Deepuro R/O Water Filtration System - Test & Review

Hi, I'm Mike with House on the Mend. And in this video, we're gonna be replacing this old bulky RO system with this new sleek system by DiPuro. So let's get going. If you break it, he will fix it. If you buy it, he will build it. House on the Mend. Now, if you find this video helpful, be sure to give it a thumbs up. It's really helpful and I'd appreciate it. Full transparency, I am not paid nor sponsored by DiPuro to do this video. They reached out to me and sent me this unit for free to do my own independent test and review. And when they did so, I was excited to replace this existing unit and here's why. Well, in truth, I do get pretty decent performance out of this unit. The only problem is it's got four different filters and every one of them needs to be changed out at a different rate. Some of them are every six months, others are every year, and then the RO membrane is every two years. It's got a tank which does limit the amount of production coming out of the met pure faucet up here. And as you can see down here, we've had instances where various sections where all these hoses and connections are going, that it's leaked over the years. We had an O-ring fail down here. So now I have to keep it in this plastic tub. So it also takes up a tremendous amount of space. You can see we've got this unit over here with the filters and then the tank over here, leaving us basically less than half of our sink to utilize, our sink space to utilize. So this is nice. The new unit is gonna fit right here. There's no tank. So it's gonna free up some space and it'll look clean and there's not gonna be as many failure points. Let's take a look at what comes in the box. All right, we have quarter inch hose, three inch or excuse me, three eighths inch hose. And we've got the AC adapter. This is a pretty big adapter. It does have two spots here where it can be screwed to the wall. I wish they could have incorporated whatever we're changing 110 volts into into a little plug adapter because now this is something we need to elevate off of the bottom of the cabinet. Cause I don't know about you, but I don't want it coming into contact with water if any part of the sink and garbage disposal or RO system start to leak. So that's one more thing we're gonna have to contend with. All right, there's a ton of parts in this bag. My goodness, lots of slip fits here. I like those, the hose just goes right into those. We've got water on and off valves. Looks like we've got taps for tapping into the regular hose line. Oh, a real nice one. If you have a larger hose assembly that you can tap into for the three eights line with a shutoff valve, lots of ways to tap into your existing water line. This is gonna be your waste water line. This taps into the black drain pipe. You drill a hole through, put this around the hole with these rubber gaskets help to seal it. And then the drain water goes right into here, very common. We have all these little kind of locking mechanisms. I like these little guys, it makes me feel better. You put the hose in here and then in the gap that's left, you pop in this little lock and that keeps the hose from being able to come out because you basically just push on that and the hose can come out. So let's take a look at that. Hose goes in and it holds in place. To take it out, you push that towards the main section here. You collapse that little lock and the hose comes right out of there. So these little locks, you push it in, you pull it out and then you put this lock around it and that keeps it from being able to be pushed in and the line from coming out. I like those, they work really well. We also got a roll of thread seal tape here and look at that, it's a full roll. That's pretty nice. What do we have in here? Aha, okay, so this is the faucet for the RO. Let's take a look at it. All right, really nice. So on and off here. This is adjustable so you can rotate that anywhere you want. So you can have it like this where you turn it on and off or you can have it in the front or even in the back if you want it. Next, we have the two filter canisters. Look at the size of these things, wow. Almost as thick as like a roll of toilet paper. Maybe that's how they get away with just two. Because they're massive. I can see this little, in the back, you must slide it all the way in and then there's this locking mechanism so it engages and then locks into place. There are several ports back here and then the front, it says two RO, one three PCT. So nice big filters, wow. Wonder how much those are to replace. I'll have to look up the price. Good packaging, everything in multiple layers of like foam, not styrofoam, but really soft, sturdy foam. Let's slide the actual box out. On the bottom here, we have rubber feet and a little bit of standoff. You have the feed water inlet right here and then you have the outlet for the drain and the outlet for the drinking water. And it looks like these are just little, maybe these are just little ports that are, yeah. These are just little transporting little ports that keep it clean. So it looks like our feed has to be this three eighths inch line. This is our power port where the plug goes in, obviously. Nothing