Reverse Osmosis Installation

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.

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.

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

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.

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

My shower is not wrinkled.

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.

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.

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?

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!