Watermakers remove almost all the TDS - supposedly 99+% - so the water
is like distilled. Is it unhealthy to drink nothing but distilled
water - no mineral content - for years while cruising.

Just remember to keep taking your Centrum Silver. :-)

wrote:
Watermakers remove almost all the TDS - supposedly 99+% - so the water
is like distilled. Is it unhealthy to drink nothing but distilled
water - no mineral content - for years while cruising.

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:13:14 -0700, " Olly wrote:

Watermakers remove almost all the TDS - supposedly 99+% - so the water
is like distilled. Is it unhealthy to drink nothing but distilled
water - no mineral content - for years while cruising.

I've been drinking distilled water for over 5 years. The only thing
I've noticed different is I haven't had a common cold in....well....5
years! I don't even get stuffy nose on it.

I'm told by a doctor, a medical doctor, that elemental metals and
other pollutants in tap water cannot be absorbed by carbon-based life
forms. It must be ORGANIC in nature. The reason I went to a
distiller is I got tired of laying screaming in pain from the kidney
stones the local drinking water kept producing in my kidneys from the
elemental calcium. Some fell out....many didn't....one they had to go
after up through the plumbing! I'm cleaned out, now. Pure distilled
water is the finest flushing agent, the real job of the water you
drink, there is. It leaves no deposits of bad things like elemental
calcium or heavy metals like zinc, cadmium, lead in your body......

Now, about the RO problem........

I'm sorry the website won't load any more, but there was a news item
on yahoo warning people about a bacterial problem with RO water making
people very sick. Remember those cruise ships with mass sickness?

RO systems DO block bacteria from passing through the
membranes.....good. But, unfortunately, the bacteria piled up by the
billions against the membrane under high pressure are BREAKING DOWN
into their component parts, including the TOXINS in the bacteria that
make you sick. The TOXINS are much smaller, very molecular, and pass
THROUGH the membrane into your drinking water. Of course, companies
with vast investments in RO systems would rather you never saw such a
thing, which may be why it disappeared off Yahoo, mysteriously.

Searching for problems with RO systems on the net is very hard to do
with all the keywords on EVERY sales page of EVERY RO seller on the
planet keying your search.

If you talk to RO sales people, ask them, "Why do I need a UV
sterilizer connected to the output of my RO water system?"

Think about the why until you get to pop the question.....(c;

Distillers are not without their problems....either......

Many common aromatics, almost anything ending in "ene", is
DISTILLABLE! If you have, as we do, dissolved aromatic contaminants
like benzene, xylene, toulene and other industrial solvents will
distill in my plant. These contaminants give grocery store distilled
water for your iron a "metallic taste". Mention drinking distilled
water and people cringe at the thought of drinking water that tastes
like metal....uggh!

Lucky for us, activated carbon filtering causes these ions to attach
themselves freely to the activated carbon....making the carbon
filtered distilled water just delicious and free of these
distillables. Some of the distillables don't condense around 100C and
the condensor of the distiller is too hot to re-condense them. They
float off if you leave the outlet open with water dripping out, not
sealed. Unfortunately, valuable alcohols are one of them.....sorry.

My carbon filter consists of a gourmet store NYLON food baster body
filled with activated carbon (not charcoal) with a little cone of
coffee filter paper to keep the carbon dust from contaminating the
output in the bottom of it...the pointy end. The rubber bulb has been
removed from the body of the baster and a slot cut in its end opposite
the hole the body fit into. The bulb is forced over the outside of
the baster body with the narrow end pointed towards the spout of the
body to form a soft "plug" that will hold the baster carbon column
vertical when the plug is stuck into the open end of my 5-gallon glass
water bottles. a small hole allows air in the bottle to escape as the
drizzle of distilled water fills it over several hours. The carbon,
itself is amazingly easy to obtain in a very pure, very active state.
Go to any WalMart and look on the shelf of the fish tank department!
A whole pound of activated carbon comes in a nice plastic jug with
white cap for about $3. Changing the carbon column after every
distilling process, which goes on here about 3 days per month, 24/7,
and you will empty this pound of carbon in about 10 years. The
distiller company charges LOTS more, but admitted they get the carbon
from the same place as WalMart does.....same stuff.

