Is rain water drinkable?

nobodythere

I'm just wondering if rainwater is drinkable without filtering? I.e. is it pure h2o that falls from the sky? If it was collected in a bucket would it be drinkable and if not what's the simplest method of filtering it?

Maccattack

its water aint it.

Webmonkey

Normally you could drink rainwater without becoming ill.
However, rainwater contains pollutants, soil, plant parts,
insect parts, bacteria, algae, and sometimes radioactive
materials that the rain/snow has washed out of the air.
If filtered with one of the filtering systems that you
can buy in stores nowadays, and then boiled, you could
probably drink the water safely. However, it is safer yet
to get your water from municipal water supplies or from wells
that are frequently tested.

Capt'n Midnight

don't drink the rain collected on your roof too much junk on roofs like bird droppings, lead, tar, dust etc.

Supercell

grasshopa wrote:

I'm just wondering if rainwater is drinkable without filtering? I.e. is it pure h2o that falls from the sky? If it was collected in a bucket would it be drinkable and if not what's the simplest method of filtering it?

No.

Buy a filter.

nobodythere

Thanks, I was just curious what with the coming end of civilisation and all

netwhizkid

My Aunt recently had their well Water tested in the Lab and she added in a sample of Ballygowan too to the batch and she found it contained much more germs than did her well water. :eek: As for rainwater, I'd say run it through a Brita filter or some sort of filtration device anyway as the amount of muck that is floating around up there is unbelievable.

rabidspud

from what i hear its safe. just the container its accumulating in is usually the problem. And since the water isnt treated its a much more hospitable environmenr for bacteria so amek sure its fresh and not accumulated over a long period

old boy

rainwater collected in a plastic container was always considered distelled water, ie direct from the heavens.

nobodythere

Is this gunky rainwater from our destruction of the environment or is it a natural thing?

po0k

It's weak carbonic acid.

robnubis

Boiling water removes most things that can harm ya, i mean in the end, its waht humans all drank at one time before water plants.

Just boil then filter it, and keep it chilled.

Pocari Sweat

grasshopa wrote:

I'm just wondering if rainwater is drinkable without filtering? I.e. is it pure h2o that falls from the sky? If it was collected in a bucket would it be drinkable and if not what's the simplest method of filtering it?

Depends how you collect it in the bucket and is the bucket made of a food grade plastic? If it is a new bucket and you want to wait till the next heavy shower and put the bucket out direct under the rainfall, then as long as a passing bird does not shiit in the bucket and the rainfall is heavy enough to give you a couple of inches, then you might have a pint or two. Probably lucky to get a pint though.

Most tap water is sanitised and checked by the local sanitary authority for a minimum number of times a year both at source and at given sample points at end use.

Check monitoring and audit monitoring tests along with bacteriological testing are done regularly on over 99% of private and public supplies to meet fairly strict EU drinking water directives.

There are 53 set parameters they test in public supplies and regular audit tests assess the most common 20 parameters - stuff like; odour, colour, taste, turbidity, pH, nitrates, nitrites, iron, manganese, heavy metals, hardness, alkalinity, ammonia etc.

As long as yer tap water is properly chlorinated, and a scheme serving more than 6 houses, ye are usually grand.

City schemes have their own water filtration plants and on site labs doing regular strict tests.

A bird shiiting in yer bucket, ain't quite the level of strict monitoring the public supplies get put through.

Put a reverse osmosis filter on to your chlorinated tap feed, for anything from 300 euros, and you have a level of purification that will guarantee to beat the bucket method all year round for quality and it would be both better than bottled water for quality and cost at a tenth to a quarter of the net bottled water costs from year to year.

tyney

I got an r/o system, 3 tubes, 1 in, 1 out, 1 drain. can't believe everyone doesn't have one. apart from the number of empty plastic bottles produced by the bottled water brigade, you get to cook with it as well. It's hard to believe people make up babies bottles with boiled tap water. I know boiling kills the bugs, but it's the floating stuff that bothers me.

Pocari Sweat

If you are going to boil water, make sure it boils for a full five minutes, anything less will not fully do the job.

netwhizkid

Pocari Sweat wrote:

If you are going to boil water, make sure it boils for a full five minutes, anything less will not fully do the job.

Would this not be a phyrric effort, Boiling the water is ultimately contributing to Co2 emissions unless you have your own Turbine etc. Wouldn't drinking Rainwater this way be totally not worth it?? Maybe doing more damage than good? What is wrong with Mains water anyway, I think it is perfectly fine.

Of course if you are one of those people you yearn to go off the grid and try to be self-sufficient. In which case boiling Water to drink would be ok as long as it wouldn't be using electricity from a Diesel Generator. You could also boil it on a wood stove and be carbon neutral.

Pocari Sweat

Yeh distilling water is another American kitchen trend that is a bit OTT.

Don't boil raintank water if you want regular potable use from it. Just get a UV steriliser, granular activated carbon cylinder and reverse osmosis filter with ceramic final cartridge post RO.

This combo produces ultra pure water, no boiling.

nobodythere

My grandparents alway had a big rainwater tank out their back, and they're happily alive into their 80's.

I think we all go overboard on the hygiene sometimes

Pocari Sweat

Yeh true. If you get a regular dose of e.coli in your raintank water, you probably will develop immunity, but young ones, the elderly or infirm, guests and visitors who are less accustomed to higher levels of e.coli may not take to it too well.

Supercell

Pocari Sweat wrote:

Put a reverse osmosis filter on to your chlorinated tap feed, for anything from 300 euros, and you have a level of purification that will guarantee to beat the bucket method all year round for quality and it would be both better than bottled water for quality and cost at a tenth to a quarter of the net bottled water costs from year to year.

Do you have any links for a quality reverse osmosis filter that you would use yourself?
Other question does it remove the chlorine from tap water?
I'm very interested in this, I've exzema (also had asthma) and noticed that drinking bottled water has considerably reduced the level of flareups and has pretty much wiped out my asthma (admittedly giving up smoking has probably had a large amount to do with that, but havent returned at all anywhere near astmatic rates before smoking, barely have it at all now).

Anthing that reduces the potential allergens is welcomed!

Pocari Sweat

Longfield wrote:

Do you have any links for a quality reverse osmosis filter that you would use yourself?
Other question does it remove the chlorine from tap water?
I'm very interested in this, I've exzema (also had asthma) and noticed that drinking bottled water has considerably reduced the level of flareups and has pretty much wiped out my asthma (admittedly giving up smoking has probably had a large amount to do with that, but havent returned at all anywhere near astmatic rates before smoking, barely have it at all now).

Anthing that reduces the potential allergens is welcomed!

Yeh, an RO usually has 2 carbon pre-filter stages, dedicated to chlorine removal, and including the membrane (4th stage usually) which does not like chlorine too much but gets rid of finite traces anyway and a 5th stage carbon polishing filter which can also act on any infintessimal traces, a 5 stage RO is the perfect machine for this - the ultimate chlorine remover of any filters on the market.

The first carbon pre-filter removes about 95% of the chlorine concentration and the second carbon pre-filter removes 95% of the 5% left over by the first carbon filter. The 4th stage (membrane) therefore is protected by this level of chlorine removal and probably gets rid of the bulk of the remainder, which means the 5th stage carbon filter has a few atoms of chlorine left over.

I should note, the Health Boards, EPA and EU, allow only a tiny amount of chlorine in water fed to houses at a level ideally between 0.1 to 0.2 ppm for it to be effective as a sanitiser but with an upper limit of 0.2 ppm.

Lime in water on the other hand can exist in hard water at levels of anywhere from 200 to 500 ppm and would be unable to be detected by the nose and only slightly detected by tasting at these levels.

People with keen smell and taste can often detect some difference in water potability with chlorine levels at 0.1 to 0.2 ppm but most people would soon notice anything more than this especially the sort of wafts of chlorine you get in swimming pools which are hyper-chlorinated at a level of 2 ppm (ten times the upper drinking limit.)

So most water that is properly chlorinated at say 0.1 ppm, safely under the limit, which is passed through an RO, will probably end up with levels of chlorine at well under the parts per billion scale, maybe a few parts per trillion.

PM me and I can give you details of the best 5 stage RO's on the market, which range from 300 to 500 euro DIY systems.

gingerGiant

My water comes from a group scheme and every time a tap is turned on you can smell the chlorine immediatly. Much stronger chlorine smell than I ever get at any swimming pool. The water is impossible to drink because of the strong chlorine taste.

Also when I have a hot shower I tend to feel very sleepy and groggy for up to 20-30 minutes after never really bothered me until i realised it never happens when away from home. Could it be that there is such a high chlorine concentration in the steam that it is making me sleepy, it would get into your bloodstream much quicker when inhaled through steam than if you drank it. Is chlorine in it's gas form chloroform.

Also the water is very high in lime when you fill a glass of it from the tap it kinda looks like milk after about five minutes it will go clear. we haven't used this water for drinking or cooking for over a year would it be safe to use, currently getting water from an untested source and using it as are a lot of the neighbours. Live in a very rural area

any advice welcome

Pocari Sweat

From what you said about the smell of chlorine, it is certain that the group scheme administrators have not trained up the bloke who monitors and doses chlorine via the chlorine dosing pump to the scheme water.

Any people nominated to do they refilling and dosing of chlorine in any schemes, private or public, have to go on a course and are then paid by scheme funds to do their job right.

Often it is a quick earner for them, they don't go on the course and don't have a clue or can't be arssed. This sort of thing is now becoming a criminal offence with new strict EU drinking water directives, so I advise you to track the monkey down who is risking public health on your scheme, and getting paid for it.

Chlorine is dosed as a dilute hypochlorate into drinking water, the same as Milton Fluid, but at a much weaker concentration. Milton is about 2% hypochlorate and the scheme chlorination should be diluted down before dosing via a finely tuned chlorine dosing pump which pulses fine squirts through tiny jets into the stream of pressurised water based on a feed back from a telemetric water meter, so concentrations are exact and between the 0.1 ppm to 0.2 ppm level.

The chlorine exists as a chlorine ion in the water or "free chlorine" and has a sanitising effect on bacteria without being as much a risk to health as bacteria ultimately could be.

You mentioned a white cloud appearing in your poured glass of water which disperses after about 5 minutes.

This is probably air in the water supply or the oxidising effects of too much chlorine. When the glass is poured, the white cloudiness is millions of fine oxygen / air bubbles, that are too small to fight their way up to the liquids surface immediately and take a few minutes to find their way up.

Free chlorine is unstable in water in open containers, and disappears at a fairly fast rate, leaving sterile and drinkable water behind it.

The rule is, if you can smell chlorine, then don't drink water with levels you can detect. Taste is another issue but goes hand in hand with the smell.

gingerGiant

Have talked to the group administrators and to the guy who puts in the chlorine they showed me the machine for putting in the chlorine and told me how it works which was just as you described, have been discussing it with them for a couple of years and getting nowhere they insist everything is as it should be and that the chlorine is been put in at the correct rate as the containers of chlorine last the correct amount of time for the amount of water that has been pumped, both of which are monitored by both them and the local county councils. the scheme is quite large and supplies customers in two counties so both councils allegedly monitor it. It was also upgraded a couple of years ago and the problems only got really bad since them, before the upgrade they did not have a automated method of putting in the chlorine, so it just did not get done.

Anyway i am researching getting a well drilled as they simply will not sort the problem out. Got the water tesed for bacteria etc once. Guy said it was cleanest water he ever seen and wished his own water was like it.

Does any one know does high leves of chlorine in water have any negative health effects.

Pocari Sweat

When concentrated, chlorine is obviously toxic and more so the higher the concentration. But at the levels found in drinking water it is not an issue.
It is not a long term highly carcinogenic toxin like many heavy metals found in well water like arsenic (not a heavy metal but included as a constituent to the group), Cadmium, Lead etc. Aluminium is a light metal but is now included in the water tests for heavy metals due to its toxicity and effects on the nervous system.

Water is far more dangerous if left unprotected by chlorine. Things like Legionellum causing Legionaires disease will easily kill a person in a short period of time, and other nasties will make you seriously ill, such as cryptosporidium, clostridia, faecal strep, high levels of e.coli etc.

The worst outcome of chlorine in water is when overly high dosing reacts with organic substances found in water, to form byproducts called trihalomethanes, or THMs.

Trihalomethanes are reported to cause rectal and bladder cancers and miscarraiges in pregnant women, and as such are far riskier than chlorine alone.

