Can Water Survive?
Will you survive the loss of water?
Series One Edition One
"Today in our advanced and modern society we believe we have to sacrifice everything including the water of this planet we inhabit (for the time being) in order to continue the "progress" and our so-called "welfare." We are rapidly destroying water's life-giving capacities. Increased population, industrial wastes and agricultural chemicals are contaminating our water sources. The citizens of our "consumer/waste" society have unfortunately lost all respect and deference for water and Mother Nature."
A quote from the "Nordic Living Water Systems" website.
The question is can water survive our consumer lifestyle? Can it live when we continuously try to kill the water that gives us life. So I guess the question is can we survive the death of water?
Water filtration is an option to many people, if not all people, depending on how you view water filtration. Purification of water is possible in various ways, including boiling the water, which will kill most pathogens, but will not remove the heavy metals and other toxins in the water. Sediment filtration removes some of the non-dissolved materials, and micron filtration will remove some of the dissolved materials, but until you use reverse osmosis do you really start to filter out heavy materials that are dissolved in the water. Distilling the water will further clean out salts and other bacteria, but it takes with it the dissolved materials. Ionization will remove other materials but leave some behind. Heavy particulates can be removed through the addition of salt (softened water), but then there is the added salt to remove. In all these processes there are problems that are solved, but many actually create their own problems that will have to be solved.
Taking a lesson from nature, there is a way to purify water, but it requires simulating natures own filtering system. As there is no perfect way to purify water, you have to accept water as it is, or take what the government will provide you with.
Or you can take the best of the rest and design your own system. First you need a water supply. The best supply of water is a well. The reason for this is that you can secure and protect a well supply, for the most part. Like any issue with security, it is only as good as your vigilance. If you sit on your security it will eventually be breached by some means. Always test you security, and that goes for any type of security you use.
Once you have secured your supply (the well) you need to access the water supply volume. You want to know how much water do you have, and is it enough to do what you want to do. You may have to adjust how you use water to fit the supply. What we are looking for is a fresh water supply. This means that you could look to using multiple water supplies for various operations.
Drinking water and potable water is that which you use for drinking and cooking purposes. You would also consider lavatory sink water as potable, as it would be used for drinking and brushing your teeth. So potable water is water that you will take orally into your body.
Wash water is that which you use to clean things. You could consider your body a thing in this case, but most people would not. This means you would use water that is potentially reused or filtered in some way to be re-used to clean your dishes, clothes, and yes it could even be used to clean your body. This is the secondary supply, and could come from a combined source. Every time you get a glass of water or brush your teeth, or fill a pot of water, do you run some water through the tap to get it to the right temperature, or just because that is what you do (clear the pipes, something done years ago when we had less than clean pipes). All this potable water running down the drain is going into the septic system and is wasted potable water. If you were to collect it and reserve it for cleaning purposes, you would save all that water. That is less energy, less water waste, and less your septic system has to work to get rid of excess water. So that is once source for the cleaning water. As you can see, this water is just excess potable water, perfectly good water just being run out for wasteful reasons. One way to prevent the hot water run, the most common reason people run out their water, is to install a on demand hot water heater, but that is another subject yet.
To make this work you need a storage system, that will store the water for future use. This means you also have to be very careful what you put down your sink. Think of it this way, your sink drain is the first source for your cleaning water, you don't want to put dirty water down your sink drain if you plan on using it for other work. Well really dirty water is relative. Some water is dirtier than other water. Without going into a whole bunch of definitions about water qualities, just assume that sink water should not include water that has been used except for potable reasons. Now you might ask about vegetable water, or pasta water, and I would say sure, there is no problem with that, but I can thin of a better use for those waters, but that may be too complex for you, if you don't plan ahead. In a whole energy plan, these issues are part of the entire energy plan, and are valuable resources for your energy plan, but this is not an energy plan, this is an article on water.
So, how do you store this used water. Now in the industry they have three types of water, potable water, gray water, and black water. In this article I introduce white water, which is the water that you use to clean with. Water goes down hill. Your drains must go down to operate without assistance. By this you know that your storage system must be low in the dwelling. If you have a basement, this is where your storage system needs to go. All the drains from all your sinks should connected to the filtering system used for white water. Why are you filtering it before it goes into storage? So that is can be pumped directly from storage already to be used on demand.
Yes this means you need an additional pumping mechanism. However the distance from head water supply to end use is shorter, so the pump does not have to work as hard or be as powerful as the one that brings the water in from your well. However pressure tanks do the same thing, and including one after the secondary pump will increase the life of the pump and provide your system with better service. Again it does not have to be as big as the main one.
So this will then have to be plumbed into the system to special service areas, such as your clothes washing machine, dish washing machine, and utility sinks, because you don't want this recycled water in your potable water system. The problem is that the storage system may run out of water before you can complete the task you need the water for. That and you may need hot water for some task, and cold water for other task. Well yes this is where the whole system gets complicated. This is probably why you will need a specialist to install such a system, because it does take some fancy plumbing work and the use of many recirculation loops etc..
What did I say recirculation loops? What is a recirculation loop. In this case the recirculation loop is a means to provide sufficient water for the task at hand, without adding additional water to the system. However a word of caution here, unless you want to include certain types of back filter systems, you will need to adjust your washing cycles to suit the supply of water in the white water system.
Well, now I am going to complete this, but for now this is all I got, the rest will come in series two, or three, or so on until I have provided all the info. I will cross post this on the Technoquest blog too.
Shameless Promotion
If you are looking for a great water system look no further than the Nordic Living Water Systems' Original Water Revitalizer (OWR) with many solutions to suit your needs, the OWR will provide you with living water, find out more today.
This is an unpaid endorsement, I receive no money for this, I just believe in what they are doing.
