My advice is never to pee on an electric fence, or pour a highly flammable liquid directly onto a fire.
Oh, and don't mess around with Jim.
So when I pee in a public toilet, I should keep the stream on the dry part of the bowl.
So when I pee in a public toilet, I should keep the stream on the dry part of the bowl.
From the article: "the waterfalls have to be contained in a spout or channel, and they can't be more than a centimeter high."
Just move back from the bowl a bit.
Just move back from the bowl a bit.
The reminds me of the guy would go up the urinal and say, "Brrr, the water is cold."
So when I pee in a public toilet, I should keep the stream on the dry part of the bowl.
It depends on whether there are candiru in the water supply.
reminds me of the guy would go up the urinal
Tyrone Slothrop?
"Be the first of your friends to like this."
8: It's like they never thought of just pissing in a coke bottle and tossing out the window when the coach is talking to the driver.
How many waterfalls are less than a centimeter high?
10: 42,630,327,... hold on, I'm just finishing up the count here... 515.
And now you know.
tossing out the window
Or into the freezer.
That's interesting, because one of the recurring beliefs the public seems to hold is that the earth magically cleans water. People who won't drink tertiary treated wastewater from the pipe will be perfectly willing to drink it if you put it into an aquifer first, where Sacred Gaia can bless it.
13: Self-delusion is probably the key there.
13: Or just let water sit frozen for a few thousand years, melt it, filter out the dead mammoths, and you have clean water.
I bet even those same people, Megan, distinguish between water from an aquifer and lapping up water that they just poured onto the dirt.
Anyway, I'd rather not drink tertiary treated wastewater from a pipe. I'd rather not drink it from a goblet encrusted with jewels. What do I know? I live within a nice walk a river that supports navigation.
And they probably have some folk, but not actually insane, belief that the whole process of seeping down into the aquifer actually cleans and filters the water.
The arxiv paper is a bit thin on details. But hey, poorly-understood phenomena in everyday systems are always fun.
I think Megan is saying that the water is already clean when it comes out of the treatment plant, but I'm guessing that an aquifer actually does clean water.
A non-polluted aquifer would, if the soils aren't naturally salty or metal-laden and if the water is dirty. But public comments suggests that people are indisciminating about that belief in a way that is closer to magic than it is to considering the relative conditions of the water and the aquifer.
I used to drink from the toilet, but it kept turning my teeth blue.
"Marangoni force" is a new one for me, but it seems to be a generalization of the same basic idea that explains capillary action. So not all that mysterious. You would think if they had any detailed understanding of this, though, they could explain how the 1 cm height depends on various things like the liquid's surface tension, the size of gravitational acceleration, etc.
The whole thing is kind of suggestive about the state of science funding in Cuba. Maybe it's part of a grant application to get them a steady supply of mate and chalk?
21: You should probably think of a cheaper way to get people to avoiding thinking that they are drinking from the toilet. I think that is the key.
Paint a big sign on the pipe: "Artesian Well Water"?
Mom wants to know when you're coming back to visit, Apo.
24: "The water you're drinking is not from the toilet, it's of the toilet".
"You know, there are holy men in India who drink their own urine for health reasons."
28: That would remind people of Waterworld.
Anyway, in the part of the country where it rains and shit, one town uses the water, treats it (hopefully), puts in back in the river, and the next town then uses the water. The treated water is probably cleaner than the river in many cases, but we have a built in psychological defense ("I'm drinking river water.")
I agree with 24, my intuition is that it's the appearance of the word "waste" in the description that causes the problem rather than some magical attribute of the ground.
I do know someone who has magical beliefs about water that is put into a bottle being safer.
I've been told on good authority that if you're in a one room wooden shack in Siberia in the winter time with a bunch of other people, you really need to get over your shyness and just piss in a pot at night, unless you want a solid frozen yellow arc from just inside your (now very frostbitten) penis down to the snow.
This reminds me of an interesting Space Fact I learned last night: finding bacterial life on Mars wouldn't be super-duper-interesting, because bacteria can travel on dust between Earth and Mars. So it would be super-interesting, because look! on Mars! but it would not actually be evidence of additional geneses.
