Water and Chlorine

[Goju]

Re: Water and Chlorine

How about swimming pool water?

I have a pool that holds about 18,000 gallons of water. It is chlorinated and runs through 300 pound sand filter.

In the winter, we drop the water level below all intake and outflow openings, and add winterizing chemicals.

Besides bathing and toilet use, do you think running the water through a Berkey Filter would make it drinkable?

[Snowy Owl]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Goju, I would suggest you look on reverse osmosis purification system, they are not that expensive and very reliable.

French use it in many countries in Africa.

[Mellie]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Typed in from my Solar Living Real Goods Sourcebook:

Reverse osmosis (RO) is a water purification technology that utilizes normal household water pressure to force water through a selective semi-permeable membrane that separates contaminants from the water. Treated water emerges from the other side of the membrane, and the accumulated impurities left behind are washed away. Eventually sediments builds up along the membrane and it needs to be replaced. (I think this can last several years.)

RO systems have two major drawbacks.

• First, they waste a large amount of water. They'll use anywhere from three to nine gallons of water per gallon of purified water produced. This could be a problem in areas where conservation is a concern, and it may be slightly expensive if you're paying for municipal water. On the other hand, this wastewater can be recovered or redirected for purposes other than drinking, such as watering the garden, washing the car, etc.
• Second, reverse osmosis treats water slowly: it takes about 3 to 4 hours for a residential RO unit to produce one gallon of purified water. Treated water can be removed and stored for later use.

[Mellie]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Goju, here's our inexpensive Doulton (simple siphon) filter alternative:
http://www.pwgazette.com/gravity.htm

We have a 500 gallon water tank with runoff system from the roof and a hot tub. Got one Style A ($40) for the tank and one Style C with Style A ($62) for the hottub. The website talks about using water from a pool, similar issues as with a hottub.

We also have other options, like a creek behind the house and a firepit and wood for boiling water if necessary.

More info on water here:

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=5668

.

[Pfwag]

Re: Water and Chlorine

The info on chlorine is mostly right. Depending on who you check with the answer is all over the place. As an example:

For the standard 5.25% concentration of liquid bleach, to treat a gallon of ?clean? water, the Red Cross says to use 15 drops, the South Dakota Dept. of Environment and Natural Resources says 3, LSU and North Carolina U. say 16, the US Army says 1-2, Ohio State University says 5, the EPA says, 8-10, and 8/40. The City of North Miami says 16, and FEMA is all over the place. Tracing it back to the most popular source, Clorox says to use ?? capful (1 teaspoon)? and doesn?t mention the number of drops, although it would be far more than 16. Further complicating the issue is exactly how many drops are in a teaspoon? This is important to know when treating larger quantities of water.

Basically, the reason for this is because most emergency preparedness sources recommend using a fairly high concentration of chlorine either because they assume a user doesn?t knows what the actual chlorine content of the bleach is, doesn?t know the relationship between concentration and exposure time, doesn?t know the relationship between exposure time and water temperature, can?t count, or figure it is better to be safe than sorry. Or maybe they don?t know how many drops are in a teaspoon and assume nobody else does either. Also, there is about a 16:1 range for the amount of chlorine in municipal water.

Since there were some questions on Calcium Hypochlorite, here is the info:

Calcium Hypochlorite

Should you want a lot of chlorine based product, or want some that will not go bad any where near as fast, get dry calcium hypochlorite [Ca(ClO)2]. You should be able to get it from nearly any swimming pool or spa provider or a specialty chemical house. Swimming pool chemical providers often sell it labeled as HTH (for "high-test hypochlorite") or ?pool shock.? Make sure you are getting pure calcium hypochlorite with nothing else added, i.e. no anti-fungals or clarifiers, etc.

Pure calcium hypochlorite provides a minimum of 65% available chlorine. Calcium Hypochlorite is not hygroscopic (does not attract water), is practically clear in a water solution, and is a stable chlorine carrier. It is rarely available in small quantities so transfer it into smaller 1 lb plastic containers that can be tightly sealed. BE SURE TO CAREFULLY READ AND FOLLOW ALL HANDLING DIRECTIONS AND HEED ALL WARNINGS. It is always a good idea to be using calcium hypochlorite in an EXTREMELY well ventilated area, (i.e.OUTSIDE!). If calcium hypochlorite becomes contaminated by foreign substances it can cause combustion. Do not breathe the dust or get it in your eyes. This stuff is not Play Dough.

For granular calcium hypochlorite, 1oz = 50ml = 10.1 teaspoons

To treat clear raw water with 65-70% calcium hypochlorite there are a couple of ways to do it. If you want to directly treat the water with calcium hypochlorite use the following:

1 Gallon: add one grain, about the size of the period at the end of this sentence.
55 Gallons: add 1/8 teaspoon for a 5ppm solution.
400 Gallons: add 1 level teaspoon for a 5ppm solution.

To make a 5% chlorine solution to be able to use the drop method for disinfecting water, add and dissolve add ? teaspoon of 65-70% calcium hypochlorite to ? cup of water. This will decay at the same rate of purchased 5.25% bleach so don?t make more than you will use in a fairly short time.