Peace,
James
Will you survive the loss of water?
Series One Edition One
"Today in our advanced and modern society we believe we have to sacrifice everything including the water of this planet we inhabit (for the time being) in order to continue the "progress" and our so-called "welfare." We are rapidly destroying water's life-giving capacities. Increased population, industrial wastes and agricultural chemicals are contaminating our water sources. The citizens of our "consumer/waste" society have unfortunately lost all respect and deference for water and Mother Nature."
A quote from the "Nordic Living Water Systems" website.
The question is can water survive our consumer lifestyle? Can it live when we continuously try to kill the water that gives us life. So I guess the question is can we survive the death of water?
Water filtration is an option to many people, if not all people, depending on how you view water filtration. Purification of water is possible in various ways, including boiling the water, which will kill most pathogens, but will not remove the heavy metals and other toxins in the water. Sediment filtration removes some of the non-dissolved materials, and micron filtration will remove some of the dissolved materials, but until you use reverse osmosis do you really start to filter out heavy materials that are dissolved in the water. Distilling the water will further clean out salts and other bacteria, but it takes with it the dissolved materials. Ionization will remove other materials but leave some behind. Heavy particulates can be removed through the addition of salt (softened water), but then there is the added salt to remove. In all these processes there are problems that are solved, but many actually create their own problems that will have to be solved.
Taking a lesson from nature, there is a way to purify water, but it requires simulating natures own filtering system. As there is no perfect way to purify water, you have to accept water as it is, or take what the government will provide you with.
Or you can take the best of the rest and design your own system. First you need a water supply. The best supply of water is a well. The reason for this is that you can secure and protect a well supply, for the most part. Like any issue with security, it is only as good as your vigilance. If you sit on your security it will eventually be breached by some means. Always test you security, and that goes for any type of security you use.
Once you have secured your supply (the well) you need to access the water supply volume. You want to know how much water do you have, and is it enough to do what you want to do. You may have to adjust how you use water to fit the supply. What we are looking for is a fresh water supply. This means that you could look to using multiple water supplies for various operations.
Drinking water and potable water is that which you use for drinking and cooking purposes. You would also consider lavatory sink water as potable, as it would be used for drinking and brushing your teeth. So potable water is water that you will take orally into your body.
Wash water is that which you use to clean things. You could consider your body a thing in this case, but most people would not. This means you would use water that is potentially reused or filtered in some way to be re-used to clean your dishes, clothes, and yes it could even be used to clean your body. This is the secondary supply, and could come from a combined source. Every time you get a glass of water or brush your teeth, or fill a pot of water, do you run some water through the tap to get it to the right temperature, or just because that is what you do (clear the pipes, something done years ago when we had less than clean pipes). All this potable water running down the drain is going into the septic system and is wasted potable water. If you were to collect it and reserve it for cleaning purposes, you would save all that water. That is less energy, less water waste, and less your septic system has to work to get rid of excess water. So that is once source for the cleaning water. As you can see, this water is just excess potable water, perfectly good water just being run out for wasteful reasons. One way to prevent the hot water run, the most common reason people run out their water, is to install a on demand hot water heater, but that is another subject yet.
To make this work you need a storage system, that will store the water for future use. This means you also have to be very careful what you put down your sink. Think of it this way, your sink drain is the first source for your cleaning water, you don't want to put dirty water down your sink drain if you plan on using it for other work. Well really dirty water is relative. Some water is dirtier than other water. Without going into a whole bunch of definitions about water qualities, just assume that sink water should not include water that has been used except for potable reasons. Now you might ask about vegetable water, or pasta water, and I would say sure, there is no problem with that, but I can thin of a better use for those waters, but that may be too complex for you, if you don't plan ahead. In a whole energy plan, these issues are part of the entire energy plan, and are valuable resources for your energy plan, but this is not an energy plan, this is an article on water.
So, how do you store this used water. Now in the industry they have three types of water, potable water, gray water, and black water. In this article I introduce white water, which is the water that you use to clean with. Water goes down hill. Your drains must go down to operate without assistance. By this you know that your storage system must be low in the dwelling. If you have a basement, this is where your storage system needs to go. All the drains from all your sinks should connected to the filtering system used for white water. Why are you filtering it before it goes into storage? So that is can be pumped directly from storage already to be used on demand.
Yes this means you need an additional pumping mechanism. However the distance from head water supply to end use is shorter, so the pump does not have to work as hard or be as powerful as the one that brings the water in from your well. However pressure tanks do the same thing, and including one after the secondary pump will increase the life of the pump and provide your system with better service. Again it does not have to be as big as the main one.
So this will then have to be plumbed into the system to special service areas, such as your clothes washing machine, dish washing machine, and utility sinks, because you don't want this recycled water in your potable water system. The problem is that the storage system may run out of water before you can complete the task you need the water for. That and you may need hot water for some task, and cold water for other task. Well yes this is where the whole system gets complicated. This is probably why you will need a specialist to install such a system, because it does take some fancy plumbing work and the use of many recirculation loops etc..
What did I say recirculation loops? What is a recirculation loop. In this case the recirculation loop is a means to provide sufficient water for the task at hand, without adding additional water to the system. However a word of caution here, unless you want to include certain types of back filter systems, you will need to adjust your washing cycles to suit the supply of water in the white water system.
Well, now I am going to complete this, but for now this is all I got, the rest will come in series two, or three, or so on until I have provided all the info. I will cross post this on the Technoquest blog too.
Shameless Promotion
If you are looking for a great water system look no further than the Nordic Living Water Systems' Original Water Revitalizer (OWR) with many solutions to suit your needs, the OWR will provide you with living water, find out more today.
This is an unpaid endorsement, I receive no money for this, I just believe in what they are doing.
Peace,
James
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