A note about water/snow melt...

[Brick Wall]

I haven't checked if this has been brought up already or not.  

Snow itself is potable and does not need to be boiled.  Unless it is contaminated/dirty, or has collected radioactive dust particles as it falls through the atmosphere, and then no amount of boiling will do any good, you would have to collect it via transpiration/condensation.

The addition of a solar still would be nice yet only really functional on sunny days or inside a structure when the temperature is above freezing.  Even then ice/snow will sublime over time but the vapor from it then is practically impossible to capture in a cold environment.

Just a thought...

Brick

[Sherri]

It's always cracked me up that you have to boil snow but you can drink toilet water directly. That's backwards.

[Sherri]

Also, what is the point of the water purification tablets? Do people EVER not finish boiling their water?

 

The toilet water should be in the dirty state- perfect use for the AquaPur tablets.

[ManicManiac]

47 minutes ago, Sherri said:

Also, what is the point of the water purification tablets? Do people EVER not finish boiling their water?

I use whatever purification tablets I find right away... it effectively allows me to produce twice as much water in the same amount of time.

This way I bolster my water supply quickly.

[Addendum]
because you only have to melt it and you get to skip the boiling - this saves time...
so take a cooking pot for example: instead of getting 2L every 2 hours or so (depending on cooking skill level)... the purification tablets let you melt 4L of potable water (once you add the tablets) in the same amount of time with just the one cooking pot. 

Edited June 25, 2020 by ManicManiac

[Sherri]

Good point. I've just never bothered with that so far.

[UTC-10]

In the initial scoping of the game, water purification tablets were probably initially considered as needed to deal with water drawn from toilets since not all of them have reservoirs and with any non-boiled water.  Considering that non-potable water would have high probability of dysentery and the availability of antibiotics or even the water purification tablets would be hit or miss, it was probably eventually decided that water will be designated as potable or non-potable and toilets were then designated as a potable water source based on the assumption that it was assumed to be from a potable water source. 

Similarly for snow.  It could have been designated as a potable water source but that would trivialize the hazard of non-potable water (snow was likely the only regular primary source of water) and if the devs then wanted a danger from water they'd have to come up with a host of things to justify it which would complicate things and detract from the focus on story mode. 

Using water purification tablets does involve some extra effort on the part of the player.  I am in Bleak Inlet and specifically used four water purification tablets to purify the four liters of water that I got from melting snow on the workshop fire barrel.  I suppose the devs could have made the melting snow process require more effort which would have complemented using water purification tablets, but I know I am glad they mostly glossed over that part. 

[Brick Wall]

2 hours ago, Sherri said:

It's always cracked me up that you have to boil snow but you can drink toilet water directly. That's backwards.

I hadn't thought about that but you're right.  Did you know that water from toilet lowls has tested cleaner than water from dentist offices?  True story.

[Sherri]

5 hours ago, Brick Wall said:

I hadn't thought about that but you're right.  Did you know that water from toilet lowls has tested cleaner than water from dentist offices?  True story.

Yikes gross.

[SirSharper]

16 hours ago, Brick Wall said:

I hadn't thought about that but you're right.  Did you know that water from toilet lowls has tested cleaner than water from dentist offices?  True story.

ummm, eww

[odizzido]

Water from toilet reservoirs is probably pretty clean, at least in canada. I've never done any testing or anything on it but it never interacts with people's.....fluids and solids.....and it's closed to the environment pretty much forever. I would be interested to know how it actually compares.

And yeah, most snow should be pretty clean in TLD considering how often it's falling. You can get jardia(sp?) and I think a few other things around spring but that's not the situation we are in.

[Brick Wall]

On 6/26/2020 at 11:01 AM, odizzido said:

Water from toilet reservoirs is probably pretty clean, at least in canada. I've never done any testing or anything on it but it never interacts with people's.....fluids and solids.....and it's closed to the environment pretty much forever. I would be interested to know how it actually compares.

And yeah, most snow should be pretty clean in TLD considering how often it's falling. You can get jardia(sp?) and I think a few other things around spring but that's not the situation we are in.

Giardia comes from animal waste.  So as long as you don't eat yellow snow you should be fine.  If there is a high air pollution problem then the first 6" of snow shouldn't be eaten as it collects the pollution particles as if falls.  But in NW Canada I imagine there isn't much pollution and there is enough snow fall that I personally wouldn't think twice about it.

[odizzido]

There are certainly enough animals though.

I thought any snow that had a slightly pink color should be avoided for giardia? I mean yellow too, yes. And brown especially.

I am not an expert or anything. I just seen to remember the pink thing from survivor man

[Brick Wall]

26 minutes ago, odizzido said:

There are certainly enough animals though.

I thought any snow that had a slightly pink color should be avoided for giardia? I mean yellow too, yes. And brown especially.

I am not an expert or anything. I just seen to remember the pink thing from survivor man

Pink snow is a new one to me.  I was always taught that giardia was from animal waste that made its way into standing water, and moving water.  I'm now curious about pink snow....off to google!

Ok so pink snow is a thing.  Apparently it's from algae that live in very cold temperatures.  Myself being color blind I may have seen pink snow but it probably just looked brown [dirt colored].  Thanks for the new bit of info.

An article about pink or watermelon snow.

https://www.sciencealert.com/why-is-snow-sometimes-pink 

Edited July 1, 2020 by Brick Wall

[odizzido]

I think I am remembering incorrectly, from what I am reading. I should find that episode and see what he actually said. Maybe I just misunderstood at the time.

[Serenity]

On 6/25/2020 at 9:04 PM, Sherri said:

Do people EVER not finish boiling their water?

Sometimes I forget that the fire time is ending. Or more commonly it's blown out by the wind. It's rare though

[ThePhoenics]

It took me way longer than I am willing to admit to realise that you could take water from the cistern on a toilet instead of the bowl, but either way it should absolutely be nonpotable. if balance is needed to make sure houses always have potable water, a couple bottles around will solve that and not make it seem like everyone in Canada flushes their toilets with spring water XD