Testing Drinking Water

Skin is the largest organ human body has.
IF you shower in it, wash your hands/face in it, brush your teeth with it....you can drink it.

Same goes for dish washing, cooking with it.

Well this was informative. I'll do the bleach thingee the day we pull out of where we are. Lots of hills and curves the roads we travel. We'll continue to drink bottle water, the main thing I was interested in was making sure the water coming in was safe for my fur kids and the ice maker and coffee pot. Thanks for all the input.

There is no DIY test kit that can test for all contaminants, a lab is needed for that.

garyemunson wrote:
Personally, I never trust my RV tank water for drinking. Some CG water can be sketchy, too. We always carry bottled water for drinking....

Public water systems are more highly regulated and tested than the bottling company that is filling those bottles.

Personally I wouldn't rely on the dispensers from grocery stores for my drinking water. It wouldn't surprise me to see those hooked up to the local water supply.

We have distilled water delivered because our local water is really nasty tasting, and makes absolutely horrible coffee.

We buy all of our water. Most grocery stores have water dispensers, the reverse osmosis removes all the ****. Very much worth the effort. Never drink out of a tap.
We have Culligan delivered at home, they add minerals to the water after purifying it, tastes very good. Did you read the article in yesterday's WSJ regarding a number of municipalities using amonia in their water treatment plants? Disgusting.

http://www.wsj.com/articles/use-of-a-water-disinfectant-is-challenged-1470785357

bukhrn wrote:

Shearwater wrote:
An inline filter will remove sediment but will pass bacteria and viruses.

It will if it's .05-1 micron, such as my whole house filter.

That's a dangerous assumption to make.

Yes, the filter media itself may trap the organisms, what about the o-rings and sealing faces inside the filter. Are you sure they're free of defects down into the sub micron range? Is your filter housing laboratory grade, or something from a big box store / camping world? When you replace the cartridge, do you do so in a cleanroom, to avoid contamination of the filter media and housing?

There is reason consumer grade filter systems (even reverse osmosis) are not rated to work on contaminated water... the filter is as strong as its weakest links, and that's the housing, the seals and sealing faces.

Folks paranoid about cooties in the water, get an inline UV + Ozone system. Trying to filter out cooties is pointless, just kill them, then run the water through a deionizing filter to clean up the free radicals the UV and ozone will generate.

Shearwater wrote:
An inline filter will remove sediment but will pass bacteria and viruses.

It will if it's .05-1 micron, such as my whole house filter.

An inline filter will remove sediment but will pass bacteria and viruses.

As noted, there is no simple test for bacteria. Test kits are for common swimming pool chemical balances. Most basic is ph (acid/base), and chlorine. Unless you are using gold mine run-off as a water source, the ph test is of no value for Rv'ing. Chlorine test kits measure from 1-10 parts per million, with 1-3 being the goal for a pool. City water never registers on the test strips - amount of chlorine is just too low. Ask any pool owner about what happens if they fill, but do not add chlorine - stinky swimming really fast! Sanitizing as posted above drives the level up to about 50 ppm, which kills everything in a few hours.
While RV tanks are a semi-sealed system, things like algae and bacteria can begin to grow, but it takes a pretty long time as there are few nutrients and it is dark. (As opposed to a pool that gets alls sorts of wind blown stuff in it, and gets full daylight).
The only test that you can do, without sending water out to a testing lab, is to smell it.
So, just sanitize - at least yearly, more often if you leave the same water in the tanks for weeks or months. Use the test strips if it makes you feel better about verifying that you have flushed all the sanitizing chlorine out of the system, but your nose works even better than the test strips in detecting small amounts.

Test for the levels of cancer drugs, opiates and Viagra as well. I'd be more worried about that s--t in my drinking water than lead or bacteria.