Posts Tagged ‘pure water’
Discover the benefits of drinking water for your health
In a captivating book called “Your Body’s Many Cries For Water” that I recently read and highly recommend, the author gives an astounding presentation of the many benefits of drinking water.
Besides the other very interesting facts which stress the importance of drinking water, the author makes special reference to some common ailments that almost all of us suffer from time to time and shows that their most probable cause is dehydration. Below, I give you some examples:
Headaches and migraines
You should agree with me that some of the most common ailments that millions of people get afflicted with on a daily basis, are headaches and migraines. Most of the times, the underlying cause is very simple: You skipped on drinking adequate quantity of water.
You see, 75% of our brain consists of water and when it detects that there is shortage of it, it produces histamines which cause pain and fatigue. The intention is to make us slow down our activities, so as to preserve the minimum water quantity that will allow our brain to function properly.
More often than not, a big glass of pure water and a 20 minute break will work better than any pain killer medication to make our headache go away!
Sore Back
Second in my list of the benefits of drinking water comes another ailment which is one of the leading causes for loss of workdays and for the creation of a lot of distress and pain. This is none other than the back pain.
Let me elaborate on this.
The discs which our back consists of, have a hard external surface while inside they are filled with water. Provided that the quantity of the water is maintained at an adequate level, then the discs are performing their function well. This meaning that they are robust enough to help our backbone support the weight of our body.
Being flexible, our discs respond to the varying pressure exerted on them when we move our upper body, by shifting their shape. When they do this, water that stands around in our body is sucked inside the discs. As long as there is enough water around, then our discs have no problem, as they are properly filled with fluid.
The problem begins when we don’t replenish our body’s natural stock of water by drinking enough quantities. When the discs are shifting, then there is not enough water around them to be sucked inside, as explained above. The result is devastating: The internal fluids are gradually depleted and so the outer shell of the discs is no longer supported. Without this support, our poor discs are helpless, as the whole weight of the body is shifted on them! Pain and swelling ensues, putting us in distress and agony.
High blood pressure
The importance of drinking water is also manifested in the case of hypertension, that is the increase in pressure exerted by our blood circulatory system on the arteries.
You probably don’t know this, but it has long been established that hypertension more often than not occurs when the total volume of our blood is decreased. Considering now that more than 80% of our blood consists of water, then it is easy to realize that water deprivation can very well lead to blood volume loss.
When the total volume of our blood goes down, then an alert is triggered in our body. What follows is that our blood circulatory system self-adjusts by guiding all blood flow to the most active organs, switching everything else off. High blood pressure inevitably ensues, as a consequence of this blood redistribution.
To summarize, it goes without saying that improving your quality of life can be as simple as getting into the habit of drinking more water each and every day.
One word of caution: In order to benefit the most and avoid any adverse effects on you health, both yours and your family’s, make sure that the water you consume at your house is the very best quality. Considering now that, based on reports and statistics issued not only by private but also by government bodies, it is widely acceptable that both tap and bottled water quality leaves much to be desired, I should advice that time investigating your options about what you can do, will be time well spent.
Tags: benefits of drinking water, Health, home appliances, Nutrition, pure water, water filtration, water related ailments
The truth about residential reverse osmosis systems
Although their popularity has declined over the last years, residential reverse osmosis systems are still one of the alternatives that the average consumer considers when he or she becomes aware of the importance of having clean, healthy water at his or her home.
After studying the pros and cons of these residential reverse osmosis systems, I came to the conclusion that I should advise against them. Below, I will give you the three top reasons to support my decision. I rank them in terms of importance, the first being the least important.
Reason #1: They are very slow in processing water. This drawback is directly related with their principle of operation: Water has to be pushed with high pressure through a porous membrane. Whatever has smaller molecules than the pores (water) passes through the other side, while whatever has larger molecules (pollutants) stays behind. This whole process is slow because of the time it takes for water to pass these very small pores.
Typically, it takes about two to three hours for enough water to pass through the membrane to produce 1 gallon of water. Because of this, residential reverse osmosis systems use storage tanks holding 2 to 5 gallons of water. When drinking water is drawn from the RO faucet, the water comes from the storage tank.
As you realize, this fact puts some restriction on the space you want allocated at your house, as well as on the level of availability of the water you want to have, in order to cover your everyday needs.
Reason #2: To make matters worse, most RO units waste a lot of water. Just to give you an indication, they typically use between 3 to 10 gallons of tap water to produce 1 gallon of purified water; the remainder drains away.
Because of this, you realize that your cost of ownership of the system will increase, as you water bill will go up due to higher water consumption. As this is not enough, you will also have to make an extra provision for the water drainage set up.