Here is a detailed conversion chart for using calcium hypochlorite.

http://chppm-www.apgea.army.mil/documents/ChlorineDosing(fromDraftTBMED577).pdf

Remember, you want a residual, after treating, concentration of about 0.5 ppm so get some pdp test material.

Get a plastic ? teaspoon and 1 pint ? 1 qt plastic bottle and store with your calcium hypochlorite.

1 pound of calcium chloride will treat about 65,000 gallons of water at an initial 5 ppm concentration.

Calcium hypochlorite has the major benefit of extended shelf life. Providing it is kept dry, cool and in an airtight container, it may be stored up to 10 years with minimal degradation. If you want to keep chlorine in larger quantities or for a long time, this is the item to store.

All this and more in my (free and I'm not selling anything) Water Report ~95 pages. Send me an e-mail (pfwag@lycos.com) if you want a copy.

[Pfwag]

CRYPTOSPORIDIUM

Cryptosporidium, ?crypto? for short, is a widespread, water borne protozoa. If you get infected you get a disease called Cryptosporidiosis and you will get very sick but probably won?t die. If you get Cryptosporidiosis and have or catch nearly any other series disease at the same time, including ?regular? influenza you will probably die. However, if you get Cryptosporidiosis and Bird Flu, you will surely die.

In discussing Cryptosporidium, it is worth noting that there is a similar pathogen called Giardia, which is just as widespread, if not more so, and which causes Giardiasis and is another disease you do not want to be catching either. However, in the grand scheme of things, Giardia is not quite as bad as Crypto and any mediation efforts done for Crypto will automatically take care of Giardia. In fact, many of the efforts to eradicate Crypto will also take care of most pathogens, with the possible exception of a virus.

Cryptosporidium is already in the raw water of most municipal water supplies as nearly all surface water sources are polluted with Crypto and it is getting worse every year. Crypto has a life cycle where its eggs, called cysts, have a nearly impenetrable hard outer shell. In this stage it is VERY HARD to kill. As a result your municipal water source has added or increased the methods used to try to kill it and usually added additional and very extensive filtering to prevent it from getting through and coming out your tap.

Occasionally, however, something goes wrong and, as a result of Cryptosporidium, bad things can happen to a lot of people. In the Milwaukee incident, 400,000 people were infected, thousands hospitalized, and hundreds died. Many of those who were infected never completely recovered and have lasting side affects. Smaller Crypto infections are occurring with increasing frequency every year, including recent outbreaks in Nevada, Oregon and Georgia.

The reason you are even reading this paper is because you expect to be in a situation where the water coming out of your tap is suspect or there is no water coming out of your tap and most likely the alternative source of water that you will be using is polluted. If that water is surface water there is a high probability that it is already infected with Cryptosporidium. As the Milwaukee incident revealed however, it does not take an outside factor to occur for you to get infected with Cryptosporidium.

How hard are Cryptosporidium cysts to kill? As noted in Disinfection and oocyst survival ?Few commercial disinfectants are effective against the oocysts, nor is chlorination at normal drinking water treatment levels? and one study noted that ?long-term exposure to 70-100% bleach is necessary to completely eliminate infectivity? and ?3% chlorine as Na hypochlorite for up to 18 h does not affect viability.? Another report noted that ?crypto cysts suspended in 5.25% aqueous Na hypochlorite (full-strength Clorox bleach) for up to 2 h still initiated infection.?

For more information on Cryptosporidium, see: A Review of Cryptosporidiosis and Cryptosporidium parvum: an emerging pathogen

What will disinfect water of Cryptosporidium? According to the Army:
Chlorine: Ineffective, even at high CT values. (CT= Concentration X Time in mg minutes per liter)

Chlorine Dioxide: Effective at high CT values. If possible, use longer contact times instead of higher dosages to achieve adequate CT values. Colder water temperatures require higher CT values. Use a two-fold increase in CT for every 10? C decrease.

Iodine: Not Effective

UV: Effective at reasonable doses.

The bottom line for our emergency water scenarios is that there is nothing you can add to polluted water to be 100% sure of killing Cryptosporidium, despite what others may be saying. The only viable additive solution for our purposes that might POSSIBLY kill Cryptosporidium is Chlorine Dioxide, covered in the Chemical section, below.

However, all is not lost. Crypto can be killed with heat and is relatively easy to filter out of water. The heating methods are discussed immediately below and for filtering all you need is a mechanical filter with an absolute pore size of 2 microns, ideally 1 micron. This is covered in the Filter section.

