Water

Which would you be willing to do?

  • To use water that has already been used before. But filtered before re-entering the system.

    Votes: 5 71.4%

  • Pay for your water usage by way of increased food prices.

    Votes: 1 14.3%

  • Other: Specify

    Votes: 1 14.3%
  • Total voters
    7
C

classic33

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With many areas worldwide, Southern England included, now classed as Very Highly Stressed when it comes to water supply per head of population.

A question.
Would you be willing to pay more for the food on your plate, or use water that has been "through the system" at least once already?

Water can be treated, and allowed to re-enter the system altready. Desalination plants are already supplying drinking water. But supplying drinking water is only scratching the surface of the problem.

It's also required for nearly everything you eat. In order for it to be grown. Be it meat, grain, fruit or vegetable. To meet present food demands, water would have to "bought in", to help try and slow price rises down.

This is not a short term solution, or a quick fix.

Hand held units are available already that are used in some parts of the world where supplies are dubious. Larger ones exist for home use.
 
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I live in a desert and our water supply (Lake Mead) is slowly diminishing, I think recycled water is the way to go. They are doing it now and if it is cleansed and filtered I'm fine with that. The lake water isn't exactly an Alpine spring to start with. It is used for recreation by boaters and jet skiers, people drown in it, and I'm sure swimmers pee in it. It doesn't just get piped from the lake into my faucet. There's already a filtering process in place.
 
What a topic ,and one I've considered for years ,
I've always thought about desalination was the way forward,
But as a young lad was always intrigued by the sewrage works and the way the water was filtered threw the beds and the gas extracted and the solids cleaned and used for the land,and the cleaned fluids were put back into the river Frome
Lately I have been looking at a engineering friends water harvester ,he has designed ,very good the water could be re filtered to drink ,but for toilet and washing it's great ,he even has it to his hot water fonts he's designed
But does filtering remove all the nastys?ive just heard of a case of a portable traveling water filter where the chap ened up with his kidneys going down after using it ,
Maybe more research in this as well
I believe water is a precious comodity ,maybe the source of life ,it should be looked after
In the UK we are able to drink from each the tap,but more and more we get threatened with draughts
When designing new builds there is massive respect to water saving ,with a computer programme used to make sure it meets usage standards
I keep all my waste drain water for my grade I have 10 strategically hidden barrels
I feel in the UK we need to look after water better ,thee is more to turning a tap that meets the eye ,maybe soon we might be on bottled water more for drinking,but it will be our doing ..due to water usage being to high and new measures having to be put in place
 
I always go for natural and I don't scrimp on that. Most of our house guests are surprised to know that our dogs drink only purified water while it is a norm that pets should be given tap water only. So with people, food and water should be of highest quality regardless of cost. When my husband cooks, he buys the best ingredients available and cost is not an issue.
 
I agree with SNSSO. Our water has already been in and out of the system numerous times and I don't see a problem with that. I have a septic tank so I don't add to the sewerage system at all. And as for water, I have 5 1000 litre plastic tanks that are filled just from rain water. I have a large woodshed, with guttering and the rainwater from that roof fills 3 of the tanks. The rainwater that falls onto the house roof fills another 2 tanks. We use this water for watering trees, grass etc. We do have it hooked up to the house as well, and if we needed to we have a filtration system that can be fitted to enable us to drink the water as well.

We did this as our house is around 400 yards from the nearest severn trent stop cock. If ever there was a leak in the pipe from the stopcock to my house the cost of looking for the leak alone would be many thousands of pounds let alone the cost of putting it right, and we could not afford to have it repaired. In that event we can simply hook all the tanks up to come Into the house to provide us with all our water needs.

Water is becoming more and more of a discussion point at the moment, especially like california where people are being stopped from watering fheir gardens ETC and quite rightly so. Americans have taken water for granted for so long and have not given a second thought as to where it comes from, or the consequences of using too much. They just naturally assumed that they could continue to take without any thought. They have also upset the Canadians by taking so much water from lakes and rivers that are jointly bordering both Canada and America. Its not only America though. We all have to consider water, where it comes from, the amount we use, how we use it, and how we re cycle it. Here in the UK we have had drought years and hosepipe bans, and this looks set to increase if the climate experts are right about climate warming.
 
Of course all waste water is recycled and we don't just have fresh rainwater or untreated river water for domestic use. Where I live in the south of England the waste water charges are extremely high compared to the amount charged for the supply of fresh water.

Everyone should be aware that water is a limited resource that should be used and reused with respect. I think every home should have a water meter. I believe this is a requirement for all new build properties but many home owners and tenants still pay a standard charge for water usage, regardless of how much the household uses.
 
Berties said:
ive just heard of a case of a portable traveling water filter where the chap ened up with his kidneys going down after using it ,
Click to expand...
One of the thing we looked into extensively when we went off to cycle around the world was water purification.
What we found was quite alarming.

Pumps.
Most pump filters (those hand ones that say filter out everything larger than a certain size) sound great and do filter out all bacteria and protozoa. What they don't tell you and what is critical is that they don't actually filter out viruses because viruses are smaller than the size they state. There are some newer and rather expensive pumps coming onto the market that can now filter out viruses as well, but they are still very expensive and the filters are rather prone to blocking. Pumps also need a lot of energy to use and the filters once opened have a limited lifetime. (We have one that is reasonably cheap to run (carbon filters to remove odour and taste from the filtered water, plus the actual filter itself).)

