water filtration Options

[fajw]

I want to get some water filtration at home to get rid of fluoride, chlorine and any other nasties. I searched but there are heaps and heaps of sites and I don't know where to start. Any particular brand that is the best? Do I just ring up plumbers and ask for quotes? Recommendations?

[Director]

You wont get rid of sodium flurosilicate with anything other than reverse osmosis...and that is VERY expensive and also takes out all the good stuff as well. You can get a whole-house filter to remove chlorine or you can get individual shower/tap filters. I spent weeks researching this a little while ago and we ended up with a Durand water filter which we use for drinking water, which comes out of the rainwater tank ( http://durand.com.au/ ) and we just put up with the chlorine in everything else. The local council are hooking up our neighbourhood to a different water supply soon and that has sodium fluorosilcate added to it ( from the Shanghai Mintchem development corporation (I'm sure it's perfectly safe as everything else coming out of China:) ). So I guess I'm gonna have to get off my arse and try to get them to turn off the fluoride tap, lots other countries are doing now. Watch out though cos there are psychopaths out there who want to start adding lithium to the water supply as well. :)

This post has been edited by Director: Jun 8 2012, 03:06 PM

[Xen]

I want to get some water filtration at home to get rid of fluoride, chlorine and any other nasties. I searched but there are heaps and heaps of sites and I don't know where to start. Any particular brand that is the best? Do I just ring up plumbers and ask for quotes? Recommendations?

I can't remember the brand but when i was in China i saw the most fucking awesome filtration system ever.

From memory there was about 7 or 8 difference filters the water went through, pretty much it filtered everything down to pretty much dialysis level then added minerals back in.

If i find out what it was called ill add it up.

Edit: Here's one but not quite as awesome:

http://filters.en.hisupplier.com/product-4...ter-filter.html

This post has been edited by Xen: Jun 8 2012, 03:05 PM

[codecreeper]

Just buy bottled water it will probably be cheaper. Filtration is not for the average brain to understand.

[@~thehung]

yes fajw, you heard codecreeper. take your 'average brain' to a 7/11 or something and forget this foolhardy pursuit.

mods please close.

[Director]

Just buy bottled water it will probably be cheaper. Filtration is not for the average brain to understand.

A lot of bottled water mobs are starting to add sodium fluorosilicate and other stuff so that's only a temporary solution.

[bushi]

I have one of the durand filters. I'll take a pic and show you how grubby it gets before I clean it this weekend.

And the gf threw in a stump of charcoal in the bottom section for good measure. :/

I would recommend one, not just for filtering fluoride but mainly the shit flaking off the pipes in your house (depending on how bad it is).

[Director]

The Durand wont filter fluoride, and the ceramic filter has carbon on the inside so adding more isn't required. :)

[bushi]

http://durand.com.au/fluoridefilters.html is what I have.

That doesn't reduce fluoride?

[ReapermanRS]

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=tinfoil+hat

So which definition is your favourite, I like 2 personally though I feel some people around here are going to be partial to 1 and 3.

[Antraman]

Reverse Osmosis (RO) purified water is the best method of purifying for drinking. Most systems you can buy will have a fibre or mesh pre-filter for large particles, then the RO membrane, with a carbon post-filter to remove chlorine and bacteria.

A simple system like that with hoses, attachments and frame which can easily be attached to washing machine taps will cost about $350-400. Pre-filter lasts about 8months, depending on how bad your tap water is, the membrane lasts about 3-4 years, and the carbon post-filter lasts about 1 year. We get ours serviced once every year and a half, for $120, and they replace pre and post filters, back flush the membrane, and replace hoses to maintain highest quality of filtering. The need for replacing filters or servicing depends on how bad your tap water quality is...the worse the water, the more strain on the system. Usually you get your tap water analysed, they check the levels of undissolved solids, bacteria, virus, and chemicals present in the water. This will determine how long the pre- and post filters will last. A sandy water may be relatively clear of chemicals and bacteria so you will go through pre-filters quicker and post-filters slower...a clear tap water may be low in particulate matter but high in bacteria so the post-filter would wear out quicker than the pre-filter.

Our family is fastidious about pure drinking water. After 20 years of RO water, we can not drink tap water or bottled water, the taste is so bad. Bottled spring waters are a crock of shit. There is no benefit to drinking bottled spring water over tap water, as they all have to adhere to a standard, and companes will meet the minimum requirements and not more. The best commercial water available we have found is Noble's Pureau, which is also RO water.

Everyone who drinks RO water for the first time barely notices much difference in taste (or lack therof) and thus complains how disppointing RO water is, but after drinking for several days, when reverting to tap water the bad taste is quite obvious. For healtlh reasons, I drink 2L of water within the first 10mins of waking up each morning, and when you drink this much of tap water or bottled water, your throat burns with a metallic taste. Not so with RO water, or Noble's Pureau. The best natural water I have found is from a spring on Mt Wellington in Tasmania...it is cleaner than any bottled spring water I have tried.

I have more detailed snippets of interesting info regarding RO if you are interested in hearing more, or need to be convinced.

By the way, I don't believe there is any "good stuff" in water besides hydrogen and oxygen.

This post has been edited by Antraman: Jun 8 2012, 10:37 PM

[Gir]

By the way, I don't believe there is any "good stuff" in water besides hydrogen and oxygen.

And oocytes.

Why have chlorine when you can have delicious oocytes?

[chrisg]

We have a water chiller and bottled water from a local company. Their water comes from a spring in the hills, the difference in taste to tap water is remarkable.

There are a lot of scams though, "bottled water" taken from the tap, a company I know in SA who went to a lot of trouble getting their spring water tested only to find it was the same after it was filtered whilst one of their competitors who had no such qualms when tested turned out to contain pig urine - there was a piggery above their source.

