And I don't mean paying the annual water charge. We have the mains water for washing and general use and a deep well for drinking and cooking water. Recently the well pump seized, it was close to twenty years in use so it owes us nothing anyway, mains water tastes awful so we had no alternative but to buy large bottles of water for tea making and drinking.
I decided to avail of the opportunity to rebuild the pumphouse which includes a rewire job. Most of this work is done, we are waiting for the doors before calling in the plumber to install the replacement pump. I find the idea of buying water in Ireland to be completely crazy. It rains here almost as much as it does in Scotland.
Life is full of new experiences.
Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. [Albert Einstein]
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
Comments
i've visited lots of places around mainland UK (is that term offensive to Irelend, I'm never sure, correct me if it is?) & only Bath comparable in taste. maybe it's a chalky thing?
& i lived in a little village (south downs) that ran off their own spring, which was also amazing, but offgrid obvs not a usual option.
worst was Maidstone. very plasticky. & most of London tastes tinny.
btw plastic bottled water to be avoided long-term because the plasticisers can end up in the water over time. re chlorine, have you tried boiling off &/or letting it stand overnight. supposed to help?
is your pump to your own well, or is it just to get it from the mains/reservior to your house?
The best water is in Iceland. I've drunk from the streams that feed straight off the glaciers. Absolutely wonderful.
The pump I refer to is a private well and it supplies our house only. The well water is high in lime and is sparkling clear. No idea where the mains water source is, it might be Louth Owel. You make an interesting point about plastic bottles, we will have our own well back in operation soon.
Nil Satis Nisi Optimum
Phthalates (try saying that after you've had a few )
Thing with desalinated water is that it needs to be blended with 'normal water' or re-mineralised, otherwise it RO's your guts - plenty of idiots on the interweb promote drinking desal water with no blending! So it will taste like the blend water or a glass of Andrews salts. Chlorine is an extra flavour treat on top of the natural taste of the water, but you would rather that than a dose of crypto. As you say, Iceland glacial water is probably as good as it gets, but we get a pretty good pure taste up here in Mid Wales.
Water Co's are putting a lot of investment into transferring upland water into lowland supplies at the moment to tackle to taste complaints. Also using UV rather than chlorine to stop the swimming pool taste issue.
Did you know.....a few years back Coca-cola tried to set up a Coke distribution network, yup direct to your home on metered connection so you could get fizzy acid from your tap. This is the company that tried to sell desalinated tap water without re-blending it (it's illegal to sell tap water on, even more illegal to poison people with desal). Still, the Desani brand is going strong in the good old USofA. Watch out brexiteers here they come.......
...and I'm not even going to mention Nestle, oh I just did.
Brita filter helps loads but I get lazy with it haha.
Im just outside London and the mains is drinkable but seems to give me stomach aches sometimes as well as not tasting as nice as bottled.
i'm a terrible water snob tbh. super-fussy about it. but water quality is such a fundamental thing, so essential to health, that is so often overlooked, whereas things like fad dieting & dubious unecessary vitamins (anything multi-dollar corporations can hype & plug) get disproportionately more coverage.
a good liver (don't drink) & a good water supply & a good sweat a few times a week (gym or bedroom) can achieve far more in terms of detoxifying your system that a bucket load of crank antioxidants taken every day for a lifetime. but the stuff that generates profit & tax always gets the headlines.
get well soon!
Remember, it's easier to criticise than create!
Go Berkey, your life will change.
And yeah, don't get me started about Coke & Nestle - the shit they try and pull to effectively bottle so much water it causes shortages and then sell that water back to people...
Security of supply is the biggest thing to get right. Chlorine dosing is base on what they call breakpoint dosing, so you put the minimum into supply based on a residual reading. Get this wrong and you have to shut down the supply (using an instant response valve on the supply line), this can cause issues so they look for continuity of supply solutions. UV offers the opportunity to run a standby set of lamps in the event of duty failure, so you never lose the supply. We used Ozonation on some plants but O3 is pretty deadly, you have to destroy any that is not used in the process. The Ozone destruction plant were beautiful to watch, sparking plasma, but the cost was extortionate.
The biggest problem with chlorine - and any chemical - is handling it on site. All large water works which use it have air raid sirens which go off if there is a leak and windsocks so you know which direction to run. UV is a nice neat package plant with standby and no chemsafe procedures to worry about. We had a few OSEC plants, which generate Chlorine on demand electrostatically (Salt + water + electricity) but they were prone to blowing up.
my knowledge base comes largely from refinery ETPs and large scale demin plants so I don’t know the can/cannt of the potable world.