Save Your Water
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This is a guest article by Albert Bates Adapted for The Automatic Earth from his Financial Collapse Survival Guide and Cookbook (Kindle, 2008) “
[See the full post at: Save Your Water]Since living in the high desert is even more critical for the availability of water for irrigation and animal as well as domestic use, we decided that our “Retirement Place” should have a well. Further, last year we added a solar pump that can supply about 200 gal/hour should we need it. In all lifeboat situations, one must plan on a priority basis. Water is at the top of that list.
A very useful post, thank you very much for all the excellent information, and the reminder of how important pure water is to our survival.
Where I live in Canada (British Columbia), we have an enviable supply of fresh water, but the utter disregard for conservation is appalling. Until very recently, Victoria and Halifax have been dumping all their untreated sewage into the ocean every day; the Tar Sands are not only laying waste to huge swaths of land, the devastation also extends hundreds of miles downstream, all the way to the Arctic Ocean; BC has just issued free permits for literally billions of liters of water, to be mixed with undisclosed (but certainly not benign) chemicals and forced underground for gas fracking operations. And on, and on … all of our glaciers are retreating too, but the 1% seems totally oblivious to any thought that this can’t go on forever.
In our area ( central victoria-australia) there is no need to boil water collected from our roof. The author posts a wonderful article but some aditional info on the risks from roof collected water would need to be provided and may relate to more polluted areas. Cities may collect heavy metal and other toxic particulate matter but more remote or forested areas would be less at risk.
We don’t boil the water from our roof either here in New Zealand. It does go through a filter though. One of those osmotic filters I think you call it. In fact, no one I know boils their rainwater from the roofs. I’m curious why this author thinks it necessary, other than being exceptionally cautious. Maybe it depends on where you live.
Anyhow, as someone who used to be dependent on city tap water, I simply love having my rainwater supply. It tastes a lot better. I was interested to read in this article that rainwater is considered superior to well water. I also just love the independence of sourcing my own water. I don’t think I’d ever wanna go back.
There’s a couple of reasons for considering boiling or otherwise disinfecting rainwater collected from a roof. Despite a “first wash” being discarded, there may still be bird feces washing off the roof. Different roofing materials may hold onto feces for longer (wood shingle, asphalt shingle, versus metal sheeting), and feces can carry pathogens & parasites.
Another reason is the gutters themselves can harbor bacteria and mold, which also holds the potential to make a person ill.
Then there’s the debate about roofing materials themselves releasing chemicals into the rainwater that may be bad for you, but no boiling or disinfecting will take care of that issue, except maybe reverse-osmosis or distillation, if that. FWIW…
Yes, I know birds shit on the roof. And things can die up on there too! But honestly, I’ve never heard of anyone getting sick from their un-boiled rainwater supply here. And there are literally thousands of rainwater collection tanks being used over decades here. It’s just something I’m curious about more than anything. I need to learn more about water and food independence. Thanks for the article!
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