on either side, no access door or anything like that completely enclosed, nothing on the top. So let's take a look at the front face. So I see a flush and reset. If you look deep down in there, so that corresponds with the filters, right? This is, yeah, this is our RO. So it's got three that matches that. And this one has the four and then the open spot. So it looks like those will slide into place and that area down there, that receiver will actually rotate to lock them into place. And it makes it very easy. It says PCT and RO on it. So there's that and the amount of little ports. It means there's pretty much no way we can screw it up. I see magnets, like rare earth magnets here. So it looks like you get this guy in position and it's just held on magnetically. Glad you're not driving down the road with that magnet strength, but it should be enough when it's just sitting still. That's pretty clean. Let's confirm the measurements. Just under six inches wide, tall with the feet. Let's get a measurement with the feet. We're looking at about 16 inches. And from the back to the front with the cover plate on is looks like a 17 and a quarter, maybe just a little bit more, 17 and three eights. I really like this manual. It's really well-written. Let's go through a few things. First of all, I am not a representative of Depuro. They sent me this unit to review, but I am not an employee there and I'm not affiliated with them otherwise. So if you need information that I don't have on this video, I'd be happy to answer your questions in the comments below. Otherwise you can go to support at depuro.com. Now let's go over a couple of things I liked about it. First of all, look at the size of this font. They are speaking my love language here without having this tiny little font that I can barely read. Now, first of all, you can take your smartphone and you can click on this QR code and it'll send you right to their YouTube installation video. I watched that video to make sure nothing I was gonna say or do would conflict with it. And it's very good. It's very detailed. The one thing I will say is it is not in a typical sink area. It's like a set that is waist height and completely wide open. So we're gonna be doing much more of a real world installation than you'll see here, but it does cover all the points. So on this first page here, it says the warranty is one year from the date of purchase. But if you go back to page 23, it says one year standard warranty as well as an additional two year warranty for core components. So that's the water pump and the control modules. Now, consumable materials such as the actual filters are not covered by the warranty. All right, here's some stats I found very interesting. First of all, the feed water pressure. Your typical house pressure is gonna be anywhere from 40 to 60 PSI. This unit can handle 21.8 to 87 PSI. So that is a huge range that it'll operate under and work properly. Anything above or below that, you're gonna be possibly having issues. Here's something I've never seen before. A feed water temperature has to be between 41 and 100 degrees Fahrenheit. Now that could be an issue if you're in an area where you get extreme cold temperatures and vice versa. If you're like us out here in the desert and it gets really super hot and you might run into something there. So that's something to consider, but probably not for most people. Daily production rate, just like in the Amazon ad, is 600 gallons per day. And then the reason why this unit is so large, come to find out, is it's converting 110 AC down to 24 volts DC. Instructions are all very good. The grammar is pretty good. I found a few errors, but they obviously have a person who is fluid in English, either editing or completely writing this manual. So that's nice to see. All right, basic installation steps are pretty well done. When you're taking your measurements, just make sure you're not thinking about putting it against the cabinet wall. It's gonna cause vibration and it could be pretty loud. Eventually, when it comes time to replace the filters, there's a little, in the user interface, there's a little filter light that'll come on. And when you turn the water on, if it's past the life of the filters, the unit will beep telling you it's time to change the filter. So if you look here, when water production is completed, so basically you walk up, you fill up a glass of water or your coffee mug to make coffee for the next morning. Each time you produce water and you turn it off, the machine will automatically flush the water for five seconds. So it sounds like you're gonna hear a little something going on down there every time you run the machine. Also, it said if the power goes out, when the power is restored to the house, the machine will automatically purge itself. Now here's something that sounds like a real pain. If you're gonna leave your house for more than a week and not use the RO machine, the routine maintenance section of the manual suggests that you shut the cold water valve off, turn off the RO, drain it out, disconnect the power, take out both filters, store them in a Ziploc bag, and put them in the refrigerator. That seems like a lot to do just to leave the house for a week. So