Don't Drink the Water

[James Doran]

GTO Listees:

I know I am not supposed to drink the tap water here. What do you think about drinking it if it is boiled hard for a few minutes?

James[/i]

[Ann001]

I was told that a 20 minute boiling makes it safe to drink.

[Ann001]

However, that seems a ridiculously long time, so I googled. The CDC says by the time water reaches boiling it is disinfected, but they recommend another minute just to be sure.
https://modernsurvivalblog.com/health/ho...ing-water/

[admin]

Such a lot of work - once the water is boiled you still have to wait until it is cool enough to drink. And also you'd probably need to "repackage" the now boiled water into other containers assuming you wouldn't just be boiling up single servings. Wouldn't it be simpler to install a basic filtration system? You can get an idea of what is available in the Mexican market by checking ]MercadoLibre

[DonJuane]

Water filtration has long been an interest of mine. Living in Texas most of my life I've suffered through some of the worst tasting water I've experienced in my life and some of the worst clothes staining and cooking pot staining as well. Some things I've learned about what works as far as available filtration methods follow. You see once you boil that water, you get the benefit of all those little microbes roasted, floating tastelessly in whats left of your water brew and what this means is no stomach bugs from your water supply, but the best is yet to come. At this point the good minerals from the water supply of a typical Mexico mining town including arsenic, iron, cadmium, copper, sulfuric acid and more and all of them say to you as you boil, "thanks for the sauna as a prelude to settling once and for all in that fine body of yours". So some of these minerals may actually benefit from boiling water as a catalyst to help break them down to where they will be easier to be absorbed into your body.

I drink GTO water right from the house supply but it's first pumped via a booster pump through a 5 stage reverse osmosis filter system with a follow on ceramic filter. With this setup I probably don't filter everything out of the water, but it's likely as good if not better than what the water companies provide. Shopping for the unit, one can be found online from a US supplier for around $130 (buy the old-style filter canisters or pay many times over and over again by instead purchasing the new Costco "quick change" style filter unit) and also purchase the additional booster pump (required for gravity feed water systems) for around $80 and then add an individual canister ceramic for the final stage for around $50 which all totals to be a one time cost of around $260. A three year's supply of filters can be found for around $110 on US Amazon. If you don't think you will drink $40 worth of water a year in purchased bottles and you don't mind ordering and managing all your drinking and cooking water from bottles and you don't mind staying home every few days waiting for deliveries or else you don't mind toting them up and down the hills here, it might be less expensive to go the bottle route and skip trying to process the water with your own filter. At $40 a year that would be around 20 bottles a year or a little more than a bottle a month. So economies of scale would say buying bottles would be more economical if you drink or cook with 1.5 or less bottles per month. But then who knows what you are getting from the vendors and it's not always easy to manage bottles going in and out and the interruptions to your life that come with the constant shuffling.

Or as another choice (one that I would never select due to the all out potential, and likely one yet, of fraud) you can buy the latest model of a beer-can size "miracle filter" from REI and use it instead. (Using one the size of a tampon permanently mounted in a water pitcher is also popular I have discovered.) Does it work? No one actually knows but you sure feel like it works after paying a high price for it and pinning the glossy brochure next to the sink to marvel each time you take a drink. But who really knows if it is working or not? The lab they claim tested each new year's model never seems to get around to submitting the filter to an actual government approved testing agency and before you press the issue too far, next year's "miracle filter" brand is already on the shelves and everyone has now forgotten about last year's model. Still you have a strong feeling it's doing it's job because the brochure says it is and when you search Google, the entire first page of reviews links are positive, all of those glowing reviews must be accurate since they are from every popular outfitter magazine that got paid to review it. So it's got to be true don't you know ;-)

[James Doran]

All right. Thank you all for the replies.

I think the water filter system that Don Juane explains is the best way to go for the long run. We just bought a small place here and are settling in. More improvements are to come, including the water filtration system.

For now we are ding a combination of the bottled water delivered up the stairs to the house and boiling a couple of liters each day in an electrical pot for incidental use. Of course I wonder if the cost in electricity to boil the 2 liters is more than the cost of the bottled water? (There's one for you, Don.)

Thanks again,

James[/b]

[DonJuane]

Boiling is the best route but only if you use one of the filtration models that boils the water and follows up by distilling the steam from the boiled water into pure drinking water. Then even with this model as a solution, people complain about the energy they use and say the water "tastes flat", so you likely have to just select what works best for you.

Here's another bit of advise to people building here. Carefully consider how you wire your house and what appliances you plan on using. I am unique in that I was able to watch my rental being built which is not common. I saw the electrician who did a pretty fair job overall but he used 12 gauge wire between my master breaker panel and the meter outside on the wall. I was severely concerned and in fact after raising an issue had to pay for some number 6 (gauge) to replace the run between the breaker box and meter. That was the thickest that could go through the hole in the very thick wall. Then after living in the house a while I stood on the terrace one day and started visually tracing down some of the wires. It turns out that our neighborhood's transformer powers about 20 houses along this callejon and all of the houses are powered from what looks like about a 10 gauge wire. So it turns out the electrician was not that far off and should I have planned to add any significant electrical appliance, if I didn't melt the thin 12 gauge leading out the meter, there's a large chance I would melted the 10 gauge wire running up and down the callejon in front of the house. So make note.

Many years ago I remember that certain types of electrical appliances like deep fries or large waffle makers were prohibited from being imported into Mexico due to the electrical system. I have not heard of that lately but I certainly understand why it would be of major concern. For those of a curious nature, a 12 gauge wire is only capable of carrying 20 amps, the 10 gauge out on the street, 30A. If you have a breaker with 3-5 20A circuit breakers running to various rooms in your house, it doesn't take much to realize that you are going to be creating an overload either in my case with the sub-standard meter feed or in the case of any home in this neighborhood, the 30A maximum load capacity of the community wire running up and down the callejon.

[DonJuane]

Here's a better summary of electrical rates for house builders and thus an inspiration in making a non-electric or at minimum an energy efficient home. Also note that no matter how sore or out of breath you get in Guanajuato, no matter how much you dread another walk up or down stairs, just be thankful you don't live in Playa Del Carmen (wink).

http://everythingplayadelcarmen.com/your...ng-it-low/