32: If you could figure out a way to solve the frostbite problem, I don't think you could stop me from trying to make the frozen arc of piss.
a way to solve the frostbite problem
Naw, you can say other things, like "recycled" water or "treated municipal water" and they still look at you suspiciously and say "from the toilet?!". But if you tell them it was put into an aquifer and pumped out, they have no qualms. I'm sticking by my assertion that it is magical thinking. Which is fine and mostly understandable. Does force districts to do a bit of a pointless and expensive work-around, though. And seriously. Don't people know what those aquifers are like? There were gas stations and dry cleaners and defense contractors on that recharge basin for fifty years!
Off to give a presentation at a public meeting where I will try not to sneer at the peasants for their quaint beliefs.
33: Right, if you found life on Mars you wouldn't know whether it was a separate genesis or not until you actually looked at the life in question. But it's pretty easy to imagine strong evidence of separate genesis, e.g. a wildly different genetic code. Also once you got your hands on the DNA (assuming it had DNA) you can try to fit it into the family tree of life and get pretty good evidence of where it fits (if anywhere!). There are plenty of non-crazy versions of exogenesis, and it wouldn't be at all surprising if we found related life elsewhere in the solar system. But none of this detracts from the "interestingness" of finding life on Mars, it just means there's *another interesting question* about life on Mars that you didn't know about before.
Hrm, though now I'm curious about running this argument backwards. If there had been a separate genesis of life on Mars why haven't we found it on Earth? So if you think dust carrying bacteria from Earth to Mars is likely, then you probably shouldn't believe in there being a separate genesis of life on Mars.
The water you're drinking is not from the toilet, it's of the toilet".
Drinking eau de toilette is also deprecated.
The treated water is probably cleaner than the river in many cases, but we have a built in psychological defense ("I'm drinking river water.")
Really? I'd never drink river water unless I was dying of thirst or something. Rivers are full of crap and diseases and parasites.
I've been told on good authority that if you're in a one room wooden shack in Siberia in the winter time with a bunch of other people, you really need to get over your shyness and just piss in a pot at night, unless you want a solid frozen yellow arc from just inside your (now very frostbitten) penis down to the snow you've got bigger problems than pissing.
If there had been a separate genesis of life on Mars why haven't we found it on Earth?
SILENCE
but it would not actually be evidence of additional geneses.
That's lucky. One Phil Collins is more than enough.
42.last: They treat the river water we drink. I assume.
Really? I'd never drink river water unless I was dying of thirst or something. Rivers are full of crap and diseases and parasites.
We're still here, and happily rolling in dead things too! And kissing Bob!
44 Actually, given that they were Jewish, it turned out that using the services of Siberia's most popular travel promoter of the Stalinist era probably saved their lives.
.last: They treat the river water we drink. I assume.
Sure, but I don't get the "I'm drinking river water" part. Not least because river water is waste water, unless you live right near the source.
49: The river gets a great deal of other water besides the upstream sewers. It is diluted waste water.
41: The guy who was speaking did have a professional interest in deprecating life-on-Mars interestingness, as he was part of the team exploring Titan with the Huygens probe.
He showed a picture of the betting pool for the question "what kind of surface will the probe land on?" It included "Tar", "Liquid", "DOA", "Indeterminate", and "Eaten".
Topically, our bathrooms are all out of service because the plumber disconnected the water. Our alley isn't very private, so the obvious solution won't work.
It certainly makes sense to say that if you found life on Mars and on Titan it's more likely that the life on Titan is more interesting. I think finding either would be really really interesting.
35: I was expecting a disclaimer -- "Warning: Not effective as birth control".
55: You can try it if you'd like, but I'd think that would be very effective as birth control.
Durex lambskin condoms: unsheared, for maximum protection.
Did I ever talk here about the time when I was a kid that my Mom installed an experimental greywater system to recycle water from the house? Extremely non-good, and by that I mean greywater that really was opaque and grey and sure did smell bad. Maybe technology has improved since 1989, but I'm not running a personal treatment plant again anytime soon.
