How To Purify Water You Didn’t Think You Could Drink

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How To Purify Water You Didn’t Think You Could Drink

On a fundamental, biological level, water is the most critical, ingestible resource for survival of most any organism, including humans.
The average person engaged in average activity in a temperate climate can live for three days without water. No exceptions. It’s also a fact that the average person requires at least a half-gallon of water a day to maintain functional health. This can vary depending on age, weight and activity but stands as a viable average. Any less begins to compromise certain biological systems.
But it’s not just about water as a liquid for life. It’s about water as an ingredient in cooking, bathing and personal hygiene – not to mention a needed sustenance for animals, from dogs and horses to chickens, pigs and other livestock. Plants also require water but we generally hope that natural water resources such as rain or irrigation will suffice.
This article focuses largely on scalability. It’s not about constructing a solar still to squeeze a pint or two of water out of the ground on a daily basis. It about collecting water from both existing and found sources and effectively purifying it.

Water Collection
Perhaps the most reliable source of fresh water is natural precipitation. In most parts of the world, rain and snow are consistent and predictable. Your ability to capture and store natural precipitation should be a fundamental part of your water strategy.

The most common method involves the use of rain barrels connected to downspouts and gutters on the roof of a structure. You could also create water capture areas using tarpaulins to catch, collect and direct precipitation when rain looks eminent.

Snow is essentially harvested with a clean shovel and a bucket and then placed into either an environment above freezing, or over a heat source. The good news is that freezing temperatures inhibit bacterial growth. The bad news is that melting snow or ice takes time and is usually done in small quantities.
Bodies of Water
Another source of water is provided by lakes, rivers, creeks and springs. Unlike precipitation which is relatively pure when first collected, these water sources will often require varying levels of filtration and purification. A possible exception is a cold water spring, but even then a certain level of filtering and purification is wise.

The unique value of any water source that has a current such as a river, creek or spring is your ability to use a “ram” pump to collect and pump water to a collection point. This requires you to be in relatively close proximity to the water resource, but we often choose locations for a homestead based on this dynamic.
Wells also serve as a reliable water source, assuming you have a system in place to pump the water to the surface. This could include a hand-pump, a windmill-powered pump or an electric pump. The challenge with any electric pump in an off-the-grid environment is electricity, but solar power and windmill power is an option.

Be careful with any assumptions about your ability to generate and store enough electricity to power a well pump. Many well pumps have a very high initial draw on power up to 1,000 watts or more, and if you can’t generate or store that amount of wattage, the well pump will never engage. There are lower wattage well pumps designed for solar and/or DC applications that could simplify this situation…..More Here

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How To Purify Water You Didn’t Think You Could Drink