The Science of Water

[B.L. craft]

We have a number of natural springs in the hills around here; there are no water sources above them and I drink from them untreated regularly. I always have done in the welsh hills if I'm high enough up. We're also on our own private borehole and the water is pumped up 100m - it is the cleanest tasting clearest water you will find and totally untreated; I cannot drink tap water from towns and cities - the taste is disgusting.

Have done the same in Wales and in Scotland years ago when I was in the Military, we just dropped a sterilising tablet in if we weren't sure. Now most of my water is filtered and it's sweeter and better than the tap water in Chester.

When I was on a Combat Engineer 1 course part of the syllabus was water supply both bulk and personnel, for the bulk we used chlorination sets with pumps and personal use we use the Milbank bag.

There were certain tests we had to carry out at water sources one of them was to check for the usual parasites etc; but the other was for bone oil. Bone oil occurs in mountain streams especially were there are flocks of sheep. If a sheep dies or falls into a water course and dies it pollutes the water, the bone oil is highly toxic and that was drummed into us, always check the water source in mountains.

I also had a blood test not long ago that looked to see if I had any parasites and pathogens in my blood, the Dr did the full spectrum and the results were negative, because I regularly drink filtered water from our club lakes he wanted to make sure I'd not picked up anything causing me a digestive problem, unfortunately I have IBD as it turned out and wasn't anything I had consumed in the sticks.

Interestingly most water I have come across never had a bone oil problem so it wasn't an issue. The other test we did after cleaning the water was a Neutral red test, this was to make sure chemicals were not present, however, most tap water in the UK is not to Military standard so it always failed and that's water supposed to be clean via the water utilities.

 

[TLM]

bone oil

From WP: "It saw limited use as a chemical warfare harassing agent during the desert campaign of World War II. The oil was used to render wells undrinkable and thus deny their use to the enemy.[2][3] By not being lethal, the oil was claimed to not be in breach of the Geneva Protocol."

It is apparently the result of pyrolysis of bones. Do some sheep self pyrolyse?

 

[grizzlyj]

Without wanting to start another thread, I was recently looking at a small water filter, the Lifestraw. It does not remove virus but somewhere I read this is not an issue because you will know if the water you will be filtering will have virus in it or not.
So are there parts of the UK/world where you could safely assume there are no virus, or is that a bit of a daft question?

 

[SaraR]

you will know if the water you will be filtering will have virus in it or not.

All natural waters contain viruses. Lots and lots of viruses. So I guess this statement is true, in a sense. ;D

Now if we're talking pathogenic viruses and in the UK, you're probably mainly looking at Norovirus and a few other suspects, so you might be ok if you don't take water from downstream any diffuse or point sources of sewage water, so downstream of towns, farms etc.

To be on the safe side, you'd want to treat your water after filtering, for instance using UV, boiling or purification tablets.

Still talking about the UK, you also want to avoid collecting water downstream of old metal mines and their spoil heaps. The levels of lead, zinc etc are still very high in many streams and rivers downstream of historic mining sites.

 

[Herman30]

Here´s my waterfiltration system.



Left to right:
Hydrapak with BeFree filter.
Millbank filter.
Foldable cup to fill Millbank with.
Water pump for occasions when water is hard to reach to.
Orange pack pouch for the stuff.