Tweaking my System: My Hot Water System

[[GSV]Myocardial]

it is, but it's worse really.

You see, a kettle BOILS.. and the elemnt inside a kettle is even hotter.. many hundreds of degrees, so all bacteria is killed.

Can't agree with that statement, simple boiling water in a kettle will not kill all bacteria and can actually promote the germination of cryptosporidium oocysts which are very resistant to heat and chemicals and are thought to cause most of the cases of stomach bugs in the UK. If you think about it a kettle boils for what 30 seconds at most and is not sufficient to kill many bacteria.

Only way to ensure killing most of the bacteria is to boil in a pressure cooker, cool and then re-boil in the pressure cooker. This allows the crytosporidium to bloom into it's vegatative form which is much more suceptible to heat.

But a hot water cylinder works by having HOT (not boiling) water circulating through the inner copper pipes, to heat the water in the tank, so it never gets to boiling... and all sorts of weird stuff accumulates, some of which is kinda... jelly like

it is rank tbh. And every house has it.. and it's why you should NEVER drink hot tap water.

It depends how the hot water tank is fed as to what it is likely to contain. If you have a gravity fed tank with a cold water tank in the loft then you are likley to have a higher chance of the water containing harmful bacteria due to the cold tank containing standing water unprotected due to a lack of sufficient amounts of chlorine. If you have a mains fed tank then the likelyhood of organic contamination is extremely low and comparable to the mains fed water taps. In both conditions you can have slightly higher amounts of copper due to the heating process, but again it is very unlikely to be to a level where you would be adversely affected with long term use as naturally there is copper in the water we drink.

In fact if you are a fan of organic foods it is quite likely that you consume more copper from your food as Copper Sulphate solutions are considered to be an organic pesticide and are still legally and widely used in the organic grape growing business afaik.

With regards to the limescale then as a constituent part of water it is actually a requirement for human body function to consume those constituent components. If you soften hard water then it is actually advisable not to drink the softened water as it can contain high levels of sodium, depends on the method used. So a softener can be used on the hot water system supply to reduce scaling and it would then be advisable not to consume it in larger quantities.

[Zak33]

/\ gooood post

[Brucelles]

Double post problem.

[manwithnoname]

I've posted this before about drink from the hot water tap. I'm guessing the posts above have convinced you not to do it but if not ...

Your hot water tank may be feed via a cold water tank. My friends family would fill the kettle from the hot water tap. So at least they were boiling the water but they all got very ill. After a bit of investigation the cause was found to be a dead bird in the cold water tank (a crow I think).

If the house if plumbed correctly the cold water taps will be from the mains and not a tank, the hot water supplier is always going to be lucky dip.

[BUFF]

Look on the bright side, we dont live in France, where its apparently acceptable to have brown water.

been to the Scottish Highlands much?
peat=brown

I find that map hard to believe - the Isle of Man is yellow... we have the softest water going - absolutely 0 scale on my kettle. It also says the the Merseyside area is softer than here, which is rubbish tbh.

I hae me doots too but it was about the only 1 that came up on Google that included Scotland.
I know that it's not correct as I worked for a major water treatment company for 2-3 years & generally in the plumbing industry for~20 years e.g. up top lh of Scotland around Durness there is a large area of limestone & the Borders hard area isn't quite as large as shown.