I have been notified, very politely I might add..

bgott · Jul 16, 2003

If you think you need to have your water tested call a state university and see which school does it. The subject never came up when I lived in Florida but in California, where I'm originally from, you could send water samples to UC- Davis and get them analyzed for free. As screwed up as most state budgets are nowdays they will probably charge but you stand a good chance of it being cheaper than a private company.

Hakim · Jul 16, 2003

Cindi,

Yes, the best system for purification in your home is a reverse osmosis system. Sam's Club and Costco usually have very good quality units -- for around $150. You can install yourself -- most likely thousands less than those "water purification companys" who test in your home and scare the bejeesus out of you.

We have used RO for several years. It is the best and most complete filtration you can obtain without going to very great expense.

Get a plumber to install if you need to. Shouldn't charge more than $100-200. We got ours to run a line so it filled the ice maker, too!

The exact same thing that we paid about $400 for, installed, was quoted to us by several water company outfits, for $3,000 to $12,000, believe it or not. Watch it!!!

Gary_in_Indiana · Jul 16, 2003

I admit to being one who buys bottled water by the case (literally). I keep a case in the back of my Tahoe year round. I haven't had one pop open and leak yet because I check them and vent when need be. I also try to keep one out at my barn because I have no well there as yet. When I'm working or driving somewhere hours away and want/need something to drink, whatever I paid for that bottle of water seems real cheap right then. /forums/images/graemlins/smile.gif

r0GuE · Jul 16, 2003

Nobody ever seems to mid paying 1.70 for a plastic bottle full of brwn sugar water. But if you buy perfectly clean and ice cold water in a bottle, you are a spend thrift. I buy water like that al the time at convienience stores. My company gives out free pop (soda to you southern folks) and I don't touch the stuff. When I worked in Germany they had a pop machine on the plant floor. When I bouht a bottle, a guy RAN over to me and grabbed it. It took a while for me to understand what he was saying,.... they use the pop to loosen rusted bolts. Mmm Mmm...

As for the purification salesman.... I'd bet he never found some water that he couldn't find a problem with. That is what salesmen do.

Good luck!

Egon · Jul 16, 2003

Re: I have been notified, very politely I might ad

Lots of places where people will only drink bottled water as the tap water may contain too many undesirables.

Over the past few years one town in Ontario had seven deaths and hundreds sick after a lapse in water treatment control. Another town in Saskatewan had several deaths for the same reason. There were many Boil Water notices issued for other towns.

Chlorine reacts with organics in the treatment process with a side effect that may leave carcinogentics in the water.

We are on town water and have a reverse osmosis system under the sink that supplys all our potable water.

Egon

MikePA · Jul 16, 2003

...that I have begun to stray off topic with some of my posts. Now that I look back over them and compare them to others, I see that that is glaringly obvious, so I will try very hard to limit my posts to rural issues and/or tractor related topics. 
Hi Cindi,

You might want to consider creating your own weB LOG (BLOG). I do not know all that much about them, just that they are personal Internet sites where people log anything they want on any topic they want. Kind of like an online diary although they're described as 'a personal publishing tool. Here's a link to one such service. At $5.00 a month it would appear to be a rather inexpensive vehicle for publishing those non-rural/tractor related messages. /forums/images/graemlins/cool.gif

kubotasaurus · Jul 16, 2003

Re: I have been notified, very politely I might ad

Egon and others - distilled water is not good for your health as it is demineralised. If you drink it over a long period of time you will basically be leaching minerals out of your body - yet another example of osmosis at work.

Much better to just have it filtered. And if there is really a problem with viruses or bacteria then whack on a UV light with an alarm system in case the UV bulb blows.

I just have a filter and softener on my well for what it's worth - the softener is a Kinetico model 60.

kubotasaurus · Jul 16, 2003

Re: I have been notified, very politely I might ad

Just a note on pesticides. I've been told that boiling is an acceptable way to get rid of these as they are more volatile than water and the boiling will drive them off. I'm not sure I'd want to do it though - and especially not for my family.

My father died of a type of cancer that they linked to his exposure to agricultural pesticides. Not something they could directly link, but one of those cases where the cancer was very common among farmers who used the old cattle dip formula in the 50s.

Lets face it, pesticides are weapons of mass destruction for bugs. There has to be something in those news reports from Iraq that said they were getting false positives for WMDs from pesticides...!!!

CountryBoy · Jul 16, 2003

Re: I have been notified, very politely I might ad

( distilled water is not good for your health ) /forums/images/graemlins/smirk.gif

I have drank it for years. Why ? Because we have salt in our water and that is the best way I know of to remove salt from the water. No problems here,our doctor has never advised us against it.

itsmecindi · Jul 16, 2003

Is that what a blog is? I wondered about that. Thanks Mike. I do have a couple more outlets. When I started writing on the internet, I used the pseudonym C J Mouser. Which is really just my name. If you do a web search for it you can find most of the other posts. I do tend to get carried away, and have to be reminded to 'stay on topic' occasionally, which is a good thing, because the general banter in a forum like this one is a great tool with helping me find new material. I'll check out that blog thing. Thanks again!