Steve Zoma

I can tell you mine is NOT!

I have tested it and it failed both primary and secondary thresholds.

A few things I am just barely over, like nitrates at one tenth over allowable levels. But the nuisance ones I am way over on. Iron and salt water. Neither pose a health risk but they are inconvenient.

At 37 mgs per liter our water is orange. Our clothes are orange and out dishes are orange. It’s rust and I will turn orange if I don’t scrub my hair and skin once a week with clarifying shampoo using it as a body wash. Body hair is the worst to deal with.

Then there is the seawater. It’s just under the 2000 mg per liter threshold so it’s brackish water and not full seawater but it’s bad. Soap does not lather. Clothes take forever to dry in the dryer, and you never really feel clean.

I am working on a way to mitigate this but the water company was blown away. By far the most costly water they ever saw to try and clean. The starting cost was $45,000 in filtering systems.

Yes!

The first was really nice, looked good, a split two room place for both ducks and chickens with a center area so that there was no real way for the chickens to escape...

And it was tough to shovel out so we seldom did it.

Our next coop... it was bigger, had more light and was more simple in construction. It was WAYY easier to shovel out. It also had lights, outlets and an enclosed outside run.

The three absolutes I would never be without:

Concrete floor: It is hard to shovel a dirt floor coop
Full door: It really sucks to have to duck down to get inside the coop and for eggs etc. We got inside our a lot more than we thought we ever would.
Lights: It gets dark quick and long in the winter. Having a light you can just snap on is more than a luxury

Dakota Miller wrote:

John C Daley wrote:

How does that sailor get water from the ocean, because he can't always take enough water with them, or the stored water becomes sickly.  

from google
Sailors in the 1700s primarily obtained water by filling large wooden casks at ports, supplementing this with collected rain, and rationing it strictly.

Distillation may be the only way that will work for you.

Yeah I'm considering destillers. At least the limitations are pretty inarguable. I know exactly what will evaporated and what I need to physically filter.

1700s sailors were built different. Lol. Most modern boats have a BEEFY RO system. (That's why I chose RO instead of destilling) Plus any other add-on filter they like. I'm looking very critically at the katadyn survivor 40E. It's over built and over priced for ground water. But it's built to be used as a complete system. The company expects that their customers will drink the water straight out of the system. They can't afford to cut corners and play with false claims because they'd end up with very sick, lawsuit-happy, customers. But apparently it a go-to in the long distance ocean traveling group when storage is only a temporary solution. You can repair most the parts yourself with common tools and such. They generally use an RO system to purify sea water. Dump it in a holding tank and test it on boat. If it tests good they put it in the main tank to drink. The only thing they have to be concerned about is oil and red tide. And those can be seen visually in the water.

That is NOT correct.

I live on an island far out to sea where my well's are compromised by sea water and can be affected by red tides. None of that can be visually seen in the water.

I have looked into RO for seawater because of the sea water in my house-system, but what RO system I use for desalination is very different. If the water is over 2000 mg/liter it is considered sea water and takes a special robust filtration system, and if under that it takes another. As desalination is being carried out, it constantly has to be adjusted, and that is just for desalination. Too much pressure and it strips the water of minerals, not enough and you get salty water. This is a VERY real issue for me and I have conducted a lot of research on how I can get good water here. The quote I got from professionals has been the most expensive system they ever saw: $45,000 with (3) whole house RO systems to get out all the problems I have to go from undrinkable to drinkable.

If I just had sea water issues, I would distill, but sadly I also have incredibly high iron so distilling would actually make my water worse.

You do not have it quite that bad, but you can use the information that I have learned to set yourself up to be better off. Water is life and it pays to do things right.

My neighbors do not treat their well water because it is too expensive to filter so they instead have rain catchment systems. But they test their water. I am on the east coast so may be different than you, but the rate of cancer here is the highest in the nation per capita. I myself have cancer, and it is because of the topography and jet stream. In short, bad shit comes here when it rains.

Yes, water testing will change with every rainfall, but you get an average of what is in the water.