I've donated pure, distilled water to my ham radio club outings on my
refridgerated cooler. They love it, too....drinking all the jugs dry
on a hot day. "I never knew it could taste this good!", is a normal
reaction.

City water tastes like crap in comparison and after seeing what's LEFT
in my distiller's boiler AFTER I boil off 25 gallons of pure water
from it....I just can drink SEWAGE any more...Yecch.

What I can't figure out is why someone doesn't make a water DISTILLER
that operates off the engine's waste exhaust heat, instead of heating
up sea water to dump overboard. It would make LOTS of distilled water
in the process of cooling the exhaust to under 250F.......??? All
we'd do is make it out of stainless steel.....and use seawater to cool
the condensor!....

The whole Navy drinks distilled sea water.....as do their steam
boilers.







Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 04:23:09 GMT, (Larry W4CSC) wrote:

On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:13:14 -0700, " Olly wrote:

Watermakers remove almost all the TDS - supposedly 99+% - so the water
is like distilled. Is it unhealthy to drink nothing but distilled
water - no mineral content - for years while cruising.

Here's a good water test site to show what a distiller can do.....

http://wholesalewaterdistillers.com/...istillers.html

Yeah, he's a dealer in the USA for all of them......but the tests were
done at 2 universities.



Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?

RO water used for drinking will definitely harm you long term.
RO water has most of the ionic molecules removed.
The laws of Chemical equilibrium will cause these missing ions (some are
essential) to be removed from your body, thus causing a long term
deficit. Consult with you Primary Health Care Provider and work out a
regimin for replacment of these chemicals.
Larry should get a NEW physician! .... its not whats in the water; but,
what such water REMOVES from you.

RO doesnt remove *all* the bacteria from water. RO membranes are not
that efficient, nor precisely made. What Larry states is a common
problem with poorly maintained or poorly designed RO systems: when the
'dead' bacteria that are trapped on the membrane decompose, the cell
contents mix with the effluent water. Some of these decomposition
products (endotoxins) are toxic and are FEVER producers. The worse the
system maintenance the greater potential to get sick; and it takes an
'expert' to maintain properly. An RO machine that is not running
*flat-out* 100% of the time is a brewery for bacteria.
Thats why I dont have filters or RO machines on my boat's water system
..... and Im deeply involved in filtration/membranes/RO, etc.

Larry W4CSC wrote:
On Wed, 22 Oct 2003 17:13:14 -0700, " Olly wrote:


Watermakers remove almost all the TDS - supposedly 99+% - so the water
is like distilled. Is it unhealthy to drink nothing but distilled
water - no mineral content - for years while cruising.


I've been drinking distilled water for over 5 years. The only thing
I've noticed different is I haven't had a common cold in....well....5
years! I don't even get stuffy nose on it.

I'm told by a doctor, a medical doctor, that elemental metals and
other pollutants in tap water cannot be absorbed by carbon-based life
forms. It must be ORGANIC in nature. The reason I went to a
distiller is I got tired of laying screaming in pain from the kidney
stones the local drinking water kept producing in my kidneys from the
elemental calcium. Some fell out....many didn't....one they had to go
after up through the plumbing! I'm cleaned out, now. Pure distilled
water is the finest flushing agent, the real job of the water you
drink, there is. It leaves no deposits of bad things like elemental
calcium or heavy metals like zinc, cadmium, lead in your body......

Now, about the RO problem........

I'm sorry the website won't load any more, but there was a news item
on yahoo warning people about a bacterial problem with RO water making
people very sick. Remember those cruise ships with mass sickness?

RO systems DO block bacteria from passing through the
membranes.....good. But, unfortunately, the bacteria piled up by the
billions against the membrane under high pressure are BREAKING DOWN
into their component parts, including the TOXINS in the bacteria that
make you sick. The TOXINS are much smaller, very molecular, and pass
THROUGH the membrane into your drinking water. Of course, companies
with vast investments in RO systems would rather you never saw such a
thing, which may be why it disappeared off Yahoo, mysteriously.

