This might sound a little dense, but it is something that I do not understand so have to ask.
Where does the water go? Why is it that water is considered such a valuable commodity on a planet that is so covered in water? Why can we not simply filter sea water to remove salt-especially when the seas are currently suffering because of influx of fresh water.
Why do we not recycle more water? It comes in our house via taps, we consume, it hits the sewers-why can we not clean that and reuse? Does it instead go out to sea?
You raise some excellent questions, and the simple answer is that the water isn’t where it’s needed. Yes, the planet is 70% water, and most of that is salt water. Desalinization is not as easy as you would think, and sea water is fairly corrosive.
Sewage treatment plants in cities DO recycle the water, hence the presence of so much chlorine in town water to kill the residual bacteria and so on. Some places just dump untreated water back into the rivers and lakes and that is counterproductive. Near here, there’s a town with an environmentally friendly sewage treatment which is very cool and I wish more places would adopt their system, but it’s not practical in a city with millions of people.
The water for cities comes out of rivers and lakes and reservoirs, which depend on rainfall to maintain their levels. I get my water from a drilled well, and again, the aquifer I tap into has to refresh itself somehow. I’m lucky in that I’m on a good one, but a lot of people around here have their wells go dry at least once or twice every summer. There’s no easy answer to get the water from where it is to where it’s most needed.
I think that most people have the same questions that this thread presented. It seems like it’s common sense to filter salt out of ocean water, but after reading QuietLunatic’s post it made a lot more sense. I think that water recycling is something that most people are unfamiliar with, including myself.
Filtering sea water is a really inefficient use of energy, which is something our planet is definitely short on. Maybe when we can find ways to utilize nuclear energy or solar energy, we could more efficiently filter water, but those are completely different issues on their own.
I am planning on using a caravan water pump i got off ebay, a old PC water cooling heat exchanger with fan, a 12v power supply, and a 25L container for water.
i agree..while converting sea water into useful water for human consumption may sound simple it is actually very complicated. Singapore is one country that i know who recycles water and they are doing a very good job! let’s just leave it to experts to find ways to recycle water and make the reservoir bountiful, we on the other hand should just be responsible enough and have enough concern for our planet and use water wisely. wasting is such an immature thing.
Thanks for this great post. Lots of questions have been answered. I am totally for conserving our water. I have heard of Filtrete , anyone tried it? I want to stock up in case there is a huge need. We definitely need to made sure our water is safe wherever we decide to get it from.
Ah! Good point I guess there has to be some confidence in the goal for both parties, government funding for faster than light travel is not available I guess? well at least JFK propulsion doesn’t get a hell of a lot in that regard i.e. there has to be plausibility, however Im willing to bet chemical filtration is not such a burden, I may be wrong! And I guess that might be the crux of my query, but besides confidence in the research, the economical advantages to this state would be, as I stated before ‘phenomenal’ weve got the strongest economy in the world [china’s demand for iron insures that] basically said it would reduce domestic water use buy 50% economically, to the government since our state has the highest population growth in all Australia this effects basically all industry in this state.
Let me concise this down, population growth = construction i.e. places to live, the growth value is a GDP revenue of this state, and the drawing card for population growth and therefore GDP is state wealth, a fact that Australia only survived the global economic downturn due to exports to china is none more prominent than in WA [the mineral state]( incidentally many west ozzies believe we should succeed from the rest of the country since a desert is as good as any ocean) however
I’ve thought about your designs. Solar thermal is cheap, but takes some space for the holding tank. Its still applicable though, just have to really plan it out. I think my main concerns are mobility, space, and weight, so I’d probably start with a tankless heater that uses propane, and store the propane outside the house.
As for the filtration system, its an awesome idea. One drawback to it is cost. I wish I had the capital to invest in a filter company, they make a fortune in replacement cartridges and filter media. If you’re looking for “residential water treatment” I’ve heard the military has invested a lot of time and money into Reverse Osmosis for water treatment on their ships. The small footprint a RO treatment system makes it ideal for space saving applications. It can even desalinate seawater, but again, its very costly. But from the links you provided, you already knew that(sorry for stating the obvious)
I forgot to mention that ,of course planting bioregional species virtually delineates the use of water in a garden at all , however regardless of this an effective domestic recycling system even if it cost 5-10% of the cost of a typical house would surely be a pay for itself investment , not to mention reduce pollution , even better if we can extract those chemicals and reuse them domestically would be phenomenal.
While recycling is a term generally applied to aluminum cans, glass bottles, and newspapers, water can be recycled as well. Water recycling is reusing treated wastewater for beneficial purposes such as agricultural and landscape irrigation, industrial processes, toilet flushing, and replenishing a ground water basin (referred to as ground water recharge). Water recycling offers resource and financial savings. Wastewater treatment can be tailored to meet the water quality requirements of a planned reuse. Recycled water for landscape irrigation requires less treatment than recycled water for drinking water. No documented cases of human health problems due to contact with recycled water that has been treated to standards, criteria, and regulations have been reported.
As we all know, the environment around us is getting worse and worse. In some places we can’t see fish swimming in the river or trees on the hills. Bird there is less and less fresh water in the world.Some people even have no clean water to drink.
“There is only one earth”, I hope everyone will protect our environment well.