that might be a consideration for you if you take that kind of thing seriously. All right, moving on. So in the video that they put out, and also in the manual, they recommend putting this drain connector basically right here on the drain pipe. You take a quarter-inch drill bit, you drill through this pipe, and that goes around the pipe, and tighten down with these bolts. Now personally, I recommend that if you can avoid that, just think about avoid having it coming straight down from where the sink is, because if you have a lot of goo, say you've just washed some dishes and it had some sauce or something gross, and that first flush is coming down, it can possibly get caught and collude that area there. In my experience, I've had to clean those out before for customers. What I like to do is if you have a line that heads over in between the main drain and the garbage disposal, like we have here, I like putting it right here between the main drain and the garbage disposal, and that way it's upwards. So when the water's, excuse me, when the water's coming across from the garbage disposal this way, there's very little chance that a lot's gonna get caught up like here. So that's just something to think about. I've done that in the past and never had an issue with one of these getting clogged. Now in our case, we already have this line from the existing RO. So I'm just gonna simply use that line. I'll trim off the connection to get a fresh piece of hose, or if it's not long enough, I'll use this hose that was included with the unit. Let's talk real quick about the 110 power that this unit requires. Under most sinks, you'll have one outlet with two plugs, and usually that has been split, meaning they cut the connection between the upper and lower outlet. One of those is wired up for an on-off switch above the sink to operate the garbage disposal. The other one is on full time for the dishwasher. If that is your style of system underneath the sink, then you might wanna consider one of these little plugs. It takes one plug and it turns it into three. That way you can put the dishwasher here. And like we're gonna do, the RO system over here. That's not mentioned in the manual or the video, but that is something you're gonna wanna consider underneath your sink. TDS meter. So TDS stands for Total Dissolved Solids. When we're talking about RO systems, we measure the effectiveness of an RO system with a TDS meter, measuring in parts per million, total dissolved solid. When we're talking total dissolved solids, we're talking chloride, iron, copper, manganese, or zinc. There is an acceptable range in your water supply. We're gonna measure that right now to see where we're at. What a TDS meter does not measure are really harmful things like chromium six and lead. If you have any concerns about your water quality, you should have your water tested. Oftentimes you can go right to the local university and they have a science department that will run tests like that for you. We've done that with our well water before. So you might be asking, hey, I've got a soft water system in my house. Is that going to help out? Actually, no. Water softeners do not remove total dissolved solids. What they're doing is they're exchanging calcium and magnesium ions for sodium ion. So let's test our water coming right out of the kitchen faucet and our existing RO system. All right, we've got it turned on. It's cleared out to zero. Let's put it in our water coming out of our kitchen faucet. And we are on a well. We're gonna leave it in here for about 10, 20 seconds or so until that reading stabilizes. And this meter is showing 883 parts per million. Wow, that's really bad. So let's dry it off with a rag here real quick. Let's hit clear. Give it a second to reset. And then let's test our existing RO system. Now, this meter is testing the amount of metals in the water, basically. It's got two probes and it can send a very small electric charge between the two. And if there's a lot of metal solids basically in the water, it has an easier time, basically less resistance. If you have cleaner water, then it's got more resistance. And that's basically what it's measuring, but kind of at a molecular level, right? Parts per million. All right, let's see what we got here. We are at 61 parts per million. So clearly our existing RO system is doing a good job of filtering out all the total dissolvable solids coming out of our well water. I'll be interested to see what our reading is with our brand new system since it's been about a year since I've changed the filters in our existing RO system. All right, let's get going with taking out this unit. I shut off the water supply over here. I purged the pressure from the actual kitchen faucet as much as possible, but there's still gonna be a little bit of leak there. So I've got this bucket for that line when the time comes for that. I purged all the water out of the tank and then shut it off here to the point where our faucet up top is not giving out any water anymore. So now we're ready to disconnect and take out this old unit. Because I know every single one of these has got water in it, I'm gonna put the unit right into this plastic tub and then scoot it out of the way. All right, so