Reason #3: And here comes the most important reason which, even if the first two not existed, this alone should be enough to prevent you from purchasing residential reverse osmosis systems. As I already mentioned, operation of this system is based on the difference in the molecular size of water on the one hand and a wide range of pollutants on the other. Now, unfortunately, together with these pollutants the system discards essential minerals that water contains. These are calcium, potassium and magnesium to name a few.
Let me say that you can very easily tell when water lacks minerals, or it is demineralized as the exact term goes. It tastes funny, or better yet, it doesn’t taste at all! It is flat.
But, being tasteless is not the only downside of demineralized water. Scientists agree that if you drink water that is deficient of essential minerals, then you are putting your health in serious danger. Following a thorough and long running study that they conducted, the World Health Organization published in their conclusions that it is imperative that drinking water should contain minimum levels of certain minerals.
Having said all the above about reverse osmosis systems, my advice to you is that you should consider investigating water multi filtration technology instead. To find relevant information and see what I use, visit my website.
Tags: healthy water, home appliances, home reverse osmosis systems, home water filtration systems, Nutrition, pure water, Water
Buying a water purification system: A guide on how to estimate cost
If you are like me, then the first question that pops into your mind when you consider buying a water purification system for your home is this: How much is it going to cost? The issue of cost needs diligent research, as you should investigate not only what you pay to get it, but also what you pay in the long run to maintain it.
What I will present to you in this article are the different cost parameters you should have in the back of your mind when doing your own research. I should mention that my analysis covers the four basic water purification technologies. These are: Reverse Osmosis, filters, distillers and ultraviolet units.
Initial Cost
There is a wide variation of initial cost. As a general rule, it is directly related with the number of contaminants you want the water purification system to remove from your tap water. Therefore, it is imperative that before you start your selection process you should get a hold of your water utility’s annual report (if your utility is public), or get your water tested though a private lab (if your water supply is from a private source).
As a rule of thumb, the complexity of your installation will rise as the range of pollutants you want to remove widens. Since none of the available water purifier technologies is able to remove all pollutants on its own, then most probably you will need a combination of technologies, each introducing an additional stage of water processing. As you realize, price goes up with increasing complexity.
To help you better estimate your required budget, let me give you some indicative prices: One single stage system with carbon filter is around $25, while a multi stage combination technology water purifier ranges from $400 up to $800.
Set Up Cost
What is common practice among water purification system manufacturers is to exclude any installation cost from the purchase price. This is attributed to the fact that many models in a given technology do not require any complicated set up whatsoever. More often than not, these are counter top models or just need to readily connect with a faucet.
If the installation of your system is a bit more involved, more often than not you can seek help from a person with minimum technical know how. In the case, however, that more technical skills are required, then a hired professional might cost anywhere from $100 up to around $200. The final cost depends on the modifications you need to make in your existing set up in your house as well as on the complexity of the water purification system itself.
To conclude on this issue, I have a suggestion to make: Always make sure with the company that is selling the purifier system you want to buy, whether the purchase price they publish includes installation cost or not.
Cost per gallon
The last cost dimension has to do with the ongoing operating cost of the water purification system. In the performance sheets provided by the manufacturers it is usually expressed as “cost per gallon”, where by “gallon” they mean gallon of pure water produced. This cost includes money spent on replaceable parts as well as money needed to cover any other operating costs (such as electricity and water bills). It is usually in the range between 6 to 25 dollar cents.
Please note that the cost figure stated in the performance sheet of the system is based on certain assumptions, different for each technology. For example, it is assumed that filters will be replaced roughly once every six months, RO membranes once every two years and UV lamps once a year. Distillers do not have any replaceable components whatsoever, so their running cost is equal to what you pay for electricity and water. What is worthwhile to mention about RO units is that they need a lot of water to operate, so expect your water bill to be high in case you select this type of system.
As a general rule, bear in mind that, other things being equal, the higher the initial price of the system, the lower is the ongoing cost for replaceable parts. Larger and more complex systems tend to be of higher quality, thus reducing the need for frequent replacement. Therefore, my advice is that you shouldn’t rush to base your estimate of the cost of ownership on initial price alone, but rather in combination with the ongoing cost.
Having said the above, what’s very important to be clear about before you start considering the cost implications, is the level of effectiveness and efficiency that you want from your water purification system, based on your own set of circumstances. In other words, you want the system to be effective at removing the contaminants your water has and to do that efficiently, i.e. remove them as much as possible.
Therefore, I will repeat what I mentioned earlier: It is very crucial that you obtain a report about the composition of your tap water in terms of pollutants, before you start your water purifier selection process.
