Purer Water
Purer Water, not pure water! Sounds a bit strange, but let me tell you why I took the name of Purer Water! Absolutely pure water is extremely corrosive, has no minerals, gases or other things except hydrogen and oxygen. If you ever studied chemistry you would have been acquainted with various ionic forms of a compound. There are 18 different variations of good ole H2O and it just wants to dissolve or absorb nearly everything it contacts. When it does, it is no longer pure and the container to hold it becomes a problem. Often some of the container will dissolve into the pure water. The one thing to remember is the closer water becomes to pure, the more aggressive it becomes as a solvent.
Purer Water is something that can be reliably achieved to be safe for human use. But "how pure does the water have to be?" you may ask. Well the answer to that question is where the world of water consumers, water treaters, lawyers, scientists, medical researchers, toxicologists, chemists, environmentalists, politicians, news announcers and the uninformed start to clash. Everyone seems to have an opinion and insist they are the only one with the correct answer. There are chalk lines to trip over and hurdles to jump that are considered "gold standards" for governmental agencies to accept as reasonable for the inherent or potential dangers and risks.
In this country, the presumption of "no problem exists unless injury is proven, akin to presumed innocent" is the basis of most regulation. In Europe and other parts of the world, the opposite position is taken, namely if there is any risk, it is to be eliminated immediately and the manufacturers and users must prove the product's safety before it is used.
Recognizing this major philosophical difference on controversial chemicals and pollutants, the consumer has the option to move much faster than the government and courts. This freedom of choice is a nice part of living in this country. We are fortunate to have information easily available so we may make our own informed decisions as to what we want for ourselves. As a good engineer, I listen, learn your goals, and use what makes the best sense out of all the options I have to design and build a system.
Each application has different requirements. If water is prepared for injection into a human or other animal, it will need to meet certain FDA standards. Now that injectable water will be the demise of a high pressure boiler found in many large processing plants, electric generating stations, naval vessels or nuclear power plants. The conditioned and treated water that meets those boiler needs will be extremely lethal to animal and vegative life. The water used for a boiler is destructive to evaporative cooling towers used in air condition systems because these towers need a different water quality to be economical to operate. Aquariums and plant growth waters also need to be correct for their application.
However all the waters mentioned above could be used to flush a toilet, not very economically I may add and not in large quantities because it will affect the "Away Place". The "Away Place" known as a waste water treatment plant cleans those waters for discharge back into the environment such as a stream or your private septic system. I hope you can see by this example the whole water cycle needs to be addressed, as well as the consumer's water need satisfied.
Most people in the USA think of their water as tap water, the stuff that comes out of the kitchen faucet or the shower head. That tap water is properly named "Potable Water", meaning you can put it in a pot, prepare foods and injest it by drinking it, washing foods, clothes and bathe in it safely. It is what you are to have in your house, office, store and factory. The safe tap water, or potable water distribution system withing your building is often called "Domestic Water" by some people, or you may simply know it as the hot and cold water plumbing lines.
Protection of the potable water is a major concern of the plumbing codes which are laws about the health and safety of this vital and needed resource. The plumbing code is written and adopted into law to safeguard the potable water system inside and outside of your building for your health and safety and that of the public. Your plumber is tested, and trained on the codes and their updates. The wise buyer will only engage a licensed plumber to touch their vital potable water system and keep it safe and clean.
Potable water may be sourced from either a "city" type of source or from your own "private" source that could be a deep or shallow well, a lake, pond or spring, stream or cistern. Potable and non-potable water systems are prohibited to be cross connected.
Now some people have a concern about their potable water coming from a source that was polluted or it just tastes bads or looks ugly. Just think of that little cycle I described a few paragraphs above. Yes ground or well, even collected rain water is recycled and things are found in it, some caused by man, some by nature, some good stuff and some not always good for you stuff. So "how pure does the water have to be?" becomes the question.
Part of the answer becomes apparent when we examine the routes of poisoning into an animal like oursleves, our pets, livestock and vegitative food supply. The biggest transfer of things dissolved in water is trans-dermal, meaning the transfer of things through the skin. The second largest route of exposure is inhalation, meaning breathing in the vapors and airborne particles of those things we want to avoid. The smallest amounts of stuff are through ingestion, or drinking or eating.