57, 58: I was assuming it would just prevent coitus one way or another.
59: Would it work better if you didn't use soap?
59: What'd you do with it? Water the lawn, or was there an attempt to use it indoors?
Oh, it was very coming right back inside to the showers and sinks. It was like living in a third world country where tap water isn't potable, only even in the third world they've resolved smell issues. After about 8 months my Dad rebelled and that was the end of that.
Hey, the toilets work now. Or at least, the toilets nearly work as well as they did this morning.
63: The water game from the showers and sinks and went right back to them?
To the showers and sinks?! To the toilet and lawn care and possibly even the washing machine I could see, but the sinks? Gro-day.
Yes and yes. My Mom was involved with the local water dept at the time and we signed up to be experimental guinea pigs. It meant a lot of quick showers and bottled water use.
I think Megan has to give you a medal now for service above and beyond to the cause of water conservation.
Oh, it was all my Mom, who Megan might know. Personally, I run the faucet while shaving and do all kinds of other bad things.
Oh, it was all my Mom
Not to be overly inappropriate, but your mom must be super hott for that to last 8 months before your dad said no.
33,41: There is evidence that life started on Earth during or before the Late Heavy Bombardment, so the chances that microbes were blasted off is actually quite high.
59: My dad was into that. All the household waste water except toilet water went to the garden. This meant there were weird little tufts of lint all over the garden from clothes washing.
That could have been from the bunnies.
If it was just your mom being experimental with the plumbing, I would buy it, but I'm having a hard time believing a local water department would set up a greywater system to recycle water from the house right back to the showers and sinks, even to a few unfortunate guinea pigs. Are you sure you're remembering this correctly?
Yes. If I provided more detail, the story might seem more plausible, but that would involve personally-revealing information. It definitely was not something marketed to the general public.
Can I ask (to the extent you know) how it worked technically? I can't picture what you'd have in a household that would clean greywater to potability. A giant box of sand for it to filter through, or something neato and hightech? (Obviously, it didn't work great, but I'm wondering what the theory was.)
Being a moron, I have no idea how it worked technically. There were a bunch of pipes that went out to a giant box (or maybe set of boxes? I can't remember) in the backyard, and lots of buzzing and humming.
If it was just your mom being experimental with the plumbing, I would buy it, but I'm having a hard time believing a local water department would set up a greywater system to recycle water from the house right back to the showers and sinks, even to a few unfortunate guinea pigs.
It was a Gates Foundation initiative. This was when the Halfords lived in Zambia.
This is going to ruin urination for me forever.
Update: I hadn't noticed the one-centimeter thing. That's a relief.
(Get it? Relief? Ehhhh...)
You know what, strike 81, because "what if I were right?".
I wonder if every Martian probe was well sterilized.
83: Not even close. First off, it's unclear whether some of the sterilization that was done would actually kill off the kind of extremophiles that would be making the trip to Mars. Second, we stopped doing heat sterilization after the first few missions showed that Mars was "inhospitable." Third, the Russians did land a few things on Mars.
I guess it all depends on what "well sterilized" means to you. The decontamination standard they use is "fewer than 300 heat-resistant spores per square meter." This was considered sterile enough for Spirit and Opportunity; the Phoenix lander is going to be doing some deep digging, so they performed the heat sterilization (250F for 4 days until golden brown and crunchy) on the digging arm. And of course, any microbial hitchhikers would have to undergo a two-year radiation bath in a near-vacuum.
I'd prefer to go the opposite way -- load up a capsule with as many different kinds of extremophiles as you can find, send them to the surface and see what happens.
86.2: If you could get solid grant funding for the next billion years, the results might be very exciting indeed!
86.2: And bring a bunch of rabbits to Australia.
I remember once seeing an odd documentary on late night Chinese English-language television about terraforming Venus via genetically-engineered bacteria.
Wikipedia thinks it won't work.
Not to interrupt the shouting, but has anyone linked to this? It's all over the place on the causal questions, but looks to be addressing a real issue in France.
It's a good thing I messed up the link, since this is the wrong thread.
