Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

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Frnc
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Joined: Sat Mar 12, 2022 1:54 pm

Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by Frnc »

Traditionally we were told to boil water to make it safe to drink. Ideally for 2 minutes. However this is unnecessary and wastes fuel. Water is safe after pasteurisation at 65-70°C for 6 minutes. You can buy indicators called WAPIs, but they are hard to get hold of and consequently overpriced (£22). Or you can make one. It works by melting soya wax and was invented by Dale Andreatta and Fred Barrett.
Another trick is to boil water and add cold. Boil 3 add 1 is standard. So boil 750m and add 250 ml cold. But this is a conservative figure to allow for fairly high altitudes. At sea level you can boil 5 add 2. So, boil 500 ml and add 200ml cold. Then you need to leave it the 6 minutes.

Of course nowadays we have water filters, and we always had puri tabs. But filters can malfunction, tabs take time and don't taste great, and you can use up your supply. You can always light a fire.
jansman
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Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by jansman »

A lot of years ago I served with HM Royal Marines. We were doing jungle warfare training in Belize. The water rule was ‘ boil then disinfect’. Well , life happened , and we were struggling to get to our extraction point on time. We got lazy and filled our bottles and dropped in double puritabs on the hoof. Wrong! We shat through the eye of a needle. When we reached our base, we took our kit off, and had to be hosed down! The kit was burnt.

In a crisis, our water will be boiled. Just to be sure.
In three words I can sum up everything I have learned about life: It goes on.

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Covid 19: After that level of weirdness ,any situation is certainly possible.

Me.
GillyBee
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Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by GillyBee »

If the water is at all murky then the disinfectant in puri tabs may not make contact with the bugs. They are protected by the solids in the water. It also depends which bugs you are trying to protect against and how temperature & chemical sensitive they are.

60C wil kill off a lot of common bugs and in a area where there is not much risk of really nasty bugs such as up a mountain it is likely to be all you need. If you are prepping water post SHTF that may be of dubious quality then I would want to play safe and boil at 100C.

My dad was a naval engineer in the post WW2 era. They used to generate fresh water by distilling seawater. This was done in boilers at a reduced pressure to save fuel but that reduces the temperature the water boils at. Not a problem with sea water that does not have too many bacteria in it. When they sailed up the Ganges they were told to increase the pressure so that the distillation happened above normal boiling remperature to compensate for the number of bugs in the very dirty water full of cholera, typhoid and many other bug friends.
jennyjj01
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Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by jennyjj01 »

jansman wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 6:18 pm Wrong! We shat through the eye of a needle. When we reached our base, we took our kit off, and had to be hosed down! The kit was burnt.

In a crisis, our water will be boiled. Just to be sure.
TMI :lol:
Graceful Degradation! Prepping's objective summed up in two words. Turning Disaster into Mild Inconvenience by the power of fore-thought

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Yorkshire Andy
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Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by Yorkshire Andy »

As above most of the disaster relief groups recommend a rolling boil for at least a minute yes it uses precious fuel but shtf a runny back passage isn't just an inconvenience it can rapidly become life threatening and run the risk of making many in the group Ill preventing daily functions and using much of the pre lockdown bog roll stash!
Ensuring that Your Water is Safe
In addition to having a bad odor and taste, water from questionable sources may be contaminated by a variety of microorganisms, including bacteria and parasites that cause diseases such as dysentery, cholera, typhoid and hepatitis. All water of uncertain purity should be treated before use.


To treat water for consumption and/or hygiene, follow these steps:

Filter the water using a piece of cloth or coffee filter to remove solid particles.
Bring it to a rolling boil for about one full minute.
Let it cool at least 30 minutes. Water must be cool or the chlorine treatment described below will be useless.
Add 16 drops of liquid chlorine bleach per gallon of water, or 8 drops per 2-liter bottle of water. Stir to mix. Sodium hypochlorite of the concentration of 5.25% to 6% should be the only active ingredient in the bleach. There should not be any added soap or fragrances. A major bleach manufacturer has also added Sodium Hydroxide as an active ingredient, which they state does not pose a health risk for water treatment.
Let stand 30 minutes.
If it smells of chlorine. You can use it. If it does not smell of chlorine, add 16 more drops of chlorine bleach per gallon of water (or 8 drops per 2-liter bottle of water), let stand 30 minutes, and smell it again. If it smells of chlorine, you can use it. If it does not smell of chlorine, discard it and find another source of water.
If local public health department information differs from this advice, the local information should prevail.
https://www.redcross.org/get-help/how-t ... tment.html




