Sep 4, 2022·edited Sep 4, 2022Liked by The Underdog
Rain water is good but you should discard the first runoff. If rainfall is heavy and consistent collect after 15 to 30 minutes. Sometimes it rains for hours to all day where I live.
Now for Jackson, MS. The water source is the Ross Barnett Reservoir. An Army Corps dam collects water from the Pearl River north east of Jackson. Jackson has poor resource distribution and does not have high quality water treatment operators. In other words, Water was not a high priority for the City Mayor or Council.
There is a lot to know about drinking water. Typically water treatment uses chemicals such as lime (Ca(OH)2, most commonly used for drinking water treatment), soda ash (Na2CO3) for solids removal. It all has do with whats in the water and changing the charges in the water. Remember water is polar so these chemical change the charge interaction between the water and what is in it.
Deep groundwater is a better source of water than surface water but may contain a lot of calcium and or magnesium (water hardness).
One can make a poor man's treatment system with a 5 gallon bucket. There are many such devices used in developing countries and a lot if information on these is available on the internet.
Purchase pH strips that can read from 0 - 14 pH. Just take a drop of water and add it to the strip then compare the color to the strip colors on the package.. Do not put the strip in your water.
Purchase chlorine color strips also. That way you do not over chlorinate. Typically water distribution systems set the chlorine concentration to be less than or equal to 2 parts per million or 2 mg/L. If you use clorox type bleaches be sure there are on additives. Its the hypochlorite ion that does the kill.
I think it is a common misconception that deionized water is toxic by virtue of increasing osmotic pressure in cells exposed to it. (aka leeching electrolytes) If that were true then we would have to drink normal saline solution! We are pretty well-equipped to consume rainwater, which is naturally deionized. The mucosal lining of our GI tract has plenty of electrolytes and protects the tissue from all sorts of irritants, including solutions with electrolyte content differing from that within the cells. You can safely drink distilled or deionized water, it may just taste a little off. This is why a bit of Ca and Mg (no Na and K necessary!) are sometimes added to bottled water.
Even in unpolluted environment, there's also the issue of leaves and other plant materials getting into the guttering/collection system, and decaying, which in turn presents a breeding ground for bacteria.
I skipped coverage on rainwater collection systems because the configurations/requirements would be as long as this article is, which include calculating average rainfall against roof size, having enough storage for needs annually, the materials that should be used, cleaning/maintenance of the storage container, and what sort of pre-filter/mesh designs there are for the feed-in pipe, cheap plastic barrels with BPA versus expensive concrete containers.
Most people in cities will be either living in apartments, or in rental configurations that don't allow them to harvest rainwater, which is why I opted to skip it. That and city rainwater is classically polluted. I also skipped fire based distillers because apartments imply no garden/yard and likely obnoxious ordinance laws even if one did.
Maybe an hour into a good air-washing downpour, you could put out a clean tray to collect rainwater directly, and it would be safe to drink, even in a nasty urban area.
I guess the point is that rainwater is naturally rather deionized, except for carbonic acid of course, and it can be consumed with no noticeable irritation or death of the epithelium.
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Rain water is good but you should discard the first runoff. If rainfall is heavy and consistent collect after 15 to 30 minutes. Sometimes it rains for hours to all day where I live.
Now for Jackson, MS. The water source is the Ross Barnett Reservoir. An Army Corps dam collects water from the Pearl River north east of Jackson. Jackson has poor resource distribution and does not have high quality water treatment operators. In other words, Water was not a high priority for the City Mayor or Council.
There is a lot to know about drinking water. Typically water treatment uses chemicals such as lime (Ca(OH)2, most commonly used for drinking water treatment), soda ash (Na2CO3) for solids removal. It all has do with whats in the water and changing the charges in the water. Remember water is polar so these chemical change the charge interaction between the water and what is in it.
Deep groundwater is a better source of water than surface water but may contain a lot of calcium and or magnesium (water hardness).
One can make a poor man's treatment system with a 5 gallon bucket. There are many such devices used in developing countries and a lot if information on these is available on the internet.
Purchase pH strips that can read from 0 - 14 pH. Just take a drop of water and add it to the strip then compare the color to the strip colors on the package.. Do not put the strip in your water.
Purchase chlorine color strips also. That way you do not over chlorinate. Typically water distribution systems set the chlorine concentration to be less than or equal to 2 parts per million or 2 mg/L. If you use clorox type bleaches be sure there are on additives. Its the hypochlorite ion that does the kill.
There is a lot of info on the internet.
I think it is a common misconception that deionized water is toxic by virtue of increasing osmotic pressure in cells exposed to it. (aka leeching electrolytes) If that were true then we would have to drink normal saline solution! We are pretty well-equipped to consume rainwater, which is naturally deionized. The mucosal lining of our GI tract has plenty of electrolytes and protects the tissue from all sorts of irritants, including solutions with electrolyte content differing from that within the cells. You can safely drink distilled or deionized water, it may just taste a little off. This is why a bit of Ca and Mg (no Na and K necessary!) are sometimes added to bottled water.
We can drink clean rainwater from unpolluted environments. Yes, if it comes off your roof it’s going to have bird poop in it.
Even in unpolluted environment, there's also the issue of leaves and other plant materials getting into the guttering/collection system, and decaying, which in turn presents a breeding ground for bacteria.
I skipped coverage on rainwater collection systems because the configurations/requirements would be as long as this article is, which include calculating average rainfall against roof size, having enough storage for needs annually, the materials that should be used, cleaning/maintenance of the storage container, and what sort of pre-filter/mesh designs there are for the feed-in pipe, cheap plastic barrels with BPA versus expensive concrete containers.
Most people in cities will be either living in apartments, or in rental configurations that don't allow them to harvest rainwater, which is why I opted to skip it. That and city rainwater is classically polluted. I also skipped fire based distillers because apartments imply no garden/yard and likely obnoxious ordinance laws even if one did.
Maybe an hour into a good air-washing downpour, you could put out a clean tray to collect rainwater directly, and it would be safe to drink, even in a nasty urban area.
I guess the point is that rainwater is naturally rather deionized, except for carbonic acid of course, and it can be consumed with no noticeable irritation or death of the epithelium.