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#1
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Beautiful rain
0tterbot wrote:
i feel confident that the massive majority of water in australia is fit to drink (including the crunchy water from my dam, As someone who bicycle toured through great areas of this country, I felt that way in the 70's, but now I am much more caustious. That wonderful little brown pill you could take to cure delhi bellie is no longer around and the knowledge of an increasing range of long term diabilitating 9sp?) diseases is worrying. To be blunt, we have a hell of a lot more "arseholes" spreading diseases around as our population has almost doubled(?) over that time and we now have agricultural wonders such as feed lots that despite all they are suppossed tyo not do, can do a very good job of concentrating certain pathogens that overwhelm a normal watercourse's cleaning methods. I've taken to filtering everything these days. Waterhsed information for me was that polar bears in the artic are contaminated with the old style cooling oil used in power transformers. Problem was there are no power transformers scattered throughout the artic. turned out this nice, lethal chemical was going through successive evaporation, deposition cycles to wind up on artic tundra vegetation to be eaten by browsers to be eaten and acculmulated by polar bears, erk. Modern chemicals are wonderful. . it irks me that incompetent bureaucracies (e.g. most local councils) get to make these decisions from a completely irrational base (the nsw govt 360 degree turnaround on rainwater tanks being one minute banned outright in cities, & the next encouraged, is the sort of thing i mean). Absolutely no argument there. |
#2
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Beautiful rain
"Terryc" wrote in message
... 0tterbot wrote: i feel confident that the massive majority of water in australia is fit to drink (including the crunchy water from my dam, As someone who bicycle toured through great areas of this country, I felt that way in the 70's, but now I am much more caustious. :-) that's because you're more informed, not because anything has really changed much ;-) i don't disagree with anything you've said whatsoever - my point is only that if it's "safe" to breathe the air & grow crops in (for e.g.) sydney, the rainwater must also be "safe" because all the systems are connected, not seperate. shrug if the rainwater's not safe to drink (& while i'd not feel entirely keen to be drinking sydney rainwater as compared to mine here, i'd still logically consider it as safe as the tap water, seeing as how it's essentially the same stuff!!) then it mustn't be "safe" to actually live there, either. my point is that ultimately, it's exceedingly rare for any water anywhere in australia to be likely to make one sick in the short term (which i suspect is all that councils were talking about - they're probably not talking about multi-generational damage to dna or anything like that). in the long term, we all know now that all of us have chemicals in our bodies & in other systems which shouldn't be there, and might be harmful, which we didn't put there ourselves and would never choose to have in a million years. however, panicking about it now won't help either - it doesn't achieve anything. i'm pleased that this and related issues are finally getting the notice they deserve. big issues aren't served well by dim-witted local councils, though g snip I've taken to filtering everything these days. right, but you don't filter your soil or the veggies you grow, because you can't. you're making a net benefit to your household and everyone else in the world by the garden being there, though. and i think that is the more important & more positive thing. honestly, if people in cities don't want to drink their rainwater, that's fine by me. but, it seems an odd distinction on balance. shrug one other thing i do find annoying (not about YOU ;-) is water-panic in the legislative populace. grey water is the main one - people seem to treat the subject with an element of near-hysteria i find frankly mystifying. rain water comes second. i was interested to read recently that one MUST have a flush-diverter for "safe" rainwater. we don't have one of those (although i do want one, to keep the tank cleaner, but we don't have one yet). but our water tastes great, doesn't make us sick, and doesn't make guests sick (any effects we're immune to through exposure would show up in a guest, yes?) and is as clear as a bell. thousands of years' worth of rainwater drinkers would be mystified to discover they "needed" a flush diverter all along, wouldn't they ;-) i think the truth of things is that once there's a "product" where none previously existed, the combination of capitalism and fear of litigation makes powerful people lose their minds. one example of this would be microbe warnings on potting mix. i don't doubt there are people out there who use potting mix while wearing a hazmat suit and gas mask - yet these same people very likely muck about in the dirt without any "protections" at all, despite that garden soil clearly contains (amongst other things) legionella, e-coli, tetanus, etc not to mention the possibility of heavy metals, other carcinogens & christ knows what. the only difference is that you can't sue the earth if you got cat-scratch fever or tetanus, and you can't attach a warning to a back yard. :-) if polar bears are contaminated with coolants, one can only speculate what we & our soils are contaminated with - so worrying about city rainwater _in particular_ doesn't really rate when you think about it imo. this is the sort of broader theme i was pursuing in my statement. by all means we must always take care of ourselves & others. equally, worrying excessively about small pieces of a bigger puzzle just doesn't help anyone. fixing them helps, though - which is a broad thing to be doing, not a micro-managing, fuss-pot, local-council thing. i really don't think we disagree here, terry! kylie |