Still worth noting that boiling and chlorine tabs won't remove chemicals (,however a rolling boil will let some VOC"s "gas off"
If your roughing it, Your doing it wrong ;)

Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine
Ahastyatom
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Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by Ahastyatom »

Thanks for this Andy. I did not realise how important it was to let the water cool before adding the chlorine.
Frnc
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Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by Frnc »

Yorkshire Andy wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 9:17 pm As above most of the disaster relief groups recommend a rolling boil for at least a minute yes it
The reason they recommend a rolling boil is because most people don't have the means to determine 65-70°. WHO currently says bring to a boil and allow to cool. The higher the temperature, the faster bugs are killed. It only takes a split second at 100 °C.
The reason pasterurisation was studied originally was to make things like milk safe. But since then, scientists thought about people in poor countries who struggle to get clean water and fuel. So they determined the necessary temperature and time, and invented the WAPI and solar cookers for that reason.
In a shtf situation it might come in useful.
Obviously, pre-filter with a cloth if the water looks at all dirty. This can be done at source, putting a cloth over the top of a bottle while filling it.

Another point of interest is the log values. This applies to filters etc as well.
A log removal value (LRV) is a measure of the ability of a treatment processes to remove pathogenic microorganisms. LRVs are determined by taking the logarithm of the ratio of
pathogen concentration in the influent and effluent water of a treatment process.

An LRV of 1 is equivalent to 90% removal of a target pathogen, an LRV of 2 is equivalent to 99% removal and an LRV of 3 is equivalent to 99.9% removal and so on. Water is considered safe at 4-5 log. 5 log would kill or remove kill 99.999 percent of the microbial population.

Of course risk is also related to how MUCH you drink.
Last edited by Frnc on Mon Jul 04, 2022 7:45 am, edited 1 time in total.
Frnc
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Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by Frnc »

At a push, you can use a dropper and unscented chlorine bleach that's less than a year old.
https://www.epa.gov/ground-water-and-dr ... king-water

Another thing to remember is that most water filters don't remove viruses. WHO says "Microfilters may not remove viruses, especially from clear waters; additional treatment such as chemical disinfection or boiling/pasteurization may be needed to reduce viruses".

Fortunately viruses aren't currently common in water in the UK as far as I'm aware. Of course it might depend what the source is.

One other thing. These processes don't produce sterile water for medicinal purposes.
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itsybitsy
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Location: East Yorkshire

Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by itsybitsy »

jansman wrote: Sun Jul 03, 2022 6:18 pm A lot of years ago I served with HM Royal Marines. We were doing jungle warfare training in Belize. The water rule was ‘ boil then disinfect’. Well , life happened , and we were struggling to get to our extraction point on time. We got lazy and filled our bottles and dropped in double puritabs on the hoof. Wrong! We shat through the eye of a needle. When we reached our base, we took our kit off, and had to be hosed down! The kit was burnt.

In a crisis, our water will be boiled. Just to be sure.
Agreed. Better to be safe than up to your ears in crap. Literally. :mrgreen:
Yorkshire Andy
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Re: Boiling water to make it safe is overkill

Post by Yorkshire Andy »

My water cleaning preps at home consist of

A mill bag

A sawyer mini

Puritabs

Thin bleach that gets rotated cleaning the toilet etc

And for fuel efficiency a large Kelly kettle if shtf the neighbors might notice the fence loosing several slats a day :lol:

I've also got a lifesaver bottle though these were claimed to ge suspect on efficiency a few years ago but it can't do more harm than drinking out of a puddle ;)
If your roughing it, Your doing it wrong ;)

Lack of planning on your part doesn't make it an emergency on mine