Searching for problems with RO systems on the net is very hard to do
with all the keywords on EVERY sales page of EVERY RO seller on the
planet keying your search.

If you talk to RO sales people, ask them, "Why do I need a UV
sterilizer connected to the output of my RO water system?"

Think about the why until you get to pop the question.....(c;

Distillers are not without their problems....either......

Many common aromatics, almost anything ending in "ene", is
DISTILLABLE! If you have, as we do, dissolved aromatic contaminants
like benzene, xylene, toulene and other industrial solvents will
distill in my plant. These contaminants give grocery store distilled
water for your iron a "metallic taste". Mention drinking distilled
water and people cringe at the thought of drinking water that tastes
like metal....uggh!

Lucky for us, activated carbon filtering causes these ions to attach
themselves freely to the activated carbon....making the carbon
filtered distilled water just delicious and free of these
distillables. Some of the distillables don't condense around 100C and
the condensor of the distiller is too hot to re-condense them. They
float off if you leave the outlet open with water dripping out, not
sealed. Unfortunately, valuable alcohols are one of them.....sorry.

My carbon filter consists of a gourmet store NYLON food baster body
filled with activated carbon (not charcoal) with a little cone of
coffee filter paper to keep the carbon dust from contaminating the
output in the bottom of it...the pointy end. The rubber bulb has been
removed from the body of the baster and a slot cut in its end opposite
the hole the body fit into. The bulb is forced over the outside of
the baster body with the narrow end pointed towards the spout of the
body to form a soft "plug" that will hold the baster carbon column
vertical when the plug is stuck into the open end of my 5-gallon glass
water bottles. a small hole allows air in the bottle to escape as the
drizzle of distilled water fills it over several hours. The carbon,
itself is amazingly easy to obtain in a very pure, very active state.
Go to any WalMart and look on the shelf of the fish tank department!
A whole pound of activated carbon comes in a nice plastic jug with
white cap for about $3. Changing the carbon column after every
distilling process, which goes on here about 3 days per month, 24/7,
and you will empty this pound of carbon in about 10 years. The
distiller company charges LOTS more, but admitted they get the carbon
from the same place as WalMart does.....same stuff.

I've donated pure, distilled water to my ham radio club outings on my
refridgerated cooler. They love it, too....drinking all the jugs dry
on a hot day. "I never knew it could taste this good!", is a normal
reaction.

City water tastes like crap in comparison and after seeing what's LEFT
in my distiller's boiler AFTER I boil off 25 gallons of pure water
from it....I just can drink SEWAGE any more...Yecch.

What I can't figure out is why someone doesn't make a water DISTILLER
that operates off the engine's waste exhaust heat, instead of heating
up sea water to dump overboard. It would make LOTS of distilled water
in the process of cooling the exhaust to under 250F.......??? All
we'd do is make it out of stainless steel.....and use seawater to cool
the condensor!....

The whole Navy drinks distilled sea water.....as do their steam
boilers.







Larry W4CSC

3600 planes with transponders are burning 8-10 million
gallons of kerosene per hour over the USA. R-12 car air
conditioners are responsible for the ozone hole, right?

On Thu, 23 Oct 2003 05:00:54 GMT, RichH wrote:

RO water used for drinking will definitely harm you long term.
RO water has most of the ionic molecules removed.
The laws of Chemical equilibrium will cause these missing ions (some are
essential) to be removed from your body, thus causing a long term
deficit. Consult with you Primary Health Care Provider and work out a
regimin for replacment of these chemicals.
Larry should get a NEW physician! .... its not whats in the water; but,
what such water REMOVES from you.

Larry is 57 and living proof that drinking only pure, distilled water
is VERY healthy. Larry takes no pills, uses no medical crutches, is
very active and is too healthy for his doctor's financial benefit.
Larry's BP is 115 over 75. Not bad for a guy who's 50# overweight all
his life. You should all be so healthy.......and drink only distilled
water......

