Your Drinking Water

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I'm curious about your drinking water.

Personally I have lived more than half my life on a private water supply which means that I am more than used to untreated water. Usually it has been through a sand trap to filter out larger debris but it remains untreated.

When I lived in the Lake District in the UK, there was a small concrete water tank behind the house where ramblers and walkers were known to dip their water bottles into to refill and then a pipe down to the house (blue pipe to represent drinking water) and it went through a sand trap under the sink before it was used for all cold and hot water. Very rarely did the spring that supplied the water dry out because it ran off the mountainside year round from the tarn (small lake) at the top). The water was wonderfully soft (too soft to get soap off your hands without a lot of water or better still using a face cloth) and was crystal clear and bitterly cold.

When I lived in Scotland, on a peat bog, the water which also ran off the mountainside was brown in colour and we would often joke that you could not tell if you came clean in the bath because the water was brown when you got in and brown when you got out. There it was not uncommon for debris to come through in the water supply and you could have bits of peat or heather floating in the bath with you!

Another place I know in Scotland is the same, but they have to get the water tested periodically because they have paying guests. The water still comes directly off the mountainside and I have seen and heard people refuse to drink it because of the colour that the peat stains it!

When I lived in the south of England, again we had a private water supply. We also had a well for when things were really bad, but luckily never had to use it (luckily because it was too close to our oil tank for our liking, our central heating ran off oil not gas).

Here in Australia I have 3 tanks which collect water.

• The first tank is 22,000 litres (and the second emergency tank a mear 3,275 litres) and they both collect rain water from 2 roof tops (the barn and the bike shed, not the biggest roofs here sadly and much water is wasted that could be collected and stored for the summer months). There is a mesh to remove the larger debris and stop it falling into the tank because it blocks the pipes otherwise, but no other filtering is done. Both of these 2 tanks are on a single pump, so if the electricity fails we have no water.
• The other tank is a bore water tank. There is a pump at the bottom of the hill which also runs off electricity. There is a concrete tank at the top of the hill and it stores the water. It is simply gravity that supplies this water once it has been pumped to the top of the hill for storage. To fill the tank, I have to walk first to the top of the hill to the tank, turn a tap off to stop water coming out of the tank, then I have to walk back passed the house and on to the bottom of the hill to the lower paddock where the stable with the water pump in it is, and turn this pump on. Once the tank is full (empty to full takes 24-48 hours or more) I have to reverse the process... It takes around 15 mins per walk to do what is needed, but this is my toilet and washing machine, plus all outside water. Ironically because of all the rain we have had, the water in the tank is amazingly pure and not hard water which it should be because of the all the limestone in the area. Currently it is fit for drinking (if you ignore the frogs living in the water tank )

It kind of goes without saying that all of these places are on septic tanks (or cess pits in one case) so you have to be quite careful as to what goes down the sewage. You can't just use any old household cleaner and if you are washing floors down for example, it is better to have a designated area for pouring this water away rather than putting it into the septic tank because usually the floor cleaner/bleach etc is not good for a septic tank.

So what do you all live on? Have you ever lived on a private water supply and septic tank? Would you drink water straight off the mountainside?

 

[classic33]

Drink water off the hillside, done that. I've laid the pipe for someone else, so that they'd water in the house. Me not being from the country(city!), made it worth more.

Peat(Turf) water, I was always told it's the PH level that requires watching. Made tea from bog water many a time though.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Peat(Turf) water, I was always told it's the PH level that requires watching

yeh - it can be quite acidic, but when it is all you have. I know one place we lived (my childhood playground), you could often not tell if the tea bag had been in the water it was stained that dark at times. As a kid it was great fun, we never bothered about it and I know that now, I can drink any water, but when I first met my husband, him having been off mains water all his life, he would get ill if he drank untreated water and never understood how I could just drink anything that ran off the mountainside without first checking what was upstream.

Right after all of yesterday's rain, I'm now off for one of those walks I mentioned to turn on the bore water pump. So off to the top of the hill first, to turn off the water from the tank, then i'll feed the chooks on the way back down and finally to the bottom of the hill to turn on the pump. Then I will come back to the house and start the day's chores which include chopping up more wood because it was that bad yesterday the car port flooded and all of the wood got wet. It was standing in water. I need to chop fresh because I now have no kindling until it dries out. Mind you it wasn't the only thing that got wet. I also dug a moat around the chook house - seemed better than it flowing into the chook house.

This is where 2 creeks meet. About 200m from our home. Usually you can cross both creeks at this point without getting your feet wet. Yesterday I wasn't going anywhere near either crossing point. You could have drowned immediately.

The one on the left is over 3 meters deep in places and the one on the right over 2 meters deep.

If you look to the bottom right on this photo you will see the 'path' down. Its a kangaroo and wombat trails and on the otherside of the picture (left hand side towards the top, above the small rapids) is the up and out. The pool is very, very deep. That is a the side creek to the house that I took this picture of on Saturday.

Slightly, but not that much further, further up stream.

Zoomed out much further, I couldn't actually get to the same place as the above photo was taken, you can see the difference. That is what 20mm of rain between 8am and 3pm did to the place!

No way anything could cross this without ropes and backup and all sorts yesterday.

One thing we have both noticed is that the dangerous sounds from the creek are totally different to Scotland where if the water is quiet, you know it is in flood. When it gets noisy again the water levels are receding. Here it is the exact reverse. When you can hear the creek, it is very dangerous. When it is quiet, then all is well.

