your tank water supply should have safe drinking water. When you get hooked up to city water, put the RO system back in the loop.

We have 1 house filter and the fridge filter and drink the water from the fridge both on city water and tank water. Carrying around cases of bottled water just doesn't seem to make much sense anymore. When I hook to city water, I always spray a 50/50 bleach and water mix on the faucet. I do drain the water tank at least once on each trip and add 1/4 of fresh for traveling.

When I get home, I make sure the pump is on and the system is pressurized and then turn off the pump. Periodically while not in use in the garage, I turn on the pump just to see if it cycles letting me know if there is leak in the system. Mine will set a month without any pressure loss.

The fridge, I never turn it off, but shut off the ice maker at the end of each trip and dump the ice.

Now, for the ice maker filling and cubes dropping keeping you awake, your over the top on that one.:rolleyes: Your A-1 status is on shaky ground after OKC and Kevin, but that one may just put you back on top!:D Good grief man, it's a Liberty, they don't make any noise!

[flyu2there]

Jon,

As I mentioned earlier, why not dump your RO "sluff" back into your fresh water tank if you are concerned...it is cleaner than the muni water that is inside your tank and, after all, it has gone thru the filtering media and is just the water that runs around the membrane.

I have never had the problem of running out of RO water and mine dumps into the grey water tank as it is underneath the galley sink and hooked in above the trap.

[Russell Coachworks]

Jon,

Thanks for the nice words. We enjoyed working with you on getting your new refrigerator in. We are thankful for the opportunity to work with you! Regarding "I hope he can become our expert in-house POG maintenance advisor." I would love to answer any quesitons that any POG member may have about maintenance. I honestly only log on about once a week, but maybe if we could start a new section for Russell Coach Maintenance Questions or something like that, I will respond to the posts once a week. If someone needs an answer quicker and before I log on, I welcome telephone calls at my office. As you mentioned, I do have over 1,000,000 miles under my belt, and we pride ourselves in that our lease fleet are very well maintained!! I would love the opportunity to work with fellow POG members to set their coaches up on a maintenance program through Russell Coach. Of course, our other division of Russell Coach is building interiors, so if any re-do's or updates are in any POG member's future, we welcome you to Russell Coach!

Thanks again for bringing your coach to us for the refrigerator install. We enjoyed seeing you and working with you!

Rob Russell
www.russellcoach.com
865-525-3888



Now the rest of the story.

The dinette was stripped, the passenger seat was removed, the old refrigerator had its doors and shelves removed, a new windshield was ready to be installed and me and the bus went to Russell Coach where Rob Russell and our new refrigerator was awaiting me.

Out came the the old refrigerator. I usually like to work alone but it was clear from the moment four of us grappled with the refrigerator to take it out asking Rob and his crew to help was a wise decision.........

I would recommend Rob Russell and his crew to anyone that needs cabinet work, interior repairs or work, or maintenance work. Although his niche is entertainer coaches right now I can tell you that if you want to get a maintenance program set up for your coach he is the man to work with. I was not aware but in addition to the knowledge he has gained by having a fleet of Prevost coaches on the road rolling up 80,000 miles per year each, he also has 1,000,000 miles plus under his belt driving them. If anyone can tell us what items we need to maintain, replace or pay attention to, and when he is the man. I hope he can become our expert in-house POG maintenance advisor.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

John,

For quite a few years I gave seminars on gravity separation on behalf of our customer. We made gravity separators such as grease traps, oil separators, solids interceptors, lint traps , etc. As a result I learned far more than I ever wanted to know about plumbing codes and why the provisions in some codes are there. It honestly drives me nuts to know our coaches are moving violations of any plumbing code in the country. But I also understand we have them built that way becaise sometimes a compromise is the best we can do. The RO installations calls for not only discharging to the waste system, but to have an air gap. So I compromised and I will drip clean water on the ground like AC condensate.

I agree I could return it to the tank, but it is so much easier the way I did it. If we need to conserve water we will bottle water ahead of time, fill the ice bucket, and turn off the supply to the RO, just like the old days.

[Jon Wehrenberg]

To All POG members.....When Rob and I were participating in the great refrigerator swap, we were also swapping lies. Well not exactly. We were talking about maintenance schedules and what he experiences by running an average of 80,000 to 85,000 miles per year with his coaches and us motorhome folks who sometimes run 10% of that.

I will not steal his thunder except to say he should open a new thread under "Busted Knuckles" and just summarize when he replaces things that are time sensitive, such as air bags or brake chambers, and how often he does routine service such as oil changes and generator service.

For example, he does a full service on a generator every 100 hours except air filters which get replaced every 300 hours. He wants his customers to run them often and hard (load them up) and it is common for his generators to have 29,000 hours with no failures.

I think for those of us who are trying to create our own maintenance schedules we can learn a lot because his coaches rack up the miles and thus are predictors of where we need to focus our attention.

I think we collectively need to pick his brain.

When we have an on road failure we are inconvenienced. Now imagine the consequences of when one of his entertainer coaches ends up broke along side the road. It is a serious situation because he is impacting a show.

[flyu2there]

Jon,
While I agree in principal about codes et al, truth is that Premier Systems makes a legal pump to re use the excess water devoured by the RO System. They have a pumping apparatus that puts the effluent back into the home hot water tank....dunno why the hot water but it obviously meets the UBC or they would not be advertising same. Putting water into the hot water system of the motorhome might be a different story as the demand is not high enough to warrant the additional 20-30 gallons per day...my best guess. Course, you also have to consider what 20 or so gallons of water each day are going to look like on the ground, that is unless you always park on the grass! :D

[Jon Wehrenberg]

If we drink enough water and consume enough ice cubes to create the 20 or so gallons of waste water we will spill on the ground I will be peeing a lot also adding to the amount of water being recycled.

[flyu2there]

Jon,

Yes sir, I agree...hopefully that would be in a toilet:D