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| Thread ID: 128884 | 2013-01-21 22:14:00 | Water quality and health | hammer (1735) | PC World Chat |
| Post ID | Timestamp | Content | User | ||
| 1324163 | 2013-01-21 22:14:00 | i live in a rural area, with a fast running irrigation ditch as the water supply.. i have had health issues for years relating to my immune system, this has left me sensitive to all sorts of crazy things in our environment. hubby insisted we only used town supply water for drinking and cooking..i filled up bottles every time i went into town. but he got all the cancers anyway.. on my own now and thinking about the water.. i can smell the chlorine etc in the town supply stuff and wondering if maybe i would be actually better off to use the irrigation ditch stuff now.. boiled of course. chemicals vs dead cows i spose?? if the dirt in it is just dirt i am ok with that. i dont know if there is a lot of dairy farms above us on the ditch line. most are below. maybe one or two any thoughts?? |
hammer (1735) | ||
| 1324164 | 2013-01-21 22:22:00 | Filter the water through about 4 inches of sand, boil and cool... Good to go :) | lordnoddy (3645) | ||
| 1324165 | 2013-01-21 22:28:00 | You're better off drinking the town water if you have a poor immune system. Cows - there's all sorts you get from that, nitrates, campylobacter, cryptosporidium and E. Coli etc. As for the chlorine, yes I can taste it too, usually first thing in the morning. What you can do is pour some into a jug and cover it, then let it sit in the sunlight for a bit. Sunlight kills chlorine. Then refrigerate it. Cancer, well, there's more to it than just what water you drink unfortunately. It is the 2nd most common disease in NZ. |
pctek (84) | ||
| 1324166 | 2013-01-21 22:57:00 | i live in a rural area, with a fast running irrigation ditch as the water supply.. i have had health issues for years relating to my immune system, this has left me sensitive to all sorts of crazy things in our environment. hubby insisted we only used town supply water for drinking and cooking..i filled up bottles every time i went into town. but he got all the cancers anyway.. on my own now and thinking about the water.. i can smell the chlorine etc in the town supply stuff and wondering if maybe i would be actually better off to use the irrigation ditch stuff now.. boiled of course. chemicals vs dead cows i spose?? if the dirt in it is just dirt i am ok with that. i dont know if there is a lot of dairy farms above us on the ditch line. most are below. maybe one or two any thoughts?? Is there a testing facility you can send your water to so as to get its quality assessed? We had bore water on a property assessed to see if it was potable, in Aus, and don't think it cost us anything. Found out the water was too salty for drinking, but we used it for washing, etc. http://www.drinkingwater.esr.cri.nz/ has links to labs, as well as letting you input your local supply to see its compliance? |
Zara Baxter (16260) | ||
| 1324167 | 2013-01-21 23:38:00 | I use an under sink filter on my town supply for drinking and cooking - I don't really care about chemicals to be honest but when I moved in the water tasted funny to me, kinda metallic, so I got the filter for taste reasons and it definately helps in my opinion. Water quality needs to be assesed properly, there's no way to tell from here whether your ditch is good to drink from or not but town supplies have regular testing and quality standards to comply with. Also town supplies don't tend to get the occasional dead animal rotting away nearby. It might surprise you to know the Waikato river in Hamilton, which no sane person would drink directly out of, actually almost passes the minimum standard for drinking water. The only thing exceeding safety standards in it is arsenic and that comes from lake Taupo's geothermal activity at the source not from anything along the way. There are filtration systems available for rural water supplies in varying degrees of effectiveness, it's just a matter of cost. |
dugimodo (138) | ||
| 1324168 | 2013-01-22 00:29:00 | Have you thought about rain water? To my mind it's one of the best tasting, and it's one of the softest. Yes it does have to pass over whatever's on the roof but a good filtration system takes care of that. In Barbados, it's the custom to put a lime solution on the roof - the water tastes great, the roof being a brilliant white reflects much of the heat, and all in all, it's a great solution. Don't why no-one does it here. | WalOne (4202) | ||
| 1324169 | 2013-01-22 06:47:00 | In Barbados, it's the custom to put a lime solution on the roof - the water tastes great, the roof being a brilliant white reflects much of the heat, and all in all, it's a great solution. Don't why no-one does it here. You can keep your lime as it is very hard on kettles and hot water cylinders but good for the bones. |
mikebartnz (21) | ||
| 1324170 | 2013-01-22 08:10:00 | Really to try create pure water, other than boiling, i.e. distilled , it may also need to be filtered through an ion excange resin, (to remove any excess mineral ions - cations) and then possibly through a deionizer resin as well, to remove excess sodium and ions. When I worked in a chemical lab had to do that for analytical pure (or near as) water (aqueous) for chemical experiments. This is also to kind of balance out between hard and soft water. As mentioned maybe get a test done. I think there are domestic resin filters that you can attached to a tap (or inline) to increase water purity. Or maybe one of them household water coolers that have a column resin cationic/ionic exchanger filter. Maybe a test kit can help too, e.g. with silver nitrate, pH kit/meter, etc to test and evaluate water to suit. |
kahawai chaser (3545) | ||
| 1324171 | 2013-01-22 08:20:00 | Way back in the 1950s as a kid in the outer suburbs of Invercargill we did not have town supply water laid on. We relied on rain water off the roof for our water supply. I remember climbing up on the tanks and watching the crawlies swimming around. I do not think that drinking this water did us any harm. | Bobh (5192) | ||
| 1324172 | 2013-01-22 08:24:00 | Depending on how long you plan to live at your current address/investment value (in case you sell the property) you can install a variety of filtration systems. I used to work for a farm irrigation company in Whakatane, our usual business was installing new dairy/milking facilities (which included filtration for milk processing) but we also did a lot of home water supply work too. I'm not sure what's on the market at the moment but there are a lot of options from UV filters (if microbes are a problem) or if it's mineral (fertiliser/chemical run off) then you need to use a cartridge based system (uses microfibres to filter suspended particles) Town supply uses chlorine to stop contamination in the lines, no need for that since your supply is 'on demand', get the water tested, as suggested. The test results will advise whether you just need a UV filter or whether you should be using chemical, or even avoiding the water entirely. I'd also take several tests, 2x samples several weeks apart during summer, winter, autumn and spring, just because the contaminants can change and vary seasonally. |
The Error Guy (14052) | ||
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