Depending on where you live in greater Vernon, your default water source is either Duteau Creek or Kalamalka Lake. Most of us in the City of Vernon are on the Kal Lake source unless there is a quality issue, which is not very often. If your TDS is 46 at the moment, you probably live somewhere in Coldstream or outside of the City of Vernon and are on the Duteau Creek source year 'round? I ran my RO/DI a few days ago & the tap water TDS was 174, so no doubt I'm on the Kal Lake source.

This link will allow you to enter your street address to determine which water source you're on under normal conditions.

http://www.rdno.ca/index.php/maps/water-source-map

Even though a pile of money has been spent in recent years to upgrade the Duteau Creek source, due to Interior Health tightening up the rules for potable water, it appears there will be a need to borrow many millions more now to further improve filtration & separate the agricultural/domestic water systems in our area.

I'm near the top of East Hill, occasionally it goes up to 150-200 but it has been low for quite some time here now

Well I couldn't get the address entry on the link I provided to work for me, but the map at the bottom of the page allows one to zoom in. Using the colour coded Water Source legend in the data entry area of the page, it looks like much of East Hill is 'dark blue', which is Duteau Creek, much softer water. Consider yourself fortunate. Up until a few years ago when they built the multi-million $ filtration facility for Duteau source, you folks on East Hill had some pretty nasty looking water, depending on the time of year...

RDNO has the ability to switch sources between Duteau & Kal for most of the area served, so if there is an issue such as turbidity or bacteria, they will do so. Unless you check the web site often or happen to read it in the paper or hear it on the local radio, you won't know if & when your water source has been switched. The only other way to know will be the reading on your TDS meter. So if your TDS climbs to the 150+ area, you've been temporarily switched from Duteau to Kal, or they are flushing the water mains in your area. There is a flush scheduled in my area (Mission Hill) in the next few days.

I've only had the RODI unit for about a year, made about 400 gallons and just had the changed the sediment and carbon filters. I have two DI's (Spectrapure MaxCap) and I anticipate having to change the first one in another year or so haha; the second DI should last through two more cycles of changing the first one. Lucky me