UV
By far the cheapest and potentially the easiest, you literally can just leave water in a 2L soda bottle for the afternoon in direct sun and the UV light from the sun will kill everything that is in there that is alive. What it does not do however is remove colour, odour or more critically filter out any matter already present in the water.
You can also get UV pens which work much more quickly and don't rely on being in the dessert with a never ending source of sunlight. UV pens are a reasonably cheap solution.

Chemical
drop some tablets into the water, shake, wait and low and behold everything is dead. It is and it does work and it is amazingly cheap. It stinks, it tastes foul and the visible matter present in the water is still there. You can also get neutralising tablets which will remove taste and odour of chemical treatment to a point.

So you end up needing 2 solutions. 1 to filter out the visible and less visible matter in the water and then a 2nd purification method that kills the viruses left in the water that the filtering does not clear. We settled for the UV option because I'm not that keen on the chemical option and it was quicker.

I suspect the guy didn't know about the virus side of life with the standard pumps, or was using a UV solution and did not run it for a full cycle.
However, without further info, I am only guessing.
 
SatNavSaysStraightOn said:
One of the thing we looked into extensively when we went off to cycle around the world was water purification.
What we found was quite alarming.

Pumps.
Most pump filters (those hand ones that say filter out everything larger than a certain size) sound great and do filter out all bacteria and protozoa. What they don't tell you and what is critical is that they don't actually filter out viruses because viruses are smaller than the size they state. There are some newer and rather expensive pumps coming onto the market that can now filter out viruses as well, but they are still very expensive and the filters are rather prone to blocking. Pumps also need a lot of energy to use and the filters once opened have a limited lifetime. (We have one that is reasonably cheap to run (carbon filters to remove odour and taste from the filtered water, plus the actual filter itself).)

UV
By far the cheapest and potentially the easiest, you literally can just leave water in a 2L soda bottle for the afternoon in direct sun and the UV light from the sun will kill everything that is in there that is alive. What it does not do however is remove colour, odour or more critically filter out any matter already present in the water.
You can also get UV pens which work much more quickly and don't rely on being in the dessert with a never ending source of sunlight. UV pens are a reasonably cheap solution.

Chemical
drop some tablets into the water, shake, wait and low and behold everything is dead. It is and it does work and it is amazingly cheap. It stinks, it tastes foul and the visible matter present in the water is still there. You can also get neutralising tablets which will remove taste and odour of chemical treatment to a point.

So you end up needing 2 solutions. 1 to filter out the visible and less visible matter in the water and then a 2nd purification method that kills the viruses left in the water that the filtering does not clear. We settled for the UV option because I'm not that keen on the chemical option and it was quicker.

I suspect the guy didn't know about the virus side of life with the standard pumps, or was using a UV solution and did not run it for a full cycle.
However, without further info, I am only guessing.
Click to expand...
I've done uv , and even some swimming pools have adopted a uv principle,
Chemical is a given and a pump I've seen , but the new light weight pens and straw type devices I've not had much to do with , it was one of these that caused the issue
Problem is every one is a expert after watching bear on the tv , as he uses just his sock
 
Berties said:
but the new light weight pens and straw type devices I've not had much to do with , it was one of these that caused the issue
Click to expand...
I'm not sure on the lightweight pens you refer to, but know for a fact that the straws in the bottles only filter out bacteria and protozoa and unless you are putting pretty clean water into the bottle in the first place, you can't be certain that it won't be an issue.

I know that we didn't actually filter any water (or purchase any) for the first 10-11 months of our journey. It wasn't until we got to Macedonia that we started to filter our water (and we stopped filtering it in Greece and Turkey where the tap water was clean enough not to be a problem to us). Like I said, it was something I looked into extensively because of where we were going to (Pamir Highway) and there are some countries where I would not drink even the filtered tap water because of the heavy metals in the pipes used to transport the water. In these countries the only safe option is to drink mineral water from bottled sources ensuring that the seal on the bottle is not broken before you drink it.

I have lived on a private water supply virtually all my life and when I first met my husband he was stunned at what I would drink without issue. It did become a problem because he couldn't drink water that wasn't filtered at first so we ended up with this daft situation of my drinking 'wild' unfiltered water despite up actually having filtered water with us, just so that we had enough for him to drink. Luckily over the years he has gotten better because of the number of houses we have lived in where we have not been on mains water. But it took him years to adapt to being able to drink unfiltered water. Water is something I know quite a bit about, having also worked for a couple of the water authorities in the UK as well - ironically whilst I was living on a private water supply where like yourself and @welsh dragon we had many 1,000L tanks hidden around the place (and a well!) that all contained rain water which was used for watering the veg & herb plots. Being on a cesspit (not septic tank) it was legal to collect the rain water off the roof of our home.
 
Corzhens said:
I always go for natural and I don't scrimp on that. Most of our house guests are surprised to know that our dogs drink only purified water while it is a norm that pets should be given tap water only. So with people, food and water should be of highest quality regardless of cost. When my husband cooks, he buys the best ingredients available and cost is not an issue.
Click to expand...
So food prices should increase in order to pay for your water usage?

Its also what is used to clean most foodstuffs.
 
classic33 said:
So food prices should increase in order to pay for your water usage?

Its also what is used to clean most foodstuffs.
Click to expand...

Yes, sir. For me, hygience and sanitation come first in the procedure, what more with the clean ingredients? I am willing to pay more as long the ingredients to the meal that I serve are all clean. This reminds me that our water bill is quite high compared to the standard because we continually wash our hands when we are cooking.
 
Our family value our health very much. So whatever is the best for us we do not consider the cost of the price as long we know what we are eating is clean and safe. So we are willing to pay for our water usage by way of increased food prices.
 
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