My experience with newly bought MaxCap RODI filter

I have had the UHE for just over two years now and it is amazing. Yesterday I ordered only my second replacement MaxCap DI cartridge! The unit was installed in March of 2008 and it still contains the original SilicaBuster DI cartridge from day one. Pretty amazing considering I have two tanks, a 100G full blown SPS reef with a 30G sump and a 16G nano reef stocked with softies.
Water here in Phoenix is pretty hard and high in TDS, often over 800 in my location and never under 500 and I make a lot of water between the 23 gallon autotopoff reservoir and my five 5G water jugs for water changes.

I checked the UHE on Saturday while doing some tank maintenance and found the following:
Water temp 78.1
Water pressure (tap) 68
Water pressure (booster) 90
Tap TDS 552 (using my COM-100 handheld)
RO only TDS 3.2
MaxCap DI TDS 1 (using the inline probe) 2.1 (COM-100 handheld)
Final TDS 0 on both the inline and COM-100

I have only replaced the prefilter and carbon block one time in the 26 months and there is still no appreciable pressure drop across the filters and no chlorine breakthru using a low range CL2 test kit. I have a set of spares but have been monitoring things to see when they will be needed. Since you only run 2/5 as much water through the unit everything lasts so much longer.

Between the water savings running at 1:1 waste ratio, the filter replacement savings and the huge DI savings the unit is well on its way to paying for itself! I would buy one again in a heartbeat.

 

Finally got my UHE unit today. Since it was an upgrade from my 180gpd MaxCap unit, it came with the old RO membrane as well as new DI cartridges, carbon filters, etc. The packaging this time was much, much better. Everything was fully bubble wrapped with the usual shipping popcorn around (glad SP is listening to their customers!). However, I was missing the manual, but fortunately was easily downloaded from the internet.

My first issue with setup was deciding whether to use the old sendiment/carbon filter/silicabuster/maxcap filters from before. They were only 1 month old and hardly used so thought it would be a waste. Secondly, the connections were a little confusing because of the additional requirements for a "pure water" reservoir. Since I was in a hurry since i had a business trip in the evening, i only used a spare 5 gallon bucket with RODI water i had made before to test out the UHE system. I was perplexed on how the high/low switches should operate, especially when it is new. I was able to "trick" the UHE CPE into creating more water after reading a thread on RC, but afterwards it did nothing. I'm not quite sure how I'm going to setup everything now since the RODI water is supposed to go the the reservoir, but I'll figure it out when i get back in a month. For now, after measuring output, I am very glad to report 2:1(!) output to waste ratio from the UHE (i only have around 230 TDS here), so can't wait to setup it up further!

 

The UHE 100...

thought I would add-
the UHE 100 actually makes more than 100 GPD at STP, but we rate it conservatively at 100 (mine runs about 120 in Phoenix), but at STP and decent input water quality (ex: less than 500 TDS) we have many customers that push waste reductions at 2 gallons product to one gallon waste (67% recovery) or the famous 2:1. At one to one it is quite efficient and happy (reliable), but my unit at home I have run this way for years (2:1) without losing membrane efficiency and I have seasonally over 600-1200 TDS (Phoenix Metro Water table pretty bleh!) What is even more pleasing to me is that out of the box our special RO membrane was running over 99% rejection (still is after 3 years) which further reduces DI consumption (2% rej improvement improvement doubles DI life). Since we long term beta tested this thing here and in other horrible water locations we have confidence that with proper set up you will have years of relaible low cost DI, with the system paying for itself in reduces CoO in about 2 years typical. If at any time you need help, just call or post!
bruce