Surprised? Most people think the injested foods and liquids as the biggest route to toxin exposure! Not really, you have far more skin area that will absorb stuff like a sponge, and that is why skin patches for nicotine and other drugs are so effective. A skin cut is pretty serious too since it is direct into the bloodstream. But if the water has a lot of those bad bacteria and other cooties, drinking it will be pretty dramatic and you will be quick to respond. That cause/effect speed becomes the experience for most people, when in fact a slow low level poisoning is taking place by the other routes of exposure often goes un-noticed until the big cancer or other feared medical word suddenly pops up.
So the apparent answer to the contamination question now becomes how much can be tolerated, and for how long, and in what dosages? The governmental approach that is taken is that you can have a little bit of the bad stuff and still live, and some people may be seriously affected.
We know now that we really cannot get and keep absolutely pure water, there are things that just get into the water that we have little or not control over, and that it can get into our bodies in many ways. So here comes the EPA and the Drinking Water Standrards to say things are great if you meet their published standards. Now just how did those levels become established and for whose benefit.
Understand the EPA Drinking Water Standards were established as a legal standard in cahoots with the Federal Water Pollution Control Act, as amended. The need occurred because the courts and others required a ruler to measure acts of people to decide the merits of a case. This legal standard is the result of political types who established the standard and the standards setting mechanisms based upon what they could grasp and accept as the proven effects of many things that end up in the drinking water. Needless to say, the public hearings used to set the standards offered many perspectives, consequences and forecasts, with some businesses and groups successfully lobbying for one thing or another.
At the end of the day, some level of contamination was defined as being safe and acceptable for the citizens of the USA and are published at http://www.epa.gov.safewater/contaminates/index.html
Also recognize the standards are based upon a public water supply (city) installing the treatment equipment and processes that can economically achieve a result for a very large volume of water. You, the consumer have a much smaller volume problem to address with your process equipment and higher water qualities can be resonably achieved.
Also recognize defintions that are provided in the standard as safe are great if you are a water supplier and you meet the "legal" standards. The standards also apply if you are a homeowner or business owner who has their own private water supply from a well, stream, pond or lake. For the private water supply owners, meeting the "legal" standards becomes very important when you want to sell your property or face a claim in court. You get some help if your product, potable water, has those listed things at or below the levels prescribed in the Drinking Water Standards.
So what does Dan offer as Purer Water? The solution is different for each person and application, but the answer is the same. The answer is a system that meets a defined water quality objective, effectively based upon water sampling and testing. A system design without sampling and testing is a pure guess.
Dan stops by and takes his own samples and runs some wet and dry chemistry tests. For certain chemicals, toxins and biological agents, an EPA registered laboratory is used. Multiple samples may be needed and tests repeated to get a handle on the variation. Wells and streams often have a greater variance than the single snapshot in time when a single grab samble is used.
Next Dan looks at the laboratory results and uses his extensive experience in water treatment processes to design and size an effective system to meet your water qualtiy objectives. Sometimes a small pilot process is built to check out the proposed process and refine sizing parameters. In other cases, standard equipment components will be sized and matched for optimum performance and economy. No two waters are the same, even when drawn from the same aquifer.
In this area most people will want a water softener. Massillon water is HARD at greater than 12 grains per gallon. Canton City's is even harder. Hard water causes dry skin, chapping, and mineral deposits with the building's piping system. There are curves us engineers use to determine the rate of mineral depostion inside a pipe, starting off as a slow reduction of cross sectional area and later on rapidly narrowing the passage size. Hard water builds mineral deposits inside water heaters and forms a buildup in showers, sinks and toilets. Most people think of using a water softener to solve the problem, and Dan has them.
But now ask yourself, do you want to drink the added sodium salt from the softened water system? Some will say no. Do you really need softened water at your kitchen sink? Should you have softened water for your vegitation? As a plumber and engineer, coming up with an optimum solution is possible.
So here are a few of the unit operations that I can put together. Not an complete list and note that it may say reduction, the finished water product levels are usually in the trace or non-detect range with my system:
Water filters
Water Softeners salt required
Water Softener - no salt used
Color and Tast reduction filters
Iron reduction filter
Acid or basic water pH correction
Dissolved gas correction
Flourine and chlorine reduction
Arsenic reduction
Alumimum reduction (high levels often found in Alzheimers patients)
Mercury and toxic heavy metal reduction
Pesticide and Organic Chemical reduction
Pharmaceutical reduction
Radio-nucelide reduction
Bacterial, cyst and virus reduction
and many more
It all starts with a water sample and lab analysis and ends with a finished product water analysis to confirm the system is working as designed. And Dan services and maintains your system, even if Dan did not design and install it.
Call Dan at 330-268-9208 or send a note to him through this Can You Help Me Dan button. Dan will promptly return your call and inquiry.