Some of the alternative magazines such as Nexus seem to have a lot of ads for Grandier but the prices are a bit startling.

Australian water from the tap really is pretty awful, I noticed it when I first moved here from England, high chlorine content and I assume fluorine also. In my view chlorine is for the pool, iodine for wound treatment and I am very unconvinced of the value of fluorine in water, buy a fluoridated toothpaste if you like but drinking halogens offends me.

I suppose they'll start selling us on bromine next.

All the halogens are reactive, declining as you go up the periodic table, I'm not at all sure I want any of them in my body on a regular basis.

Fluoride really is a con, a means to sell what is essentially an industrial waste product - sure, might whiten/strengthen your teeth, but at what cost to your body in general? The damned stuff is so reactive whole factories have had their roofs blown off by the stuff.

Chlorine as a disinfectant I can live with for cooking water, it will boil off anyway, fluorine, although lighter bonds readily to create heavier molecules that are not so easily removed, or so my chemistry teacher taught us.

There is a contrary argument however - unless you are living in a bubble what you breathe is probably worse for you, "pollution" is everywhere but the human immune system is pretty good at dealing with most of it. It is somewhat indisputable that we are living longer, whilst on the flip-side cancer in kids has escalated - never saw it when I was young, I suspect susceptibility to that sea of radiation we live in is on the rise, we hardly helped with atmospheric nuclear tests when I was growing up and solar flare activity is at a high-point just now.

We can hardly control solar activity, some things you just have to live with, and possibly eventually die from, although personally I have little interest in dying :)

Still, every little bit helps, clean water is not a bad start.

Cheers

[osama_bin_athlon]

easily solved, just drink beer.
;)

[Xen]

easily solved, just drink beer.
;)

Worked out well before the 19th century.

Should just drink at work and say it's for "health" reasons :)

[Director]

http://durand.com.au/fluoridefilters.html is what I have.

That doesn't reduce fluoride?

Oh, sweet, they didn't have those when we got ours a few years back so I stand corrected. :)

Nice to know they're around for future reference.

Another thread Here that has some useful info in it.

This post has been edited by Director: Jun 9 2012, 09:22 AM

[ArcaneMagik]

Skeptoid's episode on Fluoridation

Short of taste or biological contaminate reasons, the water from the tap is fine. Only have to think back to the Cryptosporidium and Giardia issues in Sydney's water to realise that.

Concern about it having 'unknown' effects on our bodies is simply trying to generate fear when the body of evidence doesn't give us any any reason to believe that. Calling it a waste product is just trying to generate more fear when it is simply a by product of a process. Steam is a waste product of power generation; it is not dangerous because it is a waste product but because of the heat content.

[chrisg]

Well, not quire Arcane, naturally occurring fluorine is a non-issue it's the compounds that are as you put it by products rather than waste that have some medical professionals concerned because there is no clear understanding of how the body deals with them, it is not fluorine, it is a fluorine compound.

Fluorine is the most reactive of the halogens but just how it behaves when in a compound is what has not had much research.

Personally I use fluoride toothpaste, would not do otherwise and at 60 have very few if any cavities, but I don't swallow toothpaste.

Chlorine in water, apart from smelling like bleach, is not something I have any real complaint over, it is necessary in a hot climate which Australia in the main is to kill bacteria and does a pretty good job. But I don't worry much about it in cooking because the chlorine boils off and the heat kills bacteria anyway. I just don't like the taste of it much in drinking water.

Cheers

[Director]

Skeptoid's episode on Fluoridation

Short of taste or biological contaminate reasons, the water from the tap is fine. Only have to think back to the Cryptosporidium and Giardia issues in Sydney's water to realise that.

Concern about it having 'unknown' effects on our bodies is simply trying to generate fear when the body of evidence doesn't give us any any reason to believe that. Calling it a waste product is just trying to generate more fear when it is simply a by product of a process. Steam is a waste product of power generation; it is not dangerous because it is a waste product but because of the heat content.

Here we go, there's always one.

Concern about it having 'unknown' effects on our bodies is simply trying to generate fear when the body of evidence doesn't give us any any reason to believe that.

What 'body of evidence'? The countries that use the stuff don't do the relevant research (I guess so they can have plausible deniability) so it's left to other countries like China and India to do the work. So far there have been around 24 scientifically published articles on how it lowers intelligence alone, other studies have shown how it causes dental fluorosis and osteoporosis. Others have linked it to cancer and parkinsons and a one recent one even demonstrated it's links to atherosclerosis. Ans we are subject to all of these risks based on the presumption that 'it might stop some tooth decay'. Even if it did so that (the studies are ambiguous), it would still not be worth the price.

Calling it a waste product is just trying to generate more fear when it is simply a by product of a process.

No it IS a waste byproduct of the phosphate fertiliser industry. It can also be waste from the aluminium industry but these days it's mostly the phosphate industry. The particular waste that goes into Queenslands water is from China, it is unprocessed and untreated, it is not 'lab grade' (whatever that means). It is not permitted to release this stuff into the air or water (that's how bad it is) so they just put it in your drinking water instead. Trust me, I've done the research, I've gotten this information straight from the local council including the MSDS.



And from your link:

Fluoride is a natural component of groundwater, and it occurs naturally everywhere in the world, in varying amounts.

That's true. It's also NOT what's being added to water supply, he's talking about calcium fluoride which a completely different thing. What's being put into your water is sodium fluoride also called sodium fluorosilicate or hexafluorosilicic acid. ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sodium_fluoride )

This post has been edited by Director: Jun 9 2012, 01:15 PM

[bushi]

It's too bad they're using the same shit in toothpaste.

Even if you're not swallowing, your body is still absorbing it through your gums.


I use some organic shit that's mint flavoured - No Fluoride.