Larry no longer wakes up with that awful pain in his kidneys
indicating another kidney stone has lodged itself in the plumbing
leading to hours and hours of excrutiating pain laying on a gurney at
the hospital begging for D-E-M-E-R-O-L.....ask for it by name!

RO doesnt remove *all* the bacteria from water. RO membranes are not
that efficient, nor precisely made. What Larry states is a common
problem with poorly maintained or poorly designed RO systems: when the
'dead' bacteria that are trapped on the membrane decompose, the cell
contents mix with the effluent water. Some of these decomposition
products (endotoxins) are toxic and are FEVER producers. The worse the
system maintenance the greater potential to get sick; and it takes an
'expert' to maintain properly. An RO machine that is not running
*flat-out* 100% of the time is a brewery for bacteria.
Thats why I dont have filters or RO machines on my boat's water system
.... and Im deeply involved in filtration/membranes/RO, etc.

Thank you. I've been attacked, regularly, by RO users and sellers for
revealing its major shortcomings. I wouldn't drink RO water, either.



Larry W4CSC

"Very funny, Scotty! Now, BEAM ME MY CLOTHES! KIRK OUT!"

I'd also like to warn anyone interested in distilled water of the
dangers of your STORAGE facility......

Many forget to sanitize their storage tankage (you know that green
slimed water tank in the bilge you don't want to think about because
there's no way to really clean it). In my facility, I use only
glassware water bottles I buy from local bottled water distributors.
These are washed to get out anything solid with antibacterial soap,
where most people stop. However this isn't good, either, as the rinse
water is contaminated by city water. So, I put the jugs into my
JennAire convection oven at 230F for 20 minutes to sanitize the
leftovers from city water rinsing.

The end product is you can sit my water in full sunlight, capped of
course, and nothing will grow in it because there was nothing to start
the growth. This was suggested by another distiller and it works
great. I sanitize five big glass jugs at a time, then cap them until
they are ready to be filled. My distiller has NO TANKAGE OF ITS OWN.
It's a commercial lab distiller made of stainless steel and white
porcelain with a 1500W element. Latex surgical hose connects its
output to the carbon column directly over the sanitized jug.....



Larry W4CSC

"Very funny, Scotty! Now, BEAM ME MY CLOTHES! KIRK OUT!"

Here's a good water test site to show what a distiller can do.....

I see no mention of sulphur. We have to draw the drinking water into some
type of vessel and then let it breathe for an hour or so and then refrigerate.
The
wonders of having well water in the low country.

Leanne

verly paranoid. Virtually all of the health nut web sites recommend RO
water. RO systems are not perfect and do take at least a minimum amount
of care but they are WAY better than most shore supplies. Desalinating
RO systems are not intended as purifiers. Purification is a by product
of desalination. It does reject most bacteria but not most viruses so UV
post treatment is a good idea as is a regularly maintained carbon
filter. With proper flushing with fresh product water the bacterial
buildup is minimal and the toxins released will be at a level in PPM
lower than any health standards.

The primary essential minerals removed by RO are sodium, magnesium and
potassium. But the depletion rate in body tissue is slow and easy to
replentish. A normal healthy diet will supply all you need. Use
iodized salt on your eggs and take an occasional shot of Kaopektate if
you are worried about it. Makes you a regular fella to boot! :-)

Chemically pure water is less biologically active. This works to an
advantage if used to flush the membranes because bacterial growth will
be slowed. There is a school of thought however that claims a severe
lack of biologically active water may be harmful to the body but eating
Fresh fruit and vegatables will supply plenty of it. What hurts the
credibility of this idea for me is that this same school claims that
magnets and crystals can restore the activity.

RichH wrote:

RO water used for drinking will definitely harm you long term.
RO water has most of the ionic molecules removed.
The laws of Chemical equilibrium will cause these missing ions (some are
essential) to be removed from your body, thus causing a long term
deficit. Consult with you Primary Health Care Provider and work out a
regimin for replacment of these chemicals.
Larry should get a NEW physician! .... its not whats in the water; but,
what such water REMOVES from you.

