Water

badjak

badjak

Forum GOD!
Joined
2 Sep 2022
Local time
2:03 PM
Messages
4,147
Location
Zambezi Valley, Zambia
Well, it is a drink, but the mods can change it to another category if they like..

Question is..
What's your source of water?
Do you drink it as is?
Do you buy drinking water?
Do you treat your water?
Do you use the same water for drinking, showering, flushing toilets, watering the garden?

I bought a solar borehole pump today.
Not that I have a borehole, it will go straight in the river.
And that's the water I use for everything.
Cooking, showering etc
I generally use left over boiled water for drinking, but normally it's tea and coffee anyway.
No other treatments, and if I am thirsty I drink it as is....
 
I can’t tell if you always boil it first or “if I’m thirsty I drink it as is”?
Untreated (unboiled) I’d be concerned about parasites and waterborne diseases but that’s just me.

We have mains water which is all potable but inline with the way it’s been done in this country the kitchen taps are directly from the mains all other taps are supplied from a cold water storage tank. IT’s rare to see a tap that says “NOT FOR DRINKING” maybe at some campsites.
I’m happy with the quality and taste of the water here and drink it from the tap.

The water in Spain is not good. They say it’s potable but it tastes bad, is often cloudy or stinking of chlorine and it can destroy a zero filter (an expensive water filter) that should last weeks in a few days.
So I’ve given up and joined the rest of the spanish population and buy it.
 
I have a shallow well. Which is a well that is maybe 8' deep and 2-1/2' diameter. The water level is typically 4' or so below the surface.
I've been told it is fed by an underground river. I use it for everything. As is.

In my layman's terms, it is basically a spring that doesn't reach ground level. And it doesn't take a lot of water flow through gravel to filter water.

I've had it tested a couple times and nothing out of the norm or to cause concern.
I think I'm supposed to put a little bleach in it now and then and run the spigots/faucets until I can't smell the bleach anymore, but every time I take the cover off I am exposing it to other things. But I should probably make an effort to do it again. It's probably been 20 years :whistling:

No sulphur smell or turning toilet bowl orange. But it is a harder water. I like hard water. It's easier to rinse clean than soft water. But the spigots I have started replacing obviously do not like hard water.
 
badjak said:
What's your source of water?
Click to expand...
A rural nonprofit water supply company.

badjak said:
Do you drink it as is?
Click to expand...
Sometimes, but we also run it through a filtering pitcher.

badjak said:
Do you buy drinking water?
Click to expand...
Yes.

badjak said:
Do you treat your water?
Click to expand...
No.

badjak said:
Do you use the same water for drinking, showering, flushing toilets, watering the garden?
Click to expand...
Drinking water is mainly bottled or filtered, but other than that…yes.
 
badjak said:
Question is..
What's your source of water?
Click to expand...
This spring.
1000040217.jpg


badjak said:
Do you drink it as is?
Click to expand...
Yes.

badjak said:
Do you buy drinking water?
Click to expand...
No.

badjak said:
Do you treat your water?
Click to expand...
No.

badjak said:
Do you use the same water for drinking, showering, flushing toilets, watering the garden?
Click to expand...
No. Showering and toilets get city water. Garden gets the rain.

1000040222.jpg
1000040223.jpg
 
Our water is supplied by the nationalised water company; Hidrocapital, as it is formally known, Hidrocriminal as known colloquially.
Drinking water is bought in large, 19 lt bottles. If you drink tapwater, you may have already died and gone to heaven.
Since our wonderful socialist government took control of the company, the quality (and the supply) has gone downhill at about 200mph. Water is heavily dosed with chlorine, and the supply is very irregular.
In my neighbourhood, we've had about 5 days of water supply in the past 2 months. Sometimes, you turn the tap on and the liquid which pours out is yellow-ish. We always boil the water before using it.
 
badjak said:
Question is..
What's your source of water?
Do you drink it as is?
Do you buy drinking water?
Do you treat your water?
Do you use the same water for drinking, showering, flushing toilets, watering the garden?
Click to expand...