As chlorine is a low cost and effective disinfection agent at low levels of concentration, it is the most widely used, but if the ammonia or organic content of the water is high, then the water may have an appreciable "chlorine demand" and a higher chlorine input may be needed to achieve a given degree of protection. So there is a catch 22 involved with organics found in water especially organics that colour the water and therefore the THM problem.

Which water did you get tested for bacteria?

gingerGiant

Got the group scheme water tested for bacteria obviously it would not show up when there is chlorine in the water but sometimes maybe 2-3 times a month it would go for a day or so with no smell of chlorine so i figured the chlorine was running out and the guy was not replacing the empty container with a new on immediatly. I took a sample at one of these times into a sterile jar provided be the Lab and brought it to them obviously there must have been chlorine still in the water. The schme administrators also told me the scheme's water supply is often found to be polluted with coliforms and that when they get a high result for this they increase the amount of chlorine.

What started my concerns was, that a family member who lived in Dublin during the week and at home at weekends used to complain that at weekends as quickly as an hour or two after having their first meal at home they would start to get cramps in their stomach and chest these would remain for the weekend, they would however be gone by Monday evening having returned to Dublin Monday morning.

We eventually decided that it could be the water possibly bacteria that was causing this as had eliminated other things and decided to buy water for that person at weekends to see if it solved the problem. This went on for a number of weekends and the person had no cramps when drinking the bought water at home. So i decided that water was the problem

After this i took the sample got it tested as i assumed it must be bacteria causing the problem when it came back clear i then began to think could the chlorine be having that kind of effect, also stopped using the water as if it is causing those effects to someone then it may not be that good to drink.

Have not had the well water we use tested yet but only use it after boiling strongly for at least 8-10 minutes, I know this would not remove heavy metals etc, but it would kill most bacteria. Do plan on getting it tested and have only been using it about a month before that used to bring water home each evening from a house i spent a good few months doing up in a town with a good water supply.

Oldtree

Have you tried rain water harvesting. you may have less problems with it. The filters required were outlined on a previous thread. The main problem pointed out to me was cloriform contamination by birdies, which your body would get used to but you would have to boil water for use by your guests. A 80 litre tank takes care of all our drinking and cooking needs throughout the year. And the water has no chlorine taste, which I can now taste in bottled water.

Pocari Sweat

Bottled water should not be chlorinated, instead all sources of bottled water, usually borehole, are monitored for coliforms and have ultraviolet sterilisation before they are bottled, still with sell by dates as uv effectiveness although ultra high at point of bottling, still may leave microscopic traces of bio risk far below health board limits, but later at risk of development, because of lack of chlorination.

Rain water tanks usually need to be in the order of 5,000 to 10,000 gallons capacity, in order to avoid being emptied in periods of drought such as the last three months we have just encountered. Average household use of water is tracked by the EPA in Ireland as approx 40 gallons per person per day, or 160 gallons per household, so in three months the average household will use up to 15,000 gallons and some houses more.

Oldtree

Interesting, so the aftertaste i get with bottled water isn't chlorine. I had presumed that it was. I wonder what it is? It is a subtle chemical taste that isn't in my rain water.

My barrel is 180 litres not 80L, oops. and hasn't been empty for the last two years, except when I wash it out, before a major downpour to refill it. that does cooking and drinking water only, for a family of 3.

The Bollox

grasshopa wrote:

I'm just wondering if rainwater is drinkable without filtering? I.e. is it pure h2o that falls from the sky? If it was collected in a bucket would it be drinkable and if not what's the simplest method of filtering it?

technically every liquid is drinkable, it's just not advised to drink most of them. I am sure that in a few years the boffins will tell us water is bad for us because...

they already took the sun from us, they are going to take water aswell

Pocari Sweat

Maybe in a few years they will tell us that boffins are bad for us.

vector

You can use it to water plants for sure http://www.sydneywater.com.au/SavingWater/RainwaterTanks/

and if you are careful you can drink it too
http://www.health.nsw.gov.au/public-health/ehb/water/pdf/rainwatertanks.pdf

Pocari Sweat

Informative article on rain water for drinking. Even advises to avoid scalding yerself when boiling the water!