Once you come up with the final list of systems that are qualified to pass the criterion of pollutants removal, then you should start your selection process based on cost.
Tags: Health, home appliances, Nutrition, pure water, water filtration, water purification, water purification systems, water purifiers
Basics of Drinking Water Filters
In this article, we will look at reverse osmosis, distillation and multi-media block filter systems. You will discover drinking water filters vary widely in effectiveness, required maintenance, speed of filtering, and cost per gallon of water produced. You will also acquire the information you need to choose the best drinking water filter system for your family.
Any of these filters are far better than continuing to use your body as a filter, but, depending on your water problems, you will find that some of them are clearly better than others.
First let’s look at the reverse osmosis (RO) systems.
The main filter in these systems is a semi-permeable membrane about the thickness of a piece of cellophane. Water that has been pre-filtered to remove most of the large particles is forced, under pressure, against the membrane and only particles the size of a water molecule, or smaller, can go thru. For the water conditions most of us have in the US, there is a far better way of doing what this stage does because:
1) Chemicals such as pesticides, drugs, chlorine, synthetic organic chemicals, etc. are not removed in the stage of the process since their molecules are smaller than water’s. A carbon filter must be used in combination with RO systems to finish the job.
2) RO systems have to be operated under a minimum required pressure to force the water molecules through the filter, and even then, only about one-third of them get through and the rest of the water is wasted.
3) This process is very slow, producing a gallon or so of filtered water per hour, so, if you want any volume of water for a shower, you will have to add on a special storage tank.
4) This stage will get the lead out, but it also removes the minerals our bodies need such as potassium, calcium and magnesium. At that point, the water water has gone from being neutral to being slightly acidic, and some medical professionals believe such water is unsafe to consume on a long-term basis.
These systems will produce filtered water at a cost of 18 to 24 cents a gallon and maintenance is always among users’ chief complaints, along with costs.
Next up is the distillation system (D).
When the sun heats the earth the warm, moist air rises, cools in the upper atmosphere and falls back to earth again as rain or snow. That is a good example of distillation process.
Distillation systems send water over a heated coil, causing the water to turn to steam. The steam transfers to a cooling chamber where it condenses back to a liquid, leaving inorganic compounds like lead, calcium, mercury, etc. behind.
This system is very effective against bacteria. Any bugs chlorine might have missed, such as cysts like Cryptosporidium and Giardia (bad bugs), will be zapped by distillation.
The D systems have the same drawback as the RO systems, however, in that they remove the bad metals like lead but take out the beneficial trace minerals as well.
Another thing they don’t remove, just like the RO systems, is chlorine and synthetic organic chemicals, because they vaporize more quickly than water and move right along with the water vapor. Consequently, D systems have to be used in combination with carbon filters.
Distillation like reverse osmosis is slow and incredibly wasteful, wasting up to 80 percent of the water used. Distillation produces water at a cost of 20 to 26 cents per gallon.
Selective filtration or multi-media block filtration is the last system we will look at.
Activated charcoal or carbon has long been viewed as the best technology for removing chemicals compounds such as chlorine, chlorine byproducts, herbicides, pesticides, drugs, etc., so, the earlier versions of these systems simply ran water through a cylinder filled with a granular form of activated charcoal.
However, these first systems:
1) Allowed some water to flow between the filter’s walls and the charcoal, so, not all the water was filtered and,
2) There was some concern that these filters were not capable of removing the tiny microbes such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia.
A new technology was developed which made the two complaints mute. This new technology kept the filtering power of activated charcoal but changed its form. First, they mixed the activated charcoal with a resin that had been chemically charged and compressed the mix into a solid block composed of submicron pores.
The problems were eliminated since the water could no longer bypass the filter and the cysts were removed by the filter’s tiny pores.
And chemical pollutants are obviously filtered out by the activated charcoal.
That leaves the special resin you mentioned…what does it do?
That resin causes any heavy metal ions in the water from metals like lead or mercury to break their bonds with water and snap to this chemically charged surface like a magnet to a piece of metal. However, the lighter minerals, such as calcium and potassium do not join in on the ion exchange, so, bottom line, the good stuff stays in the drinking water.
When you think of the “Rube Goldberg-ness” of the RO or D systems it is easy to understand why selective filtration technology is leading the industry. Independent laboratory tests have proven the produce the highest quality water and initial costs are more than competitive.
And, the are efficient and economical, giving you clean water at about 9 cents a gallon, they work quickly, very simply (no extra pumps or electricity needed and no need for storage tanks) and, virtually maintenance free.
Just remember, whatever water filter you use, don’t let it be your body.
Tags: chlorine, filteration, heavy metals, pure water, toxins, water filters, water safety