This is the pumping station for my bore water. Yesterday after the water levels had receded a touch. It was no longer in water when I took this picture. All that shiny stuff is standing or running water and at one point yesterday, the field behind the 'building' on the left was underwater as well and there was no way I could reach the pump station (let alone consider using electricity in it!)

 

[classic33]

The "old un's" used a small plant to work out if they could use the water on the bog. I've no idea what it's called, find it no problem.

I think it was a colour change & the speed of it, that they used. Should have paid more attention!

Rainwater that went into an open tank was used for cooking & washing. Built in '76 for reasons you may remember. Drinking water was a quarter mile round walk. Spring required clearing once a week at least.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

Built in '76 for reasons you may remember

given I was pre-school age, no.

 

[classic33]

given I was pre-school age, no.

Heatwave!

We got a Summer.

 

[Morning Glory]

So what do you all live on?

Tap water is all I've ever known! Its quite a good invention. You turn on the tap and water comes out. I've no idea where it comes from but I do pay bills for it every six months.

 

[classic33]

Tap water is all I've ever known! Its quite a good invention. You turn on the tap and water comes out. I've no idea where it comes from but I do pay bills for it every six months.

If you saw what they put in it, you'd stop using it.

 

[Morning Glory]

If you saw what they put in it, you'd stop using it.

Hasn't done me any harm so far. Or has it?

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

If you saw what they put in it, you'd stop using it.

Or where it came from. Most tap water has been through another human being in the very recent past, and not in the timeline of water existing, but in the timeline of the last 6 months...
I also hate the impurities in it as well as the additives. I know when I visit family in Manchester I can taste a very metallic and very fluoride taste to the water. after years, no decades of stuff where my only concern is what has died in it upstream (not normally anything but on one occasion there had been but it was picked up by the local farmer very quickly and removed. We then just had to drain the water from our system and let a few hours go by before refilling - no big deal and part of living on a mountainside where animals graze), unnatural pollutants are far worse that the colouring and taste peat tends to give water.

 

[classic33]

Hasn't done me any harm so far. Or has it?

Might have done.

 

[classic33]

Is there a distinct split between town and country folk on this.

I've been able to switch with no trouble whilst others seem to have problems with it. But I've switched between town and country. Sometimes due to wild camping and nothing else.

 

[SatNavSaysStraightOn]

I think it is often the case that a lot of town folk have simply never been exposed to the bacteria and viruses that naturally live in soil. My mother for example used to be fine on private water. then she lived in a town for a long time and only very occasionally had private water and started to get bloating and belly ache, so stayed away from private water supplies. Now she can't even drink the tap water in her own home without those symptoms and worse and now has an expensive water filter system on the counter which all her drinking water goes through (including the stuff for boiling veg and the kettle which would promptly kill most (though not all viruses) bugs in the water IF there were any in her water supply - this is paid for water we are talking about here, not a private water supply. I have no idea how she thinks she is going to survive when the come to visit in a year's time because I certainly will not be paying to buy water in for her. There is nothing wrong with the water supply, they have even had the local water company test it. No-one else gets ill from drinking it and yes there is a taste to it, but then there is to all water that has had chloride and fluoride added to it.

My OH on the other hand has gone completely the other way. Having lived all his life before he met me, on Manchester tap water he could not drink any natural water supply without belly ache at first. The drinking water we would carry in water bottles whilst out hiking and mountaineering, was drank by him and I would fill an empty one with river or stream water ensuring that I drank as little treated water as possible to give him the most. When that ran out, the chloride or iodine tablets came out. He hated the taste of those as everyone does, so started the odd mouthful here and there which slowly, over the years, and it did take years, became more and more that he could drink without issue.

Neither of us bat an eyelid about what grows in our drinking water bottles for our bikes now. And there is often a really good black slime in the mouth piece that most people would throw in the bin! About once a month we sterilise the bottles, but the rest of the time... nope. We were happy to cycle up country lanes with muck and mud and who knows what thrown onto our bottles and drink from them - same when on the mountain bikes. the most we do is wipe the dirt off before we drink. I know very few people who can do that and most are long distance cycle tourers or people who have lived all their lives on private water supplies.

Now, put me in a city or even a room with a kid with sniffles and I will have the sniffles within a few days where no-one else will have. So I guess it is what you are exposed to and more importantly continually exposed to, so that you build up an immunity.

I know on our aborted world tour, we had been on the road 10 months before we purified any water at all and ironically that was tap water in Macedonia! We had covered over 11000km at that point and it was only because of the fact that the water came out of the tap cloudy and never cleared that made us get the filter out for the very first time and use it! Once in Greece we went back to not filtering water and the stuff we had in Turkey was fantastic - but there were often taps at the side of the road in the middle of nowhere and you could fill up with water. We would see cars stop at them and people get out and pray, then take the water, so you knew it was very pure water.

 

[Morning Glory]

Is there a distinct split between town and country folk on this.

I've been able to switch with no trouble whilst others seem to have problems with it. But I've switched between town and country. Sometimes due to wild camping and nothing else.

I can drink bottled water with no probs but haven't tried mountain water. I'm sure it would be fine. I have a tough constitution. However, there are certain liquids I prefer to water...

 

[Duck59]

When I lived in Oxford, we used to use a water filter because the water was pretty grim. Oddly enough, the one time I was given a water filter - when I was volunteering in Eritrea - the water was so pure that I didn't need it at all.