“I’ll come to your place when SHTF” – no... you won’t

[Remek]

^^^ fair points, but does a coke bottle hold co2 for a decade?

For the growth of organisms, fair point, but maybe follow my RO/distilled water advice.

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[Remek]

If you wont buy steam iron water, aquafina is filtered, blasted with UV and treated several ways to sunday. Its safe, albeit expensive.

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[MarcSpaz]

Holding CO2 has nothing to due with contamination.

I have a bottle of Deer Park distilled water on my desk in front of me as I type this. It is used for a humidifier. I bought it 2 days ago. It has a "best if used by" date of 03/31/15 etched into the plastic. That's 1.5 years for distilled.

[SHMIV]

Plastic will break down. That is inevitable. If the plastic is exposed to sunlight, it will break down faster.

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[Remek]

As said in the web site i cited, the date has to do with a requirement made in NJ, and I bet, to increase turnover and profit.

Still further, the point made about RO or distilled water gets rid of problems with mineral water.

I am also pretty sure that deer park isnt distilled. I will double chck, but i cannot do it with this mobile. ... Back in a second.

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[Remek]

Apologies, it appears that deer park is distilled, at least in some of their products.

To degrading, from SHIMV, one of the big issues with these plastics is that they do not degrade in landfills. There are very few bacteria that can digest this stuff.

With regard to sunlight degradation, i'd hope you are not keeping it with your solar panels!

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[SHMIV]

True enough that plastic won't decompose completely in a timely fashion, and won't become dirt, but it still breaks down. And as it does so, it will release chemicals into the water that it's holding.

Pricier plastics may hold up longer, but that gallon of water that you just picked up for $1.59 is contained in plastic from the lowest bidder.

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[MarcSpaz]

I see your point about the date. Kind of the same attitude I have about Wise and other companies selling us MRE's. Playing on emotion and "what if" to turn a profit. Plus, we can always boil or distil water again if needed, regardless of how old dirty it gets (excluding some of the obvious like radiation).

Distilleries are pretty easy to make with common plumbing supplies. Lets face it, even in a total break-down, how many people are going to raid Lowe's or Home Depot for plumbing supplies like hot water tanks and copper pipe. LOL

[dorminWS]

A few observations on the bottled water issue:

The ugly truth is that part of the "best is used by"/expiration date you see on packaged beverages is related to actual shelf-life of the product and/or package. Part of it is pure marketing. And part of it is just a planned obsolescence scam to push more sales through the distribution system. The manufacturer doesn't really care if his sales are because someone bought and consumed his product or because the retailer or distributor had to discard and replace it because the "date is up" and no one will buy it. Most diet soft drinks are sweetened with aspartame, which is unstable in solution and breaks down into a substance that is not harmful, but tastes like crap. So the shelf life, or "best if used by" date on them is something like 16 weeks. Non-diet soft drinks don't have unstable sweeteners, but the CO2 DOES diffuse through the bottle wall and they go flat over time and as a function of ambient temperature; so the "best if used by" date on them is around 30-40 weeks. But the CO2 diffuses under pressure; and still bottled water is not usually pressurized these days. The 30-40 weeks has become the standard "best if used by" date for beverages in cans and glass bottles, too, but this is just marketing/planned obsolescence. It used to be a year or so. Aquafina water is indeed RO'ed, then ionized before it is filled. The ionization sterilizes the container and filling machinery. But the "best if used by" date is set at 2 years. That's probably somewhat arbitrary, but the valid concern here is that while it may not be harmful, it might acquire a "stale" taste. The Aquafina folks would much rather that someone pour it down the drain than have a "suboptimal sensory experience" with their product. That brings up another point: "shelf life"/"best if used by" dates are not always about a product being spoiled; but just that it may not be at its PEAK for taste and consumer appeal. So commercially packaged water that was ionized like Aquafina is good for at least 2 years from the date it was produced (which will/should appear in a code somewhere on the bottle), and it is probably good for a lot longer than that. One would assume that a "suboptimal sensory experience" would be among the lesser of one's worries if the SHTF. My opinion would be that leaching would not be an issue at least when you are talking about pure water in a PET bottle.

It occurs to me that if you had a small carbon cartridge filter and hand pump, you could chlorinate water you had questions about and then (after adequate contact time) push it through the carbon filter to strip the chlorine back out. Or, you could chlorinate it and then just wait for the chlorine to gas back out. agitation and exposure to sunlight/heat would accelerate the outgassing. Maybe the best lesson from all this is to lay in a few cases of old-fashioned Clorox bleach with your water.

[Remek]

^^^ Well said. The filters are definitely a good thing to have, either way.

[kelu]

Time to hit the stores?
http://www.libertyfederation.com/have_w ... _amendment

[dorminWS]

^^^ Well said. The filters are definitely a good thing to have, either way.

