Changed our house water filters today. They seem to be working.
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We are using dual 10" canisters with an additional filter set for drinking water. After seeing this today we really want to get a ceramic filter inline for the drinking water. You never know what the next stops water is going to be like when fulltiming.
-Sean
Fulltiming somewhere in the USA
1984 Eagle 10S
www.herdofturtles.org (http://www.herdofturtles.org)
yuck. that's why we have reverse osmosis. I'd love a ceramic filter. Water gets worse IMO the farther south you go
I changed mine when the housing froze and burst last month and after almost 6 months the filter still looked good. I think the water here has to be the best we've come across yet.
Will :)
Glad you got them changed out.
From an education standpoint, remember. Those filters will not filter out bacteria (I work in the water industry). RO removes most bacteria and viruses, but still not all (in practice, it is good enough). When we treat water on a large scale, we usually have to chlorinate (and acidify, depending on the PH of the water), if we have to remove bacteria.
That is why all of our drinking water is bottled....
FWIW
John
Will - We love the mountain water. Where are you at?
Scott - The reverse osmosis is great when you are parked but you'd blow through a bunch of water to get a 100 gallon tank filled on the road :)
John,
Good stuff to know. We have a separate water filter system (GE dual stage system) for the drinking water only that (supposedly) filters a whole bunch of other stuff like lead, cysts, mercury, etc and for the most part the water from that system tastes pretty good. We would like to put a ceramic filter inline with that drinking water system and hopefully that would get most bacteria and the remainder of whatever else passed through that might make us sick. I'm not afraid of bacteria (I've had the tap water in India :) ) I just want to make sure if its bacteria, viruses or chemicals that can kill you we are not drinking them in large quantities. A long, long, long slow death is preferred. I should get the water tanks tested and see what they have in them after 6 months on the road.
-Sean
Hey Sean,
You just knew that if the water is good, we must be in the mountains, I like that LOL
It's also cold up here brrrrr
Will :)
Yep everyone likes mountain water to include the bears, deer, fox, badgers, elk etc. Giardia is not a fun Bacteria especially in your stomach. don't ask me how I know. :P We drink bottled water and RO water we get at our local health food store when in town.
Bottled water can be worse than some tap/city water. I used to drink water out of springs, streams, rivers, beaver ponds, etc. all of the time when growing up in Washinton and never got sick, never even heard of Giardia until i was almost 50 and we came back from Maui. On the other hand i did get amoebic dysentery in Viet Nam and that was from water supplied by the U.S. Army. Never got sick from the water we drank in the mountains or the villages even though sometimes we had to use 2-3 iodine tablets to kill the critters we could see in the well water....Just had to add an extra Kool-Aid packet to kill the taste!
Ed when I say bottled water Sorry I don t mean the kind with the twist cap. It is pre filtered RO water in 2.5 and 5 gal blue bottles. When on the bus and at home we have a pump that sits on top that is battery operated. We just keep it in the pantry and push a button on top when we need water.
In the mountains the rangers told us that when an area gets over populated with animals such as those and in California the mountain lion population are through the roof. They do their business in or near the water then the rain washes it in to lakes and ponds then then giardia starts. I unfortunately drank from one of those lakes up there and the only thing that would get rid of it in your system after the doctors tried everything an old Indian friend told me to take quinine water or pills. I did and got rid of it. It was not fun.
Dave5Cs from Galaxy S III
Iodine tablets and cool aide with just a hint of agent orange, nothing beats that except maybe some SOS. JIm
We ALWAYS pack RO water for drinking and coffee etc. The tablets and koolaid or crystal light in spring or mountain water has been referred to by me and my friends when backpacking as "toxin aid". I don't do that in the bus. We have good drinking and cooking water and will not hesitate to put a "little" (maybe a lot) of clorox in the "fresh" water tank to get away from BAD water. Have only had to just give up and drain the tank one time in about 10 years with the bus. Just our way.
HTH
YMMV
Melbo
You guys are funny a stream won't have the Vinyl Chloride in it like the plastic filter housing,lines,chemicals the filters are treated with and with the plastic bottles a little bear pea maybe better for you "drink beer from a glass bottle" and live longer ::)
One never knows about bottle water I grew up in Houston I watched the Eurkea Springs or Ozarka water being bottled from the Houston water supply and most breweries use filtered surface water that is why Budweiser built in Houston they use water from Lake Houston and that is why I don't drink much beer
Me I just don't drink anything from a plastic bottle or cup I saw what plastics were made from in the 60's when working for Tenneco
yeah...RO wastes a ton of water...I won't lie. :-\
We have the commercial R/0 systems in the restaurants I think around 2000 gals a day they don't use much water very little waste the units just keeps circulating the water very little goes down the drain, the one in the house takes about 3 gals to make 1 gal of R/O drinking water
Strange everything in the restaurants is on the R/O system except the soda Coke will not allow R/O system water on their equipment tap water only
Interesting. Smart to reuse and filter the backwash. RO water is slightly more acid. Maybe that's why coke doesn't want it used thru their machines?
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk. Clumsy fingers may contribute to mistakes.
Scott,I like clean water don't get me wrong the problem I have we drink clean water but we swim and take baths in about any type water and it is proven your skin is like a sponge it absorbs about anything it comes in contact with and I just don't know if the R/O and bottled water is really the way to go
I read the labels on bottled water they take all the natural minerals out then come back and add a chemical version of the same as was removed.
I just cannot bring my self to pay the price of water that I paid for 5 gals of fuel way back when the moon was the size of a golf ball lol
One thing to be careful of with RO is that the membrane performance and life can be effected by ph depending of which membrane your use.
I am pretty happy with our water at home in general, but we do filter it for chemicals. We load about 10 gallons of that water for drinking/cooking when we leave. After that, I generally try to get water from those machines in front of the supermarkets. Since it is generally filtered city system water, it has supposedly had to meet legal standards plus the filtering removes much of the chemistry. From what I understand, city water systems meet much tougher standards than are required of bottled water. It is also a lot cheaper than bottled water.
Of course, if you are concerned about critters, you could boil your water.
Clifford, when we lived in the Imperial Valley our water came from the canal system. I would not even wet my toothbrush with it. However, you are right-- we did bath in it! There are always risks to deal with. Anyway, the county assured me that there was nothing to worry about. They were very helpful that way. Once we called to complain that our house was being crop dusted, and they told me not to be concerned because it was only the smell and not the chemical that was covering us,
Lin I have some swamp land I need to sell, Just saying, LOL ;D