We all know that there are some places where one simply does not drink the water. That’s fine for vacation. But what about a more long term stay? If there is water coming out of the tap, but you wouldn’t drink it, would you feel clean after taking a long bath in it? Would you cook with it? What if it stinks of sulfur (i.e. rotten eggs) or worse? What about brushing your teeth with a bit of e coli? Who wants to brush their teeth with live bacteria? What do you use to wash your hands when they have a few scratches on them? In the long run, how would you cope?
Yep, this showed up at one of our houses along with a notice stating that repairs would occur about 5 months later. It really does make a person reconsider how much we take clean running water for granted.
Boiling
How does kettle boiling work in day-to-day life? You get out the kettle and started boiling water, of course. But there’s a process to it. Boiled water needs to go into something that can hold hot water (a pan for example) for about an hour before it can be transferred to large glass jars, jugs, or whatever else one might have sitting around waiting for the occasions when the water supply goes bad. From there, that cooled off (when it is finally cool) water needs to be rationed between the bathroom (for tooth brushing, wound care, pre-food handling hand washing, and anything else that arises), the kitchen (for vegetable and fruit washing, drinking, cleaning, rinsing, and adding to recipes), and elsewhere (pets). No one has that many pans in their house, and thus is becomes an assembly line of sorts, and if – just perhaps – you don’t remember to turn that kettle on 5+ times (probably closer to 10) per day, you’re going to run into trouble. I gave up on eating healthy for a little while and reverted to frozen pizzas – because at least those didn’t need to be washed before eating. I’m not proud of that little known fact.
Camping and Boiling
The above notice stated that we only had to bring our water just to a boil, but in more primitive situations (such as camping) in which getting and maintaining a boil is a bit more difficult – it is recommended (by everyone I’ve ever met that didn’t get sick in the woods) to boil water between 5 and 10 minutes at minimum just to make sure.
What are better (i.e. less time consuming) options?
What any frugal person would do – find a spring/well that’s not contaminated and schmooze the land owner to let you visit it now and then – that and drink a lot of well-boiled tea.
Additives – There are several things that can be added to water to decontaminate it – iodine and chlorine come to mind. I’m not a fan of the second one – or cancer – hence not being a fan of the second one.
Filter jugs and personal filters – depending on if the type of contamination can be filtered out. These can be bought or made by the seriously determined.
What any consumer would do – order water delivery.
What any serious consumer would do (and not the worst idea if you want to take a bath without worries) – get a whole house filtration system installed that will deal with your specific area’s water issues.
What any somewhat insane traveler would do – attempt to adjust like the natives. You might want to check the local health problems and life expectancy rates before trying that one. Just because the natives are drinking the water does not mean that it’s not killing them.
What we did – Aside from a combination of some of the above, we turned the thermostat up on the boiler. I would fill the bath full of burning hot water. Then I would wait an hour or two for it to cool off to the point of making a decent bath instead of cooking me alive. The theory was that nothing was likely to live in water that hot, so the bath would be as sterilized as it was going to get. There is some science to the method and some blind faith – at different temperatures different bacteria do die. Apparently, if you use your hot water enough you might sterilize the house pipes to a certain extent anyway, if research is to be believed. However, the water in the tub never was quite at the boiling level, so something may have survived.
Natural Expat 