we've got our source water line. We've got right here is going to be our waste water line and then we have our output line. So those three are ready. So the last thing we wanna do is mount the power supply off the deck here so it's not getting water on it if we ever get a leak in any of these components. So this is the plug going to our dishwasher right over here. So I'm gonna plug that guy in right there and plug him back in. That leaves us a plug for the RO system just as soon as I mount it. So I have these little stainless screws that I'm going to use because they don't rust like the little black ones tend to do. And there we go. It's elevated off the bottom so if there's ever a leak, it won't be sitting in water. All right, now we're ready to take out all these shipping plugs. So we're gonna pull the little locks out of each one, press in to release and there we go. So I'm gonna turn this guy around. Our drinking water, our water source, I'm gonna have come around the garbage disposal like this. Go right in there, lock that into place. And that leaves the last one which I'm gonna put in as I move it back here which is the drain line. All right, right here you'll see an arrow. That lines up with the unlock. You'll see that in their company video. Push this in, line those two up, turn it clockwise. There, all right, they need to be horizontal. There, all right. All right, let's turn the water supply back on. Yep, good to go there. Now we can plug our unit in. Let's listen to what it sounds like. So you can see here as it's purging itself on this initial flush, it's taking its own TDS reading of around 55. So we'll test that and see if that matches what we get out of the faucet up top. There it is dropping again. Look at that, this thing's steadily leaking right on this back plate here on the back of the unit. Just a steady drip, drip, drip from internally. All right, so after I observed that leak, I've put a little plastic lid underneath the back, propped it up on some little plastic pieces on the front and the back and I'm running a flush. It's now got a 99 code for the TDS instead of where it had been around 51 to 55. So I'm not sure if there's some sort of error code or if it's actually 99 TDS, we're gonna find out here in a minute when we test it, but I'm pretty disappointed so far. Now, to be fair, it looks like the leak has stopped, but what caused it in the first place is that issue still going on? I don't know. After reflushing it, it's back down to 56. And this is the production. It's completely steady. It's not a lot, but it is steady. It never slows down, which is pretty cool. So I've got a cup, let's fill it up and we'll take a reading with the TDS meter to see if it lines up with what it's showing on its display screen. All right, let's see what we've got for readings. Let's go again with the water coming right out of the kitchen faucet, giving it about 10, 15 seconds to stabilize the reading. There we go. 855 parts per million. All right, I'm gonna dry off the probe here real quick and hit clear and we're ready. Now into the water sample from the new Dipuro RO. All right, 62 parts per million. So right in line with what the other unit that we had previously installed was doing. Pretty good. It's definitely doing its job. Now here's a sample of the water that's come out of the new RO system. And as I look through it, it may not translate through the camera, it is crystal clear. There are no floaties, there's no bubbles, there's no cloudiness. And of course the most important, the taste test, it is tasteless. It doesn't have any kind of aftertaste or bad taste to it. So it's definitely doing its job. So immediately after discovering that leak, I reached out to the support email on the front cover of the manual. And in response, I got this weird cryptic email that was in Chinese and I couldn't understand any of it. Now that doesn't sound good, but that may be because at the same time, I also emailed my contact from Dipuro who had arranged to send me the unit. And he was very responsive. In fact, he got together with the engineers and they tried to figure out what happened to the unit. At first they thought it might've been a shipping issue, but as you clearly saw in the unboxing portion of the video, everything, including the outer portion of the cardboard box was in great shape with no visible damage anywhere. They then asked me to turn off the unit and unscrew the two filters and photograph the stems on the back of the filter and then also down the two ports in the unit. And I sent those pictures to them. They said they couldn't tell or see any damage. And as you could see in the unboxing portion of the video, all those pieces were in great shape. There was no damage. They then told me they were going to ship me out another unit with their apologies so that I could continue my review. Now, after about an hour or two, that leaking subsided. And when I reported that to them, my contact said, great, I'll go ahead and cancel the shipping of the new unit. So their engineers aren't gonna ever get their hands on this one, so we're not really gonna know what happened. And that makes me a little unsettled about the unit. In fact, I'm keeping it. It's installed down