[Fissure]

We talk a lot about making water in the wild safe to drink, but what should us urban dwellers do? We have to worry about various chemicals and feces/urine ending up in the water supply. If you're in the middle of a city with 1 million people ... the water is going to get very dirty, very fast, if for some reason sanitation services were cut off.

[stairman]

Im on a deep well but still use a water dispenser that heats or cools the 5 gallon bottles I fill myself at the filtering site. $1.50 for 5 gallons of reverse osmosis water which I think is the best method. I had a Culligan water softner sales lady test the bottled water I use and she said it was way better than what came out of my tap. I have several Nagene bottles I fill up and rarely buy pre-bottled water.

[Ron Fontaine]

Even with a well you have to be careful. Several years ago I was at someone's camp in the pristine Vermont countryside. They had a well near the home. After taking a drink of water from the tap, I commented on how it tasted a bit like sewerage.

"Can't be", the owners exclaimed. Taken aback by my observation. This is fresh country water straight from our well!

After several more glass fulls of their "fresh water" I resolved to bring in my own water, taken from a nearby spring.

Later that summer they had the water tested after I pestered them about it 100+ times. Turns out, their septic system was draining through cracks in the bedrock directly into their well.

[cowgirlup]

Originally Posted by Fissure

We talk a lot about making water in the wild safe to drink, but what should us urban dwellers do? We have to worry about various chemicals and feces/urine ending up in the water supply. If you're in the middle of a city with 1 million people ... the water is going to get very dirty, very fast, if for some reason sanitation services were cut off.

Short term, you should have water stored and can tap into water heaters.

Long term could be rough. Depending on the area you might be able to save rain water or melt snow in winter.

Look into getting a really good purifier. I've been checking out the Berkey systems lately.

[Ron Fontaine]

Feces and urine can be dealt with by basic filtering and boiling for zero minutes.

Without complex and expensive equipment it can be difficult to remove all chemicals that may be encountered in areas of industrialization.

A good method is to set up a rainwater collection system, though rainwater can be somewhat polluted from particles in the air.

Distillation is another possibility though it is fuel intensive and may not remove all chemicals.

[stairman]

Thats terrible. For that reason most septic drain fields here are built up on a mound. But yeh, you never know whats draining into your underground river. Your neighbor could be draining his motor oil on the ground etc. We only bathe and wash dishes/clothes with our water which I had tested a few years back and may get it done again. Id love to run a camera down my well and see what the condition of the sump might be.

[crashdive123]

Originally Posted by Fissure

We talk a lot about making water in the wild safe to drink, but what should us urban dwellers do? We have to worry about various chemicals and feces/urine ending up in the water supply. If you're in the middle of a city with 1 million people ... the water is going to get very dirty, very fast, if for some reason sanitation services were cut off.

Well, some might consider the city I live in urban (good mix of urban and rural I guess), and there are about one million in the area.

I store about 200 gallons of drinking water. If I have advanced warning of something (hurricane or other possible calamity on the way) I add to that.

[kevin]

Originally Posted by Ron Fontaine

After taking a drink of water from the tap, I commented on how it tasted a bit like sewerage..

give new meaning to the phrase "this stuff tastes like s#!T"

[willyboy]

PUR makes a water cleaning system " Clean drinking water Kit" .You can also reorder the chemical package kit to use it again

[Baldninja]

First off, I can't believe a well would be close enough to a septic tank that the sewage from the septic could potentially leak into the well water....that's just wrong on so many levels. If on septic and well, they should always be at least 100 feet from one another, to ensure things like that don't occur. Sometimes it's safest to go beyond what the government regulations require, this is one of those instances.


As for making polluted urban water safe to drink: I know you can filter just about anything out of water using nothing more than layers of sand and charcoal. Keeping an old 50 gallon steel barrel around for this purpose would be a wise idea. All you would have to do is pour the water in the top of the barrel and let gravity do the work for you. You want to have at least 3 layers each of sand and charcoal, with each layer being at least 10 inches deep. You would still also need to boil the water, either before or after putting it through this filtration process. A hole in the bottom of the barrel would then allow the water to exit after passing through the multiple layers of charcoal and sand. Any fabric could be used as a screen to keep any sand and/or charcoal from exiting along with your water....obviously with the thicker the fabric, or multiple layers of thinner fabric, being better at catching more debris.

Rain water collection is always an option, but you never know how long you may go without rain, so it isn't a reliable source of procuring water.

Also, you can pretty much always dig for water and then filter debris out of that. There is always a water table, it is only a matter of how far down you will have to dig to reach it. Obviously, the farther down you have to dig, the less likely there is to be pollutants in the water, as the ground itself acts as one of the best filtration systems on the planet.

EIDT: If you can't find charcoal, I believe charred wood can be used as an alternative, though I'm not sure if it is quite as effective. The boiling process should catch any impurities left behind by using this rather than actual charcoal, though.