VIQUA Arros 9 UV Sterilizer — 9 GPM

Description

The smallest chamber in the line, and the one that fits where the others will not. The Arros 9 is 11.2 inches of chamber against the Arros 22’s 22.5, and it draws 33 W against 60. In a mechanical closet, under a bench, or anywhere the run of pipe is already tight, that difference is the whole decision.

At 9 GPM it covers a home grow or a single room comfortably, and downstream of a compact RO it has room to spare. Buy it for footprint and power draw — if you have the space, look at the Arros 15 as well and compare the numbers side by side.

Ultraviolet is the one treatment step that kills biology without touching your water chemistry. Nothing is dosed, nothing is left behind for your feed recipe to account for. Water passes a lamp, the organisms in it stop being able to reproduce, and everything else about the water is exactly as it was.

UV removes nothing, though. It is not a substitute for filtration — it inactivates what is alive and leaves everything else in place.

Flow rate depends on the dose you need

UV is not rated at a single number. The same chamber treats more water at a lower dose, and dose is what decides what you actually kill. These figures are at 95% UVT, at end of lamp life.

The model number is the rating at 30 mJ/cm². If you are treating water you have reason to distrust, size against the 40 mJ/cm² row instead — this unit is a 7 GPM system at that dose.

Arros 9 specifications

UVT matters as much as flow

Those ratings assume 95% UV transmittance — clean water. Downstream of an RO you will be at or near it. On raw well or surface water you will not be, and capacity falls accordingly. If this is going in ahead of treatment rather than after it, send us your water report and we will size it properly.

Know your water before you buy

UV needs water it can see through. VIQUA specifies hardness under 7 grains (120 mg/L), iron under 0.3 mg/L and tannins under 0.1 mg/L. Past those the quartz sleeve fouls and output drops — you keep a green light and lose the disinfection. Deal with hardness and iron upstream.

Where it goes

Last. UV is the final piece of treatment in the line, after filtration, softening and RO. It kills what is in the water as it passes and leaves no residual, so anything downstream of the lamp can recontaminate.

Common to all Arros systems

100–240V 50/60 Hz, 1.5 A max, 125 PSI maximum operating pressure, 304 stainless chamber, LCD touchscreen controller (10.5″ × 5″ × 6.5″), combo 1″ MNPT / ¾″ FNPT ports, ambient water 36–104°F. Validated against cryptosporidium, giardia, E. coli and fecal coliform.

Lamps are consumables

Replace the VA09LU annually. A UV lamp does not fail cleanly — output decays long before it stops lighting, so a system that looks fine can be doing nothing. The Arros tracks true lamp running time and will tell you. We stock it.