there, but I am leaving that little tray underneath the back and I have the unit up front instead of tucked back in the corner because I don't completely trust it now that it leaked. So what do I think happened? Because the leaking stopped after I removed the filters to photograph them for the engineers and then put them back in and fire the unit back up, I'm wondering if the stems that go into those little black O-rings on the very back of the unit might have not sealed properly. And though it doesn't talk about it in the manual, I think perhaps if you would have used this silicone grease, which is used to lubricate O-rings and other portions of faucets and the cartridges that go inside, it's food grade, non-toxic. I think if I had put a little bit of this around those plastic stems before inserting them into those O-rings the first time, that perhaps we would have never had that leak. And I would like their engineers to maybe give that a try. And that might be a tip for you if you've already purchased this unit and you're looking for some installation tips to give a try. That might've made a difference. Now let's talk about production. The flow rate coming out of this unit is really slow. It is at least the flow rate that we got out of our older unit that had this storage tank. And that's not just my opinion. Also, it's my older daughter's opinion when she fills this big old jug over here for softball. She said, in her opinion, it was also about half the rate that the old one was. Now that being said, the DiPuro never slows down in its production. That is always constant, which is not something you will experience with a regular RO system. Those, we can maybe fill this coffee carafe. And if we're gonna also fill this before practice, and I want a little bit of water too, you're gonna notice the rate decline steadily towards the end of all that water being drawn from this tank. Now, if you are thinking about replacing your old unit because you're getting way lower production than that, like you have a drop off within the first 30 seconds or so, that might be an issue with your tank. So a full tank should have a PSI of seven to eight. And right in the front of most of these tanks is the same little stem valve that's on a car tire or a bicycle tire. And you can hook up a bike pump to this guy when it's full, and you can pump that up to about seven or eight, and that should take care of that issue, or at least give you more production. I've done that for several customers, and that does work, provided the membrane inside the tank isn't ruptured. Now, an example of how slow the production is, this coffee carafe here is a 12 cup carafe, and it takes a minute and 25 seconds to fill. So my workaround for that really slow fill rate is that I'll set that up first underneath the RO, turn on the faucet, then I'll go back over to the coffee maker, and I'll take out the old grounds, put them in our little compost bin to be taken outside later. I'll put a new filter in, new coffee grounds, and then at that time I can walk back over, shut it off, fill it, set the overnight timer, and you are all done. So for a more scientific test, I wanted to see, because the manual stated that it was this impressive 600 gallons per day production rate, I wanted to see, well, how long does it take to just produce a gallon of water? So I took this bucket with these nice little markings on the side, and I set that up underneath the RO faucet, and it took three minutes and five seconds to fill this bucket with one gallon of water. And so the likely question is, well, yes, that is a long time, but what is the flow rate coming out of your water supply line? And that's a fair question, so I wanted to test that. And as you can see here, it's really fast, there is obviously no problem with water pressure. I drenched myself and the entire cabinet area underneath the sink because there was so much pressure coming out of that little line. Anyway, after I cleaned all that off, I came up with this solution here where I ran a line into this blue bucket to control the water, and then it took only 45 seconds for the water supply line to produce a gallon of water into this bucket. So clearly the issue isn't with my house water pressure or the water flow rate out of the supply line, it is the DePuro unit having a pretty substantially slow rate. Now, if you found this video helpful in making a purchasing decision, will you please give it a thumbs up? It really helps the YouTube algorithm to start suggesting it to more people, and I appreciate all of you that do that. Also, please consider subscribing. I work really hard to put out good quality content and there's more videos to come. I'm gonna leave links to everything that I talked about, including the TDS meter and the silicone grease and the DePuro unit. Now, full disclosure, these are affiliate links, so if you click on them and end up making a purchase, it doesn't cost you a thing, but I do get a small reward at the end of the month. It helps to justify the time and effort it takes to make these videos. For example, that TDS meter, I purchased with rewards money from Amazon, and so thank you to all of you who have done that in the past. Until next time, thank you for watching.