Spot Free Rinse Rehab Help

[Jimmyhd]

I recently took over a self serve car wash that hasn’t run in 18 months or so.
The spot free rinse tank has algae in it.
If I turn the system on water constantly comes out of a line that runs outside the equipment room.
It is a Jim Coleman R.O. System

My questions are:
Can the water in the tank be treated/filtered somehow or do I need to drain it, clean the tank and start over?

The “red hose” in the picture is the hose that the water is constantly running from. Is this because the water in the tank is bad or is something else wrong?

I’m open to any other suggestions for getting this back going.

 

[Buckeye Hydro]

Ugh.
1. You'll need to drain, clean, and sanitize that holding tank.
2. Because that system set unused for 18 months, you'll want to strip out the system membranes, and toss them. Before you do, take a picture of the label on the membrane and vendors like us can use that info to provide you new membranes.
3. Also remove and toss the system sediment filter, if it has one (it should). Before you toss it measure its length and diameter - we can use that to help provide replacements.
4. RO systems have two effluent streams - one is purified water (called permeate - that should be going to your holding tank), and the other is flush water (called concentrate - this should flow to an air gap drain). Any time you run the system you should see both concentrate and permeate being produced, and showing up on your flow gauges.
5. Before you install any new filters or membranes, you'll want to clean/sanitize the inside of the system. If you get your replacement filters from us we can provide guidance for this process.
6. That off-white fiberglass wrapped tank, I assume, contains GAC - granular activated carbon. Check to assure the tube that leaves this tank is going to the RO system IN port. The purpose of the GAC is to remove chlorine - as chlorine in the feedwater of an RO system will ruin the membranes. There's an issue with this tank however - it has a simple IN/OUT head on it. This is sometimes done as a cost savings measure by people who don't know better. If they have the water flowing down through the GAC, the bed will foul. If they have the water flowing up through the GAC, you'll get incomplete/poor treatment. What you want is downflow though the GAC and an automatic backwashing head for that tank - I'd recommend a Clack 3-button WS1 valve.
7. Once all the above gets squared away... we'll move on to reading the pressure gauges and flow gauges and getting the system performance dialed in.

Russ @ Buckeye Hydro

 

[water guy]

Let's not forget Holy Water Too!!