Unorthodox freshwater acquisiton ideas I have (serious discussion)

[John61CT]

Grow site?

 

[highdesertranger]

yes Guy. that one pumps enough air for one person. I have one of those, on my other water pump the compressor pumps enough air for 2 divers. highdesertranger

 

[bpdchief]

It amazes me that you can be arrested for setting up a rain catchment. Heard of several arrests for it in Washington and Colorado....

 

[John61CT]

Yes, at least on your own property one would think that would be a pretty fundamental human right.

 

[Weight]

In some jurisdictions water is treated the same as any other mineral. You can own the surface and I can own the gravel. Or the water district uses a ditch instead of a pipe to move their product. Here in the east, my state owns all the water. Underground, rivers, ditches, lakes, ponds, and puddles. As well as the ocean out 3 miles. There are complicated rules and permit processes to use water. This came about because some rich guy tried to pump the pinelands water to Phild.

 

[highdesertranger]

whiskey is for dinkin, water is for fightin. highdesertranger

 

[Trebor English]

drawing from pristine/clearwater streams, rivers and lakes

Just because water looks clear doesn't mean it is good to drink.  Boiling or chlorine are effective against bacteria and viruses.  Protozoa, which include Giardia lamblia and Cryptosporidium, are parasites likely to give you diarrhea.  Protozoa envelop themselves in a protective cyst when they encounter chemicals like chlorine and iodine. This cyst is sufficient to protect them. Microfiltration can remove protozoa and they can be killed with boiling, 5 minutes, and ultraviolet.  

Things dissolved in water like salt or lead require completely different methods like distillation.  Most pesticides can be removed with activated carbon.  

A couple of thousand years ago ethanol was used to keep water from going bad.  If you start with good water some barley and yeast will preserve it.

 

[ArmorAbby]

Agreed... regarding the little fellas... Ive had dysentery.... it would be impossibly disgusting to go through that while vandwelling..

Sent from my SM-N920T using Tapatalk

 

[Schwoebs]

Wow, people have been killed over water in the United States? An extended shower is not worth my life. For drinking and cooking water I'll have 5 gallon jugs filled from the pure water dispenser.

The Western Slope of Colorado has separate water courts just for cases involving water rights.  Yeah, desert SW takes water very seriously.  Depending where you are, there are often municipal water works that sell water quite cheaply in bulk.  For instance around Montrose, Colorado:
http://www.tricountywater.org/dispensers.htm

 

[NoMadYesHappy]

Colorado JUST legalized rain water catchment this year (even off of your own property), but it is limited to 55 gallons (I think?).

RE: Suction pumps, you can only lift (suck) until PSIA on the suction side reaches zero (a delta of 14.7 at sea level). Once you hit zero, there's no air left to suck out, so no more lift can be gained. That, variably, works out to something like 33 feet or so of lift. 33' IF you can reach a perfect vacuum (which isn't likely without sophisticated hardware like cryogenic or diffusion pumps, etc.). Pushing is different. If you can submerge the pump and "push" it up the hose, then the limitations are related to horsepower and pump efficiency. PSIA becomes moot for the most part.

Without intending to ignite a discussion on the duration of human habitation on the planet, we obligate bipeds (and every other living organism on the planet) have been drinking from lakes, streams, rivers and rain for a very long time. I see it like sushi, sure, there's some risk in it's consumption, but it's just so tasty! Just be careful, and avoid high speed lead poisoning wherever us humans have become possessive about "their" water.

 

[John61CT]

drinking from lakes, streams, rivers

Wow is that irresponsible!

There are very many locations in the US where doing so would be very risky, and not only near population centers.

And lots of nasty toxins are odorless, tasteless, and from far-upstream contamination many decades ago.

Might not kill you right away, but you sure don't want your habits causing long-term buildup with very nasty results a decade later.

Of course local knowledge is a great thing, as long as it's real knowledge, not just some random "common sense" from someone who thinks the EPA wasn't created for very **very** good reason.

It's coming out now that as many US citizens have died as a result of our nuclear testing in the southwrst as Japanese did from our A-bombs.

And many times that have suffered terribly from cancer without being killed by it outright.

Be careful out there folks.

 

[NoMadYesHappy]

Wow is that irresponsible!  ...

No, it's not irresponsible, nor the end of the world ...

Don't drink out of streams that  cows (or people) have defecated in, don't drink out of rivers that have a factory dumping waste into it upstream (much less common in the US today than back in the 50s and 60s), be smart ... and, I agree, be careful, but freaking out over surface water is a bit of an over reaction.  The water today, in the US, is cleaner than it has been in decades...FAR cleaner than probably ANY other country in the world!

I'd drink right out of a high mountain stream with my trusty 40 year old iron cup in a heartbeat and love every cool drop of it.

I'd NEVER drink out of the Colorado river down where y'all have been camping without treating it properly. But, I'd drink it after treatment just as surely as I would mountain stream water.

I grew up without seat belts, the cars had metal dashboards, I rode my bicycle at breakneck speeds without a helmet, I ate dirt from the back yard as an infant, I drank out of the hose (and lakes, streams, rivers, etc...) and yet, I still live.

Amazing but true! 

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Don't drink out of streams that  cows (or people) have defecated in, . . .
I'd drink right out of a high mountain stream with my trusty 40 year old iron cup in a heartbeat and love every cool drop of it . . .

It's not only cows and people defecating you have to worry about.  It is any body of water with pooping animals in its watershed.  Giardiasis is very unpleasant and can be life threatening.  Climbing rangers advised us that the snow in the Alaska Range was observed to be infected and that we should boil all meltwater.

When I was young I would drink directly from the lake in the BWCA.  That ended when one of my group contacted giardiasis (commonly called Beaver Fever or the Hershey Squirts).  It was an extremely unpleasant two days out for all of us and a serious medical issue for the sufferer.  Since I have either boiled or filtered my water; it's an easy precaution.

It doesn't affect you until it does.

 

[John61CT]

Relevant article from NYT on a "raw water" trend I kid you not.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/dining/raw-water-unfiltered.html

Pure BS sales pitches from science denying charlatans.

growing up I believed in our ever-increasing knowledge, built upon generations of humans devoting their lives to improving our shared wisdom & insight

I'm now thinking we're doomed.

 

[Travelmonkey]

Relevant article from NYT on a "raw water" trend I kid you not.

https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/12/29/dining/raw-water-unfiltered.html

Pure BS sales pitches from science denying charlatans.

growing up I believed in our ever-increasing knowledge, built upon generations of humans devoting their lives to improving our shared wisdom & insight

I'm now thinking we're doomed.

I tried but couldn't get through the entire article b/c I was laughing too much...  Raw water for $15/gallon?  And $6/gallon for a refill?

 

[John61CT]

People with way too much money, some looking to create the next silly trend and make more billions, others looking to spend on it.

That Juicero fiasco should have led to that idiot getting banned for life by VCs.

 

[John61CT]

A better treatment of the "raw water" scam, without the Times false equivalence "balance" granting the scammers credibility

https://www.washingtonpost.com/amph...raze-heres-why-drinking-it-may-be-a-bad-idea/

 

[bullfrog]

bump

 

[future_vandweller]

>I know of no 12 volt pump capable of meeting your requirements of 100' suction

that's because it is impossible for a suction pump to lift water beyond about 33 ft, since the atmospheric pressure at sea level can't support a water column that is more than 33 ft tall.  Upping the pump's voltage to 120 V, 1200 V, or more won't fix this.

 

[John61CT]

Jordan Klepper, funny take on the raw water scammer