#3
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Beautiful rain
0tterbot wrote:
one other thing i do find annoying (not about YOU ;-) is water-panic in the legislative populace. grey water is the main one - people seem to treat the subject with an element of near-hysteria i find frankly mystifying. Well, mistakes happen you see and if someone screws up on a valve in the sewerage water recycling to drinking water plant, URK!. My 2c is there is nothing wrong with a dual water quality system; low quality, consisting of recycled sewearge water and collected stormwater, for gardens and toilet flushing and high quality filtered for drinking, cooking and showering. |
#4
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Beautiful rain
"Terryc" wrote in message
... 0tterbot wrote: one other thing i do find annoying (not about YOU ;-) is water-panic in the legislative populace. grey water is the main one - people seem to treat the subject with an element of near-hysteria i find frankly mystifying. Well, mistakes happen you see and if someone screws up on a valve in the sewerage water recycling to drinking water plant, URK!. eek! although i did mean only in a home-situation (you know, where to direct your grey-water goodies, and how, and so forth). My 2c is there is nothing wrong with a dual water quality system; low quality, consisting of recycled sewearge water and collected stormwater, for gardens and toilet flushing and high quality filtered for drinking, cooking and showering. yes, me too. although i do feel doing it on a home-by-home basis is probably better.... hm. particularly in light of your comment above. kylie |
#5
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Beautiful rain
0tterbot wrote:
eek! although i did mean only in a home-situation (you know, where to direct your grey-water goodies, and how, and so forth). If I could get a economical underhouse water bladder, then I would consider doing greywater recycling. |
#6
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Beautiful rain
"Terryc" wrote in message
... 0tterbot wrote: eek! although i did mean only in a home-situation (you know, where to direct your grey-water goodies, and how, and so forth). If I could get a economical underhouse water bladder, then I would consider doing greywater recycling. i'm not sure how big your garden is, but if it's of any size, i can guarantee you'll be glad you did ;-) there's also the possibility of doing the whole thing for free in a non-council-approved form, but of course i can't recommend such a thing g kylie |
#7
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Beautiful rain
"0tterbot" wrote in message
i was interested to read recently that one MUST have a flush-diverter for "safe" rainwater. we don't have one of those (although i do want one, to keep the tank cleaner, but we don't have one yet). Those flush diverters also remove a lot of water that could be going into your tank. We don't have one and never have and when I asked a firend about his, he was very dismissive of it because by the time it was full and ready to allow water into his tank, the shower had often passed on and he was not getting the run off into his tank. He eventually disconnected it. |
#8
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Beautiful rain
"FarmI" ask@itshall be given wrote in message ... "0tterbot" wrote in message i was interested to read recently that one MUST have a flush-diverter for "safe" rainwater. we don't have one of those (although i do want one, to keep the tank cleaner, but we don't have one yet). Those flush diverters also remove a lot of water that could be going into your tank. We don't have one and never have and when I asked a firend about his, he was very dismissive of it because by the time it was full and ready to allow water into his tank, the shower had often passed on and he was not getting the run off into his tank. He eventually disconnected it. I put in 3 (my own design) the gunk that is in the bottom after a rain event is quite disgusting. Mine are just lengths of 90mm plastic pipe recycled from the tip. Takes about 0.2mm to fill them, so there is not much waste. Had to pump another 8000 litres into the cooling tank to make room for todays 30mm after yesterdays 29mm. So the shower will be running on 100% rainwater instead of 50% rain & 50% bore water. Jim |
#9
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Beautiful rain
On Fri, 30 Nov 2007 18:12:29 +1100, "FarmI" ask@itshall be given
wrote in aus.gardens: "0tterbot" wrote in message i was interested to read recently that one MUST have a flush-diverter for "safe" rainwater. we don't have one of those (although i do want one, to keep the tank cleaner, but we don't have one yet). Those flush diverters also remove a lot of water that could be going into your tank. We don't have one and never have and when I asked a firend about his, he was very dismissive of it because by the time it was full and ready to allow water into his tank, the shower had often passed on and he was not getting the run off into his tank. He eventually disconnected it. I have one and I have made it more inefficient because my tanks are full all the time. though I only have 5000litres of storage I just cannot use the water quick enough. At least the tanks are clean inside. If you live in a city or town I think the diverter is a very good idea. Regards Harold Tantum religio potuit suadere malorum - Lucretius |
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