How do you get your drinking water? From a private well? From a municipal source via pipes? Delivered to a cistern by truck? Collected as rainwater from your roof? Is it from the tap? From a little plastic bottle? From a big plastic bottle in a water cooler? From a home filter? From a reverse osmosis system? None of the above? All of these have some impact on the environment. As most people, my situation is complicated. Pipes from the city fill a cistern on the roof, which gravity feeds throughout the house with pipes. We don't drink that water. We take 20 liter jugs to the local reverse osmosis water plant, which cleans the municipal water to an acceptable form. There is a nifty water dispenser in the castle with an electric pump and it offers cold or heated water for tea and such. No heavy lifting of jugs, they go in the bottom of the unit. The tap water from the city has a PPM of about 350-400 on a good day. I have seen it up to 1000 ppm and it is nasty at that point. The RO water has added mineral content and tests at 25-30 ppm. I don't have a better analysis of the water other than that.
I have a home filter and I also use reusable plastic bottles. And if I'm doing something outside. I drink from the hose also.
I knew that would be some one's answer, that's why the option for 'none of the above'! That's a good answer Vlad, my Dad would say the same. It was single malt only for that man.
Many years ago my wife, our infant son and I lived in a small lake house/cabin near Iron Mtn, Mi. The well was in the basement and one day my wife was washing diapers and noticed the tap water foaming. We called a plumber and we’re informed the septic tank was separated by about10 feet of coarse sand from the well! Worse yet, the “septic tank” was a 1930s vintage car body...not good. Goods news is that none of us suffered ill effects from drinking recycled waste water.
First thing I did when we moved in was install a 3-pass charcoal filtration system for drinking & cooking. We were concerned that reverse osmosis might remove too many minerals, which might become a concern re: osteoporosis.
It's great... a little hard but no "color/odor/foggy..." I have a water softener setup. It's set very subtle, doesn't do much. No filters. The best drinking water is straight out of the ground. I have two outdoor hydrants that are un-processed by the softener setup. I should add a line inside that is un-processed drinking water. When I redo the master bath with the new sinks and vanity top I'm going to add a second faucet for drinking water. The specs for this well were the same in 2013 when I had new mechanicals put in as when it was drilled in 1948... Same depth, no sediment, same regeneration rate... all that. Both neighbors have "iron problems", but not here.
The best water I ever had was out of the well I had in California. I was 40 miles from Yosemite, the wells around there tap into fissures in the granite bedrock. Flowing through those fissures is water from the melted snow up in the park... I had the best water anyone had ever tasted... It was magic.
Rain water. I no longer like the taste tap water. Maybe it is chlorinated to boost the sales of bottled water.
Also, The Massachusetts state Fisheries and Wildlife board considered creating a snake island in the middle of the Quabbin Reservoir. It was an attempt to revive the venomous timber rattlesnake population which is on the endangered species list, Sadly public outcry won the day along with safety concerns, so no snakes in the tap water...lol.. Proposed Snake Island
city water from the tap where i live now, but i have lived in places where you had to haul it in from somewhere. when i was working on that drill rig out in the desert, part of my job was to drive the water truck out to where there was a little creek, fire up the brigs and strati water pump and wait for the tank to fill. the water was to mix "mud" (basically water with lubricant chemicals) pumped down through the bit as it ground through the rock. (i don't remember what we did when i lived on that 'rez/comune', there may have been pipe from grants pass or maybe a well, or maybe someone had to haul it in, you know i hadn't thought about that. i just remember not using very much of it) also camped at varying distances from sources. also lived where we subscribed to a spring water delivery service, because the water that we also pumped up from the irrigation water distribution system was not always entirely potable. (which was below the elevation of the house, so no gravity feed, little electric pump there, powered from the grid) though fine for washing clothes and dishes and flushing toilets. also hiked where the water literally tasted wonderful from the little springs directly, filtered through mosses and likens and tasted no so much like wine as mint. that was the best water anywhere ever. that was a lot more the 40 miles north of yosemiti, but about the same elevation and the same snow melt through the granite of the sierras
You were lucky to enjoy that... other areas of California suffer from the ravages of old mining... with lead, tin and mercury in their water supplies.