Source = rain (literally). No rain = no water. So we have to store enough to get through the dry season/any drought.

Do you drink it as is? = yes. It's not treated or filtered, just stored and drunk as is. Occasionally you get bits of leaves or dead insects in it, but not often.

Do you buy drinking water? No (haven't needed to yet)

Do you treat your water? No

Do you use the same water for drinking, showering, flushing toilets, watering the garden?
Here, we have the same water inside the house throughout. So we are very aware we are showering in drinking water, and follow the aussie motto, if it's yellow, let it mellow; if it's brown, flush it down.

Our last place the toilet and washing machine were on bore water (along with the garden), the rest of the house was on tank water (tank water is rain water collected from a roof and fed into a dedicated water tank that's sealed, no light gets in at all).

Outside at our current home, we have a dedicated tank for the garden. It acts as a backup if we need it for the house, but because it's at the same height as the house, it needs a pump. The house water is gravity fed. The farm buildings each have their own tank, so we have 2 gravity fed tanks to the house, plus the tank by the house before we need to consider using dam water or the new bore hole water. There are 3 dams in the immediate vicinity of the house. That water would need to be treated. The sheep drink from it as well, and over winter one died alongside one of the dams. That's pretty common. The bore hole should be OK to drink as is.

The sealed tanks are around 20,000L each. There's an unsealed open old tank of 3,000L which we use for the chooks and the farmer for the sheep in the holding paddock. There are also a couple of older smaller sealed tanks around the farm as well, they're sheep water typically.

We do share our water with the farm buildings as well.

By modern standards, the tanks we have here are quite small. 2 of then are concrete tanks (literally made from concrete). Modern tanks are plastic tanks.
 
You drink it straight from the river? No worries about pathogens? I'm curious what you pump the water into, and how you get it home.

What's your source of water?
We're on a public water supply from the local water company. They either get it from a local river (and treat it) or from wells (I'm not sure) and distribute it through water mains.

Do you drink it as is?
Typically, yes, straight from the tap. Our fridge has a water filter, so we can get it from the door, but it's slow to fill a glass, so we usually don't bother. Occasionally, we filter it through a Berkey water filter that we keep on the countertop to remove the mild chlorine taste, but it's kind of a pain to keep it topped off, so we go through spells of using and not using it.

Do you buy drinking water?
All of it, from the water company. (It's metered on the line in.) Sometimes we'll buy bottled water in the summer, just for convenience when running around.

Do you treat your water?
Mentioned above.

Do you use the same water for drinking, showering, flushing toilets, watering the garden?
Yes, all of the above.
 
SandwichShortOfAPicnic said:
I can’t tell if you always boil it first or “if I’m thirsty I drink it as is”?
Click to expand...
If I am thirsty I drink it as is.
But mainly I boil it first
And no, not very worried about pathogens :)
I do buy water occassionally, but more when I am on the road

I pump from the river to a 5000 litre overhead tank. From there it goes to my house and garden. The garden gets topped up when needed, directly from the river

It's soft water . No lime build up at all

I'm downstream from a big hydro-electric dam. The water plunges down there, then another 15 km through a narrow gorge and I'm just downstream from the end of the gorge.
 
Last edited:
badjak said:
If I am thirsty I drink it as is.
But mainly I boil it first
And no, not very worried about pathogens :)
I do buy water occassionally, but more when I am on the road

I pump from the river to a 5000 litre overhead tank. From there it goes to my house and garden. The garden gets topped up when needed, directly from the river

It's soft water . No lime build up at all

I'm downstream from a big hydro-electric dam. The water plunges down there, then another 15 km through a narrow gorge and I'm just downstream from the end of the gorge.
Click to expand...
Got mechanical filters in there though?
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom