Last week, we began our discussion on 5 Ways to Make Water Potable – Part 1. This week, we’re going to continue this discussion with more – SIMPLE, CHEAP, and even SUPRISING ways to take any water and make it drinkable.
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Last week, we discussed using Chloring bleach to disinfect water in order to make it potable. There is a problem with using bleach, however, as we discussed last week. It has a very limited shelf-life, but I have an alternate solution for you!
Calcium hypochlorite
So, pool shock – also known as Calcium hypochlorite – can be used to purify water for drinking. The upside of using this to disinfect water is that this is shelf stable until you mix the powder with water! So this is a great long-term alternative to purify your water! You can mix up a bleach solution a little at a time using this.
Making Bleach from Calcium Hypochlorite
This is SIMPLE with just four easy steps.
(1) Gather your materials.
You’ll need a 1-gallon (or greater container – unless you want to do your own math), glasses or safety goggles, nitrile, latex, or other medical or cleaning gloves, a packet of calcium hypochlorite, and 1 gallon of water. Something to note if you can find an opaque container, it’s better than one you can see through. If however, all you have in an old water jug, then make sure you keep it away from sunlight or its efficacy will diminish quickly.
(2) Don your protective items.
(3) Mix the solution – according to the directions below.
Pour half a gallon of clean water into the container that you are going to use for your bleach. Add 1 tsp of calcium hypochlorite. Put the lid on and swish the crystals around in the water gently. Then fill the gallon jug with clean water. Gently swish the solution again.
(4) You can now use it to purify water.
Iodine
In a recent article on first aid, I mentioned that I keep iodine in our long-trip first aid kit. Because this kit is usually kept in our garage, I have access to it while I’m at home even if someone is out in both of our vehicles. Iodine is another very simple way to make water potable – or drinkable.
The iodine that we keep in our first aid kit is a 10% solution of provoiodine. PubMed did several experiments on using a 10% solution of provoiodine to disinfect water. The bottom-line of their study is that a ratio of 1 to 1000 where you wait at least 15 minutes after treatment to ingest the water is sufficient to kill e. coli bacteria.
So in practical terms what does this look like? A one to one thousand ratio is for 1 quart of clear water, you would want 19 drops of 10% provoiodine solution and allow it to sit for 15 minutes.
This is how I did my math.
According to UnitConverters.net 1000 drops equals 50ml. So a 1 to 1000 ratio would be 1 drop for every 50ml.
There are 946 ml in one quart. So we’re going with 950 for easy math. So to know how many drops we need for 1 quart of water, we divide 950 by 50 and get 19.
You do need to make sure that you shake the solution up well and then wait a minimum of 15 minutes before ingesting. I’m a concerned mama, so I’d probably wait 30 minutes. But that’s just who I am.
Iodine can be lethal if ingested in inappropirate dosages, so please do be careful.
Boiling
If you are going to boil water in order to make water potable – or safe to drink, make sure that you start with water that you have filtered out the particulate matter – as described above.
According to an article on USA Today, if you are at elevations of less than 1 mile (5280 feet or 2000m) you should boil your CLEAR (remember above where I talked about filtering out contaniments) water for a minimum of 1 minute to kill any germs or bacteria. If you are an an elevation over those, you should extend the boiling time to 3 minutes.
UV light purifier
So full disclosure – I do not own a UV light water purifier. But as I was working on this article, I did some digging and I found how a UV light water purifier works to be fascinating! UV light scrambles the DNA of organisms in water. This basically renders them innert – they can’t hurt you.
So what a UV light water purifier does is the water goes it at one end of a tube, travels down the tube where it is exposed to UV light – making whatever microbes are in it harmless, then the water comes out the other end of the tube.
The upside to this method is that it sterilizes 99.99% of all bacteria and microbes in the water. The downside of this method of sterilization – or making water potable is that you need to be able to power it. It does require electricity. The other downside to this method is that it does cost more than many other methods. This UV light water purifier costs – at the time of this writing $165.
My Conclusions
If I were starting out now without a filtrations system
So if there are any of you out there who have not yet invested in a water filtration system. Let me start by saying that you need one – even if you only use it for emergencies. You need one!
And if it were me starting over at this point – I would buy a ZeroWater countertop model. BUT if I were in a situation where there was a chance that the water had been contaminated, I would treat the water with bleach (which I made from calcium hypochlorite) first, AND THEN put it through the ZeroWater countertop water filter.
For My Family – In light of this research
I’ve been reading preparedness articles for well over 12 years – probably closer to fifteen years. In that time I’ve probably had to disinfect water maybe twice. Going back over it for this article, though I was surprised at just how simple it really is to disinfect water if you have the right tools at your disposal.
After doing all of this research – for my family, I have decided that I will continue to use the Black Berkey Filters, but we will discontinue use of the fluoride filters since it appears that they leach aluminum into the water. However, I may still purchase a fridge version of the ZeroWater to filter out the fluoride.
Did you know that there are tools that you can acquire to make the most of your stored water during an emergency?
What About You?
Do you currently have a water filtration system? If so which do you have, and are you satisfied with it? Secondly, have you tried making your own bleach or disinfecting water with bleach or iodine?
And never forget . . .
You’ve Got This, Mama!
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This was really helpful. Mike Adams, The Health Ranger also tested Zerowater with glyphosate and it filtered out 100%.
Thank you!!
I’m glad that you found the article helpful, Sally. You are very welcome.
with the calcium hypochlorite, when you get the solution, is that then essentially bleach and you use it as such?
Yes. You make bleach from calcium hypochlorite and yes, you can use it just the same way as you use chlorine bleach that you purchase from the store. The benefit is that it keeps longer when you have it in solid form then it does when you have it in liquid form, so you just make up what you need as you need it.
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