>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>

For that matter, if you can figure out how to pump water through them, small reverse osmosis systems are not that expensive.
http://www.uswatersystems.com/residenti ... mosis.html

[scrubber3]

Guys, water is water..... Water doesn't "go bad". If it did, we'd have been extinct long ago. As far as the plastic is concerned, I've got plastic toys from the 80's still holding up just fine.... I've drank soda out of plastic bottles that had been opened already that were at least 6 months old and still had some fizz. It didn't hurt me whatsoever. I've drank out of plastic canteens that had been used for years with no ill effects. Store your water in a dry, dark, cool area and it should be good to go for years. Expiration dates are there because they have to be.(regulations)

Water has been used since man first stepped foot on earth. It's not a hard thing to do so let's not make it complicated.... If its questionable; boil it. If its dirty; filter it. It's that simple.

[MarcSpaz]

I typed a 4 paragraph response to you, and then I decided, you know what bro... screw it... you drink what you wanna drink. Knock yourself out. One less person I have to compete with in the end. LOL

[scrubber3]

I typed a 4 paragraph response to you, and then I decided, you know what bro... screw it... you drink what you wanna drink. Knock yourself out. One less person I have to compete with in the end. LOL

Enlighten me.

[MarcSpaz]

Well, let me per-cursor this by saying I am in no way delusional enough to think I am the smartest guy in the room. In fact, its the opposite, which is why I joined this site. It's to learn more about the shooting hobby, meet new people and have fun with like minded people. However, after over 40 on earth, I think I have figured a few things out and developed an opinion on a few things. With that said...

I don't think we are trying to over complicate water. However, a couple of people have presented questions that collectively lead to...

1.) how do you treat and or keep your owner water supply fresh?
2.) how long can you store water in plastic bottles before you have to worry about leeching?
3.) how long can water be stored in plastic (commercial or private)and still be safe to drink?

So stimulated by those questions, most of what we are taking about is the fact that no water, regardless of how clean it is, is ever bottled in a sterile vacuum. Therefore, due to bacteria growth in stagnant water, even if the water itself is very clean when bottled or if you treat it for longevity, there is indeed a limit to how long that water will stay consumable with no other action required and you not getting sick.

The real question that none of us have been able to answer is, what is a good benchmark. There are some great debating points brought to the table, but there have also been some good rebuttals.

With all of that out of the way... to say "water is water" and "water doesn't go bad" is a pretty ignorant thing to say. I have seen people die from bacterial infection and I have seen people get extremely ill and almost die from having contaminated water they thought looked okay, including my wife.

The truth of the matter is, food and water in their natural states are very misleading. The recent education, experience and invention of technologies to help us detect problems with food and water and clean our resources is the only reason why we live longer and the global population has increased 700% since 1800. It is certainly not because nature is so forgiving.

Some of the points you brought up... "If its questionable; boil it. If its dirty; filter it. It's that simple." Although true, it actually is not that simple. The discussion is focused around a SHTF moment in time when cleaning and distilling may not be that easy to accomplish. If you are dehydrated and have limited mobility and resources, cleaning water simply is not an option. That is why we have the discussions about water storage and access to clean flowing water in nature as a renewable source.

So, my last post was a tad facetious. I don't want you to perish due to ignorance. I was stressing a point that (due to your post) you seemed closed minded to the advise and warnings we are discussing. I really didn't want to type all of this targeting you specifically as an audience, because I feel my words may fall on deaf ears.

[GeneFrenkle]

well....

In a significant SHTF scenario - fancy filters, bottled water, etc will be used up quickly. Boiling will work as will adding some bleach (if you can find it after running out). Steam or evaporative condensing would work, too. Folks are getting too wrapped around the axle and missing the overall point - a consistent source of potable water is needed for a long term. For short term stuff - rotate bottled water like you would any other food item mainly so you stay mindful of how much you have, ensure it's accessibility, etc. Honestly, it doesn't matter because you'll be hitting this stuff after going through what's in your pipes and water heater. Still short term.

There's agreement that rivers, streams, etc. all have an "upstream" and you don't want to drink downstream from a herd of cattle, even if the water looks good. Ponds and whatnot - same deal - care must be taken and we're not talking about some chewy algae that needs to be removed. We're talking pathogens.

Why not add to the mix what has been done for centuries... brew some light beer (light, not like the light beer we have now, rather light as in low etoh content - enough to kill the bad stuff). Brewers have been at the forefront of exploration, colonization, and conquest for _centuries_ and has been the primary source of potable water. Exploring this, if desired, probably should be done in it's own thread or series of threads (like readily available sources of [yeast | sugar | etc]).

Rainwater in cisterns is a different issue (yea, those have been used for a while, too). Overall - the problem has been solved a long time ago under harsher conditions with fewer resources.

[kelu]

That applies to me:
When you have no other water, some BPE from the plastic bottle would be my last worry. Ok, I may develop some cancer in the next 10 years, but at least I don't die now.
After all, if you will have bottled water you will still be doing better than other 95%. And still better than some water from nature, which you may have or not, and you may purify or not, and get some nasty disease that will kill you in 7 days.

[jdonovan]

Why not add to the mix what has been done for centuries... brew some light beer (light, not like the light beer we have now, rather light as in low etoh content - enough to kill the bad stuff).

because today, there is A LOT more more bad stuff out there to contaminate water than a town up stream pooping in it.

[GeneFrenkle]

Wells out here test just fine and are a condition for sale. Sound like bigger problems already exist wherever there is if you can't even use captured rainwater.

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