Common Myths About Water Purification At Home
When it comes to drinking water, there are many possibilities to make it suitable for consumption. People have tried various ways to purify water over time, and many prefer DIY methods instead of specially designed systems on the market.
However, some popular myths arouse curiosity about home water purification methods. Are these effective? Can they successfully remove any contaminants from your water? Is it fine to use these methods on a daily basis?
Let's find out!
1. “By boiling the water you will remove all the contaminants.”
If you are wondering how to purify water at home quick and easy, boiling is the most used method. It is an effective way to destroy the pathogens present in the water such as bacteria, viruses, and protozoa. You must boil it for at least 1 minute and a maximum of 10 minutes to get rid of these contaminants.
However, boiling water will only remove bacteria and viruses, but it is not effective in removing lead, heavy metals, fuel, or chemicals.
2. “Boiling and distilling are the same thing.”
This is a quite common and wrong opinion at the same time. The two procedures seem to be similar because water distillation actually starts with boiling but is a more detailed process.
After the water hits its boiling point, the resulting vapors are first condensed, then cooled. Within this transition, impurities are removed, leaving behind clear and drinkable water.
Even if it is a more complex method, distillation has a higher efficiency because it manages to remove impurities such as heavy metals that simple boiling cannot.
3. “Household bleach is toxic to the human body.”
Obviously, you can't drink directly from a bleach container and do not expect side effects for your health. However, household bleach can be a good DIY water purification solution if used in the right amounts.
You can treat water at home by adding liquid household bleach such as Clorox or Purex. Always read the label before adding bleach chlorine to your water. It should be odorless and free of dyes and any additives.
Therefore, you should let the bleach action 60 min before consuming the water. Follow these instructions to know exactly how much bleach to add.
4. “Chlorine tablets can be used as a daily method of purifying water at home.”
Although these tablets are generally used by campers and hikers as a quick way to purify water, their effervescent action makes them a great and very quick method to purify water at home.
Chlorine tablets work by killing harmful microorganisms, making your water safer to drink. After adding them to the water, there is nothing left to do but wait for these to take effect.
However, water purification is not exactly a DIY thing. This means that you should do it yourself only as a temporary or emergency method.
5. “Solar purification can treat your water in less than an hour.”
People prefer this water purification method because it does not involve any cost. Indeed, solar purification is cheap and affordable for everyone.
However, this method requires the longest time to be effective and, of course, sunny weather. As with boiling and distillation, solar purification relies on heat to remove impurities from the water.
Fill a few bottles with water and leave them in the sunlight for approx 8 hours before drinking. Sunlight acts as a powerful disinfectant against bacteria and parasites in the water. For the purification process to be complete, make sure the water is stored in clean containers.
6. “Water can be treated using ordinary UV lights.”
By exposing water to UV lights, bacteria and waterborne pathogens are deactivated without using harmful chemicals that can alter its composition. The same thing happens with air and surfaces because UV light is not only effective for liquids, being a universal disinfectant for a wide category of bacteria.
However, people often use portable UV bulbs or blacklight lamps instead of UV filters because these are a cheaper alternative. Unfortunately, because those are a low power UV source, they are not effective in killing some microorganisms such as Cryptosporidium and Giardia.
7. “It is cheaper to purify water by DIY methods.”
In terms of costs, solar purification, boiling, or distilling does not require any money invested. However, other methods such as household bleach or chlorine and iodine tablets can be worth a few tens of dollars.
Even if they seem cheaper, DIY methods will cost you a lot of time and energy. On the other hand, a water purification system will remove impurities from your water without the need for your intervention.
8. “Iodine tablets do not pose any health risk.”
The human body needs a daily intake of certain substances and nutrients to stay healthy. Iodine is one of them. More than that, it has a great capacity to disinfect contaminated water.
However, as with chlorine, you should not use liquid iodine or tablets as a daily method of water purification. The recommended dietary dose must not exceed 2mg/day.
9. “DIY methods are better than water purification systems because they do not remove healthy minerals.”
In fact, with DIY methods, you will never be sure which substances have been removed or left in your water.
At the opposite pole, some water purification systems on the market have been designed to remove only certain contaminants from your water. They also aim to remove impurities while also keeping healthy minerals in water's consistency.
10. “A homemade water filtration system is more convenient.”
It would be great for these systems to really work, but unfortunately, they cannot be as effective as the certified systems on the market today. Manufacturers have spent years testing and improving water purification systems, which is why a home-built water softener may not be a safe alternative.
Reasons To Use a Certified Water Filtration System
After we have managed to debate the most common myths about home water purification methods, it is time to move on to serious things! Do you want to discover how to purify water at home without changing its chemical composition, removing healthy minerals, or leaving behind dangerous substances?
As shown above, there are several ways you can purify water at home. These are really fast and involve low costs but are not very secure. Each of them removes certain contaminants from water, which is why we cannot say they are the best solutions to purify your drinking water.
In order to treat the water in your home effectively and to make sure that you remove all its contaminants and impurities, it is best to use a certified water purification system.
Here are some reasons why you should do so:
- Water filtration systems such as water softeners or filters can remove a wider range of contaminants compared to distillation, boiling, or other quick methods;
- If you use refrigerator water filters, these can remove the chlorine from water and still keep the healthy minerals in its composition;
- Purified water is a must for families with new-borns or people with a weak immune system;
- Reverse Osmosis Systems can remove bacteria such as Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shigella, E. coli, and even some viruses like Enteric, Hepatitis A, Norovirus, Rotavirus;
- Filtered water is better for cooking because does not change the smell and taste of your foods;
- Save money from regularly buying bottled water. These costs may be higher depending on the number of family members and the water consumption of each;
- Protect the environment by not buying water bottles. All non-biodegradable materials have a negative impact on the environment, especially plastic;
- Enjoy fresh and clean water in your home whenever you need it, without the need for the extra effort on your part to filter a certain amount of water before consumption.
How to Protect Your Entire Home From the Impact of Unfiltered Water
If you have read this article so far, it means that the quality of drinking water matters to you and that you want to find solutions to improve it. But how about the water that flows through the pipes of your house?
If left untreated, it can cause a lot of issues in your home and can make your daily activities more difficult. Thus, you will wake up one day with clogged pipes, broken appliances, and hard to clean stains everywhere in your bathroom and kitchen.
Our Yarna CWD30 Water Descaler can stop all this before it happens. Using a chemical reaction to purify your water helps to maintain the pipe system running as well as the appliances in your house.
Moreover, it prevents the minerals in your water from adhering to the inside of your showerheads, faucet aerators, clothes washers, dishwashers, and more. The minerals are supposed to simply pass through the system and down the drain.
Therefore, once you install it, it will function on its own without requiring maintenance on your part. Even if your intervention will no longer be necessary after installation and it is even possible to forget that your water descaler is there, you will definitely enjoy and feel its effects immediately.
To Conclude
As you can see, there are several ways you can purify water at home. However, these are not indicated if you are searching for a permanent filtration solution to treat the water in your home that you either use for consumption or daily activities.
Methods such as boiling, distillation, or solar purification are only temporary or in case of emergency solutions and are not effective in removing all types of harmful batteries, viruses, and contaminants.
Therefore, a system specially designed for water filtration such as a water softener or a water descaler are the most effective ways to purify water at home. These will ensure that both the water you consume and the water flowing through your piping system is completely clean and safe.
