Date: Thu, 19 May 2011 20:14:44 -0700
Reply-To: BenT Syncro <syncro@GMAIL.COM>
Sender: Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From: BenT Syncro <syncro@GMAIL.COM>
Subject: Re: Water tank
In-Reply-To: <20110519224350.PF261.504878.imail@eastrmwml33>
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Dave,
I'm glad you don't live in a bubble like Monsieur Squirrel. You couldn't have been more closer when you used the term "boondocks".
We drew water from an artesian well. Well water tend to carry a lot of minerals and are probably unsuitable for regular use in Westies if you want your system to have a long life. I recall that we had calcium residue collecting on the edge of faucets and anywhere water touched. Like corrosion on Wasserboxer headgaskets, they build up around faucets eventually causing washers to fail.
BenT
sent from my electronic leash
On May 19, 2011, at 7:43 PM, Dave Mcneely <mcneely4@COX.NET> wrote:
> ---- Rocket J Squirrel <camping.elliott@GMAIL.COM> wrote:
>> On Thu, 2011-05-19 at 15:07 -0700, BenT Syncro wrote:
>>
>>
>>> I'm old enough to have lived in a time when our drinking water had to
>>> be laced with iodine to make it safe. The alternative was boiled water
>>> which assaulted the taste buds.
>>
>>
>> Srsly? How old are you, Ben? I'm 61 and don't recall anything like that.
>> At least not in genteel Santa Barbara, Calif., where I was a kid.
>
> I just assumed that Ben must have grown up in some back in the boondocks place. However, when I lived in Appalachia (only 25 years ago), it was the norm for folks to use bleach in their private water supply. Typically a spring branch or even a spring head would be diverted to a cistern. The bleach was added periodically to the cistern. I don't recall anyone using iodine in those circumstances. The cistern typically had a screened inlet and a cover, to keep out debris and critters. Sometimes one or the other failed, and a neighbor once found a drowned groundhog in his cistern. Another acquaintance used to regularly keep the minnows he seined from the creek and held for fishing trips in a screen box in his cistern. He claimed his water, from a spring, was pure enough that he did not need to treat it. I never knew of anyone in his family having a waterborne illness, but I would not drink his water, since it did have surface exposure before entering the cistern, and of course, his house and others in the vicinity were on septic systems so even ground water might be a bit suspect, in that terrain where bedrock was near the surface and water "seams" were common.
>
> I guess we are straying pretty far from Vanagon stuff.
>
> mcneely
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