Water Tester

Water Tester
Water Treatment questions?

is there a digital water tester i can use to detect viruses & bacteria in my water
if there is could you provide a link

can drinking water with viruses or bacteria kill me

i am thinking of getting a RO system with a uv light
can a uv light cause health problems

can a 7 stage RO system remove poison

does RO have ozone in the system

this is the system i plan to buy

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll?ViewItem&rd=1&item=120352254170&ssPageName=STRK:MEWA:IT&ih=002

do you reccomend this system for me
if not could you provide a link to the system you do reccomend

do you know of a whole house filtration system that can give me 50 ppm water

do you reccomend a water softner
if yes why and which one
this is a test

Typically, bacteria, molds, and fungus are tested via growth plates followed by counting colony forming units. CFU's.. This is a very tricky measurement technique because you can easily contaminate the sample just by taking it. In any case, municiple water sources are rich in bacteria. Your tap water may have in the order of 500 CFU / mL or so. The testing involves, 1) purchase of sterile sampling equipment, 2) installation of a sterile sample port, 3) sterilizing the sample port, 4) taking the sample, 5) 36 hour sample growth in a incubator, 5) reading the test plates via a microscope, 6) analzying the data. You would need approximately 6 samples at a time. 2-3 hours labor per sample set to get decent data. Waterborne bacteria doubles every 6 hours. So, you should probably test every day or two. Sound like something you want to undertake?

Viruses are generally not measured. There are no viable tests for sustained testing of drinking water.

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Can drinking water with viruses and bacteria kill you? Depends on the viruses and bacteria. The short answer though is yes.

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R/O system with a UV light. R/O systems remove essentially all minerals and salts. And microorganisms. BUT. you need many of those minerals to be healthy. And R/O membranes are very sensitive to chlorine and chloramines. The things your water source put in water to control bacteria growth. So most R/O's have pre-treatment consisting of at least a activated carbon bed. that removes the chlorine compounds. So between the carbon bed and membranes, bacteria is free to grow. And after the R/O, bacteria is free to grow.

UV lamps kill a good portion of the bacteria... but not all of it. The ultraviolat radiation stays within the R/O and piping. It is not carried along in the water. But the dead bacteria are. Can the UV cause health problems? not directly. Can it kill bacteria that are dangerous, yes. Will it kill all the bacteria, no. Is it a benefit, maybe. It certainly will add to your electric bill.

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the number of stages in the link is the number of individual operations. Filtration, carbon beds, R/O membrane are each 1 stage. Most organic poisons and toxins are too large to fit through the R/O membrane. Most will probably get absorbed or adsorbed onto the carbon or resin exchange beds anyway. Cyanide ions may be small enough to make it through in an appreciable quantity depending on the R/O membrane. ie. it depends on the poisons and the concentrations. But it would probably work.

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No. R/O's do not have ozone. R/O is a membrane. typically water flows through the membrane from the purified stream to the unpurified stream to dilute the contaminates in the unpurified stream. By pressurizing the unpurified stream, we force the osmosis to operate backwards. from concentrated to dilute. ie.. R/O.

Ozonation is another way to kill bacteria. chlorination and ozonation stay in the water and continue to provide bacteria control for a while. UV on controls bacteria while the water is being irradiated. Once water passes out of the UV unit, there is no more bacteria control

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The system your looking at is parts from here

http://www.bulkreefsupply.com/RO/DI-Filters-&-Systems-RO-Canisters/c9_97/index.html

and a UV bulb.

compare the prices...

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anyway.. will it work for you? It's certainly not a "whole house" filter. The system your looking at produces 100 gpd.. 100 gallons per day. that's 1.1 cups per minute at 65 psi. Your house is probably 45-50 psi. and if you use the connector they provide, the feedwater supply needle valve, you may not make minimum water pressure to operate the R/O membrane. You may get substantially lower flowrates. Somewhere between 0 and 100 gpd. Capice?

Notice the faucet? The lead free chrome long neck faucet. That is where the R/O water is available.

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50 ppm in what? what's the chemical that you are concerned with?

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water softeners. they remove hardness from the water. hardness can cause a variety of problems for you. Itchy feeling after taking a shower, laundry problems, scale on faucets and sinks, etc. Water softeners can certainly alleviate that problem. But they way water softeners work is this. They contain a cation exchange resin bead. Ca+2 for example attaches to the bead and is removed from the water. When all the active sites on the beads are loaded up with Calcium, magnesium, etc from the water, the beads are regenerated by soaking them in brine. A saturated sodium chloride solution, Afterwards the excess salt and chlorine are washed from the resins through backflushing. The active sites on the beads now are loaded with sodium. and the process starts again...

so you're substituting sodium for calcium and magnesium.. To most people that's not an issue. To some it is.

if you put in an R/O, you may need a

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On countless occassions I have heard people complain about the tap water that comes out of the faucets in their homes.  In some cases its too hard, sometimes its too soft, rarely is it just right.  I actually still don't know what too hard or too soft has to do with the taste of water but I certainly have heard water described that way since I was a child.    I was reading an article on NBC's site that described a taste test that was performed on the Today show.  It was actually quite an elaborate test.  The Today's show brought in two prominent wine taste testers to wet their palates with the tap water from twelve of the largest cities in the U.S.  They actually poured the water into unmarked, clear water bottes and stored the water at 60 degrees farenheit (cellar temparture).  The storage instructions were at the request of these two prominent taste testers.

The top three cities according to the experts were Seattle, Boston, and Columbia, S.C.  For some reason I found it interesting that SALT LAKE was the best.  It seems like it should be SALTY (but what do I know).  I have visited Salt Lake City on several occassions and honestly the water did not leave a lasting impression on me.  I did enjoy some excellent green tea at a local area restaurant which I assume was made with their tap water.  That could have been the water or maybe it was the sugar in the sweet green tea (I remember this as I had never had sweet green tea before encountering it on this trip).

So before I venture too far away from the reason for this article let me provide the names of the taste testers to you.  They were none other than the famous wine tasters David Lynch and his colleague, Joe Bastianich.  They used words to describe water that I simply have never heard.  For instance the Salt Lake City water was "delicious, Viscous, thick and rich,"  Wow!  I need to go back to Salt Lake City and check this out again.  It certainly sounds awfully good described this way.  Well, actually delicious, viscous, and rich sound good.  I think I have tasted thick (growing up on well water which was plenty thick).

I dug into the ratings of Salt Lake City's water according to studies performed by the Environmental Working Group and sure enough they did have pretty low levels of contaminants in their water.  Salt Lake City had 9 pollutants, Boston had 6 pollutants, and Columbia had 7 pollutants.  So, to my surprise the city with the lowest number of pollutants was not the winner.  Of course, this was an unofficial taste test and toally subjective (based on the opinions of these fine wine tasters).  Perhaps it means that my theory of cleaner water tasting better is simply not correct.  In any event it really is interesting to me.

So a few of my own theories were certainly not supported by the test performed on the Today show, but I did learn something very valuable.  I can now stop referring to water as hard or soft and introduce viscous and rich into the mix.  In any event, that certainly makes an ordinary glass of water more interesting.

On another note, If you have some time and are interested in the number of water companies in your community and/or anywhere in the country please stop by waterfinder.org and take a look.  It's the only place on the web to find a listing of over 300,000 water companies in every major (and most of the smaller) cities in the U.S.

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This article was brought to you by waterfinder.org. We are the only place on the web with a searchable list of over 300,000 U.S. water companies. We know who provides your tap water and how you can contact them.

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