RO doesnt remove *all* the bacteria from water. RO membranes are not
that efficient, nor precisely made. What Larry states is a common
problem with poorly maintained or poorly designed RO systems: when the
'dead' bacteria that are trapped on the membrane decompose, the cell
contents mix with the effluent water. Some of these decomposition
products (endotoxins) are toxic and are FEVER producers. The worse the
system maintenance the greater potential to get sick; and it takes an
'expert' to maintain properly. An RO machine that is not running
*flat-out* 100% of the time is a brewery for bacteria.
Thats why I dont have filters or RO machines on my boat's water system
.... and Im deeply involved in filtration/membranes/RO, etc.

--
Glenn Ashmore

I'm building a 45' cutter in strip/composite. Watch my progress (or lack
there of) at: http://www.rutuonline.com
Shameless Commercial Division: http://www.spade-anchor-us.com

Olly's original premise and some of the comments above are apparently
based on RO systems used to purify household water. Marine seawater RO
systems -- watermakers -- work in the same way, but because they start
with seawater, they end up at a very different point.

Seawater is a little above 30,000ppm total dissolved solids (TDS).
Watermakers typically are designed for rejection rates between 99.2
and 99.5%, which results in product water at around 200ppm TDS. Since
the FDA recommends that potable water have TDS below 500ppm, why make
the unit work harder than is necessary, with some room to spare?

This is by no means on the low side of healthy. If anything for
people with sodium problems, it's probably high. The three upper Great
Lakes run at around 170ppm, and millions of people drink that water
without problems.

Now, if you run domestic tap water through an RO that is designed to
produce very low TDS, you can get the TDS way down to the point of
unhealthy, but that's not an option or problem that any of us have at
sea.


Jim Woodward
www.mvFintry.com

Glenn Ashmore wrote in message news:5uRlb.90609$sp2.10288@lakeread04...
verly paranoid. Virtually all of the health nut web sites recommend RO
water. RO systems are not perfect and do take at least a minimum amount
of care but they are WAY better than most shore supplies. Desalinating
RO systems are not intended as purifiers. Purification is a by product
of desalination. It does reject most bacteria but not most viruses so UV
post treatment is a good idea as is a regularly maintained carbon
filter. With proper flushing with fresh product water the bacterial
buildup is minimal and the toxins released will be at a level in PPM
lower than any health standards.

The primary essential minerals removed by RO are sodium, magnesium and
potassium. But the depletion rate in body tissue is slow and easy to
replentish. A normal healthy diet will supply all you need. Use
iodized salt on your eggs and take an occasional shot of Kaopektate if
you are worried about it. Makes you a regular fella to boot! :-)

Chemically pure water is less biologically active. This works to an
advantage if used to flush the membranes because bacterial growth will
be slowed. There is a school of thought however that claims a severe
lack of biologically active water may be harmful to the body but eating
Fresh fruit and vegatables will supply plenty of it. What hurts the
credibility of this idea for me is that this same school claims that
magnets and crystals can restore the activity.

RichH wrote:

RO water used for drinking will definitely harm you long term.
RO water has most of the ionic molecules removed.
The laws of Chemical equilibrium will cause these missing ions (some are
essential) to be removed from your body, thus causing a long term
deficit. Consult with you Primary Health Care Provider and work out a
regimin for replacment of these chemicals.
Larry should get a NEW physician! .... its not whats in the water; but,
what such water REMOVES from you.

RO doesnt remove *all* the bacteria from water. RO membranes are not
that efficient, nor precisely made. What Larry states is a common
problem with poorly maintained or poorly designed RO systems: when the
'dead' bacteria that are trapped on the membrane decompose, the cell
contents mix with the effluent water. Some of these decomposition
products (endotoxins) are toxic and are FEVER producers. The worse the
system maintenance the greater potential to get sick; and it takes an
'expert' to maintain properly. An RO machine that is not running
*flat-out* 100% of the time is a brewery for bacteria.
Thats why I dont have filters or RO machines on my boat's water system
.... and Im deeply involved in filtration/membranes/RO, etc.