No one person on this forum is smarter than all of us put together, but you are indeed right. You do not have to justify your water filtration system to anyone. I am not affected by what you do with your water system, but when I hear of blanket statements like "you would see bad water", for the sake of others who might read this thread, I feel obligated to say in a kind manner, "I'm not sure that is the case". Myself and others can explain this in many different ways, but we cannot make you understand it. However, we can only hope that others who read this thread do and keep themselves safe.

Drinking water is the key of life. Best to do things right, not guess.

We found a work around to almost all of these problems that were brought up by old dishwashers: we have a countertop dishwasher instead.

It is half the size of a regular dishwasher so it uses half the water, but lets a machine do it instead of us.

Since it has its own heater, it brings the hot water temp up high enough so the dishes are disinfected.

We do not have to wait until the dishwasher is full because it uses so little water and takes no time to run. You can pack a lot in it if you organize like a deranged architect and I have washed some crazy sized stuff, like crock pots and baking dishes. It's all how you load it. Load it fast and no, you will not get much in. Load it carefully and it will blow your mind on what is washed in a single load.

It has multiple functions too, like a fruit and veggie wash mode so you can clean your fruits and veggies. But stem ware and other modes.

You can put it on your countertop, or install it permanent like a real, but smaller dishwasher in your kitchen cabinetry. We permanently mounted ours up higher in our lower cabinetry so we can load it without bending over like on a full-sized dishwasher.

It also takes cheap powder for soap instead of expensive and gummy pods.

We really like it. For two empty-nesters it works perfectly for us. We only knew about them when we were looking at Tiny Houses and saw one that had this dishwasher in it. We researched it and bought it. It was $350.

I think artificial intelligence is now taking the Rocket Mass Heater to the masses...

It is done differently, but all over Youtube there are AI generated videos about rocket mass heaters. They have twisted it, putting the stoves into woven oral yarns that begin... "In 1845 on the plains of Colorado Phineus was scoffed at by his neighbors" and then for twenty minutes there is a tale about how Phineous survived a raging blizzard where his neighbors nearly froze. I sound like I am making that up but I am not. That is really what many of these videos sound like as they begin.

I mean there are a TON of videos out there on Rocket Mass Heaters now.

Some are not so flowing with a verbal tale of olde, some are touting the virtues of these heaters in a more matter-of-fact way, and they have differing names on what they are, but they are all rocket mass heaters. Crimean stoves. Finnish masonry stoves, etc. Many differing names but they are all described alike. I mean it is all over youtube now. Some with better details on how to build them, and some not so much, but AI has got ahold of this heater of olde and really is running with it.

It is not a bad thing. The masses are soon going to know in droves as people see it scrolling youtube and begin to think how it might help them.

I am not seeing your water testing results.

A RO system that takes care of 12 mg/liter is great if you have 7 mg/liter, but if you have water that has 23 mg/liters you got contaminated water after you treat the water.

All the builder placard shows is the percentage that is removed at a certain level. I have no idea what your actual levels are: it may be higher, it may be lower?

You are putting the cart before the horse. You test your water to find out what you have for bad stuff in it. Then you obtain a water filtration system to take out what you don't want. You may not need any filtration system. You may need far more than you think. But if you overfilter then you end up drinking foul tasting water because the good minerals are not left in it and your own health suffers. Same thing for animals that you may have.

It is all just a guess unless you test and it costs just $150. There is zero reason not to test. It could save you tons of work and money, or even save your life.

You are both right...

What could be done is embed pex tubing around the OUTSIDE of the septic tank to collect any heat and route it back to the economizer of the heat pump. In that way you are only collecting the heat that the septic tank is already losing.

But it need not be a heat pump. Just circulating the warm water back to a geothermal, or radiant heat type heating system would net you some gains on the Delta T. I am not sure if the return on investment would be worth it, but in quick thought, I think so.

1. Dig dirt out around the septic tank as much as possible
2. Place coils of pex up against the concrete tank
3. Put sheets of 2 inch stryofoam, perhaps several layers to sandwich the pex between the concrete tank and the insulation to allow heat to migrate to the pex coils and dwell there.
4. Add a pump to get the warmed water back in the pex to the manifold loop of the radiant/geothermal heating system

There is not enough information here to make any suggestions. You have to test the water first and tell us what the issues are.