When selecting a filtration system for Cryptosporidium, the system should have one or all of the following characteristics (Juranek, 1995):
? it can remove particles that are 0.1-1 micrometers in size
? filters water by reverse osmosis
? it has an "absolute" 1-micron filter
? meets NSF standard no. 53 for "cyst removal"

On the other hand, filters that have the following characteristics do NOT guarantee >99% removal of Cryptosporidium oocysts (Juranek, 1995):
? filters with a "nominal" 1-micron rating
? only employs ultraviolet light
? uses only activated carbon for filtration
? utilizes pentiodide-impregnated resins
? it is listed as effective against the Giardia species

All this and more in my (free and I'm not selling any thing) Water Report. ~95 pages. Send me ane-mail to get a copy. pwag@lycos.com

[rjprrt]

Re: Water and Chlorine

if you use clorox get the plain. do not use the lemon scented. use a dropper.
8 drops will completely clean the water. if you get the water from a dirty scource, such as a creek. let the water settle for a while, then pour into another container. add the clorox. after a few hours it is safe to drink.

[Speedbump]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Doesn't household chlorine degrade VERY rapidly ?

Something like losing 90 pecent of it's effectiveness over a year's time.

I'm trying to find something to store for water purification for my
fire department that.

1. has a long shelf life
2. doesn't require a special storage building and hazmat permits

So far we are using bleach, but I have to come up with a rotation plan
and how to get rid of what we rotate.

Anything better out there ?

We're semi-rural, so it's mostly a small lake, swimming pools and boxed artesian springs.

We have one deep well at the station, but i'm not counting on power for the pump.

[Pfwag]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Speedbump: look into two part chlorine dioxide. If you would like, send me an e-mail and I'll send you all the info I've collected on chlorine dioxide. It appears to be better in many ways than using chlorine bleach.

pfwag@lycos.com

[Pfwag]

Re: Water and Chlorine

I forgot that I previously posted the info on chlorine dioxide

http://www.flutrackers.com/forum/showthread.php?t=9398

That doesn't have all the links though. That section has over 30. I don't know why they don't automatically transfer over. I'm probably doing something wrong.

[Speedbump]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Speedbump: look into two part chlorine dioxide. If you would like, send me an e-mail and I'll send you all the info I've collected on chlorine dioxide. It appears to be better in many ways than using chlorine bleach.

pfwag@lycos.com

That's the stuff that beer brewer's use for disinfection correct ?

I'm definitely leaning toward storing that for both water treatment, and enviornmental decon after calls in the event of avian flu pandemic.

[Pfwag]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Probably so. One of the best prices I found for it was from a home-brewing supply company.

[Amish Country]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Hi All

My question is we have a very deep well. A manual hand pump, well tap or bucket are not options at this depth. If we are supposed to be preparing for a "18 month global winter" how to do it? A generator will need a lot of fuel for that period.

The stand alone solar options that I have seen so far do not work and play well with the rest of my appliances that work off the grid. Anyone have any specific solar suggestions? Yes a 3.5 horse pump with solar panels can probably provide us with enough water. My question is how to integrate it with an existing grid system? I do not want to risk frying my hot water heater or pissing off my spouse because he does not have shower water (preferably warm) because I forgot to flip a switch.

I would love to switch the house completely over to solar but can not handel the price tag at this time. It would be great to know how to do this with out putting out the cash for an inverter and yet have a practical home system that could be added on to with the goal of eventually switching the entire house over and getting off the grid.

My patient loving spouse see flu preparation as a quirk of mine and humors me accordingly.

In our house hold this is going to be a major out lay so we can not afford an "Oops!". We really need to get this right the first time.

[Solarpanel]

Re: Water and Chlorine

To run the whole house will cost between $18,000 to $22,000. There are small cabin system out there for $5,000 +/-. These systems will run a small effient ref and a few room of lights and a TV.

The amount of run time you get from a system depends on the number of your panels and the size of your battery pack.

Also the life of your batteries depends on the amount you draw from the pack each day. Use 10 percent of battery packs capacity and you get to recharge the pack 2000 times. Draw all the juice out of the battery pack each day and you might get 50 to 75 recharges (days).

I live in the corner of Georgia and Tennesse, my system has 10 panels (102 watts each), 14 batteries (12 volt deep cycle), a controller and a inverter. Total was $4500 plus a lot of sweat equity. The best I am planning on is running a small undercounter ref. and 4 room of lights and a tv for 4 hr. a night.

You hubby will not get his hot bath without heating water over a camp fire. You will get a lot of promises out there but not much substance.

[Amish Country]

Re: Water and Chlorine

Hi Solarpanel

It may just be my suspicious nature but I have heard some interesting "promises" out there too. Promises that make me think some of these firms might better be named "Catchem, Fleasem and Scram".

Your numbers sound right to me. Last time we had an audit done is was projected at about 23K to convert our home to solar. However, I think I can get a stand alone solar system without an inverter (with battery storage) for about 4K. If I do I hope to get several bladder tanks for additional water storage and to help maintain pressure between times the pump is run. My problem is how do I integrate it with my home on the grid? I can not seem to get clear answers from anyone on this. I feel like I am trying to mix water and oil.

What I want is for some answer that will automatically trip the well pump on when the pressure drops below a certain pressure and an alert to let us know that we need to back off water use cause the batteries are low.

Another problem seems to be I have to commit to going solar. I can not have a grid pump and a solar pump on the same well because two different pumps and different wiring is required for each.