Where I live any sort of non-drilled well source typically has bacteria. This is easy to solve with boiling, UV post-filtering or distilling, but if the water has high amounts of heavy metals then boiling or distilling only concentrates the metals and makes the situation worse. UV does nothing for it either. But it gets worse because if you have arsenic in your water, that literally CAN KILL YOU. Where I live, arsenic is hit or miss in drinking water sources, but so is radiation from uranium.

As I said, I cannot in good conscious give you a suggestion on what to do with your water because "it is just a guess unless you test".

That being said, I would look into a whole house Reverse Osmosis system and not waste my money on an undersized, under the counter reverse osmosis system. I am still not sure if the situation is anal, for animals, or annual but point-of-use RO is cheap because it is so limiting. Without testing your water, you do not even know if RO will take care of the issue. Typically RO only takes out 12 mg/liter but what if you have more? My water has 37 mg/liter of iron, but I only know that because my water has been tested. That would mean I would need (4) RO systems in series to get my water to allowable levels (here it is .5 mg/liter and I have 37!!)

Again, not enough information here to give any feedback that is meaningful.

Douglas Campbell wrote:Steve:
'The main house on these old buildings is sound, but when they put on additions, they used cheaper foundations and they have failed over the years. '

This is everywhere in New Brunswick & Nova Scotia; original house fairly solid, with 1-3 progressively more decrepit add ons.  They fall down in reverse order of age.
Around here, I suspect it partly reflects economic decline when the land was logged, sailing ships were no more and the marginal agriculture dwindled back.
That might apply in rural New England as well.
In some cases the add ons were for winter access to wood or animals, so lower grade for that reason.

I think when a person starts an original building they view the foundation as being integral to the whole structure, but with an addition the main focus is on what is being done within the walls. It is in the words when a neighbor asks, "hey, what are you building?" With a house the person states as such and maybe the number of bedrooms and bathrooms, but they are stating what the building is. With an addition the person often states, "oh the kitchen is not really big enough, so we need more room", or "we never expected to have twins so we are building a master bedroom". The difference is, up front what the building is, is stated, and for the latter; the reason for the addition is stated. It is a whole different mind-set because with additions people want the function but want to do it as cheaply as possible.

Not that I am against rubble filled foundations at all. In fact, I LOVE, LOVE, LOVE them and think they have longevity and low price: a rarity when speaking of foundation types. I do think they are site-dependent though and that a person should dig the trenches but also run the trenches to daylight and then wait before filling them with rubble. Wait until a good rain storm or snowmelt and if no water remains in the trenches, THEN and only then, backfill them with rubble. That will ensure the trenches never freeze since they continuously drain water.

I would certainly do that type of foundation on a forever home I was building. The problem is, I have built and sold three-forever homes.

I get it, banks and insurance companies dislike other types of foundations because they silly-think, "when the last hurricane blew through, we had plenty of homes that now need new foundations because they fell off their piers. Therefore pier foundations are bad". That is not always the case. My house was not only built in 1890, but was built on another island and barged to this one when electricity came to this island in the 1930's. I have never lived in an old house with such levels floors. But this house sits on bedrock. But banks and insurance companies don't consider individual house situations, they lump everything into go or no-go situations. It is too bad...

John C Daley wrote:Steve, what are you describing as a traditional foundation?

Concrete Slab
Concrete Block
Concrete poured walls

I am not saying there are no other types of foundations, they are, but they are harder to get if there are building codes, or if financing or insurance is required. That is important, maybe not to the Permie now, but it may be harder to resell the house in the future.

It is not without reason. Drive around the New England countryside and it is everywhere. The main house on these old buildings is sound, but when they put on additions, they used cheaper foundations and they have failed over the years. It's in human nature, build on as cheap as possible, but it shows long term and banks and insurance companies have seen and endured the effects of it.

I live in a town where there are no building codes and I was able to get my pier foundation house insured, but it took going through 19 different insurance companies before one accepted us. It would never be able to be financed by a traditional home loan. I fully expect in order to sell my house at some point in the future, I am going to have to have a block foundation put in. It is no big deal, but something I fully expect I will have to do in order to sell it.