Dude. Current greywater standards don't even let you surface water your lawn with sink, bath or washing machine water. You can collect those and use them outdoor, so long as the water never surfaces. I suppose I'm glad that someone is doing home experiments in this, but shocked that it was legal. Not shocked that home filtration didn't work all that well.
You can collect those and use them outdoor, so long as the water never surfaces.
So like hosing down asphalt/concrete driveways or other surfaces? How could you ever guarantee that the water doesn't reach the ground, given that it's outside in the first place?
The Living Machines produce lovely water. Pity about the name, maybe it invokes the magic.
My hydrology prof believed that touching dirt cleans water
Barring drycleaners, etc. - but it wasn't magic and we had to wyrk out how much dirt in meters. (About four; more if sandy or tunneled.)
No, like feeding it directly into a subsurface drip system for landscape irrigation.
I think current greywater standards emerged, in part, as the result of our experiment! But I'm not sure about that.
95:
so you can use that kind of water to water the garden, just as long as it remains below ground?
98: clearly you just have to water your lawn from below upwards.
Both those are right. You can water your garden with greywater, so long as it remains below ground. Yes, you water your lawn from below upwards. That's what subsurface drip does, although it is mostly not for lawns. It is mostly a direct application to the roots of bushes and trees.
Pointless detail question: Under U.S. law (or probably California) do you have to _collect_ the greywater first, or can it flow directly to the irrigation system?
I've always thought of it going to a holding tank first, but I don't know whether that is law.
Code says that the ones that use tanks must be designed to minimize holding times. That implies that some systems don't use tanks. Yeah, and there's language about what to do if the design includes a tank. So, some do collect it first and some send laundry water straight to the irrigation pipes.
Speaking of tanks, there has been a huge push around here to get rain barrels in use. I'm not sure if that helps in a real way or not, but you see them all around. I was going to get one, but then I realized that I'd have to figure a way to get it to fill and then dump the overfill back into the downspout.
Also, the rain barrel costs like a hundred bucks.
I thought rain barrels were illegal in most of the places that you'd want to use them.
We aren't short of water here, mostly. We are short of sewage plant capacity and during a heavy rain, I think any bit of water held behind might help minimize the amount of fecal matter that goes to New Orleans.
The only benefit for the owner of the barrel is a vague sense of do-goodiness and $4.38 in yearly savings on your water bill.
Oh. Well, if that's your game, then why worry about dumping it?
Isn't there something called a rain garden? Some kind of deliberate planting that's supposed to soak up your runoff before it burdens the sewers?
Isn't there something called a rain garden? Some kind of deliberate planting that's supposed to soak up your runoff before it burdens the sewers?
Yes, this sort of thing is trendy these days in stormwater management.
109: there are, and there are these, and various other kinds of things that I didn't google.
I have mixed feelings about rain barrels. My first take is, yeah, sure, why not? Capture the supply that runs off my roof first and use it to extend my water for an extra week in May before I use city supplies until it rains again in November, at which point I don't need to store water for landscape needs.
But I look at the bigger picture and get puzzled. Really? Really? We want to have eensy-teensy little reservoirs at every house? For $100 per household? Pooling $100 per household seems like it could get a town some nice storage capacity somewhere, and maybe even treat that water. Or turn a secondary treated wastewater plant into a tertiary one and generate some real good water. I dunno.
It strikes me as an extension of anti-government, anti-tax silliness, where somehow it is better for private citizens to buy tiny distributed water storage capacity for noticeable money rather than tax them for the same amount and give them more flexible, higher reliability water.
This argument doesn't hold up as well in places where it rains between May and November, so you could use a rainbarrel more than one week per year. For some reason I believe in distributed power generation. But not distributed water storage. Probably because solar cells would be useful most months a year but rain barrels won't be.
108: The downspout in my backyard goes underground and into the storm sewer. Rain barrels have an overflow on them, but it seemed hard to get this overflow directed back into the drain without leaving the drain open for mice/etc. I can't just have water dumping in my backyard. It would eventually find its way down the hill, but my basement would get a bit wet.
Yes. My agency is in favor of bioswales and rain gardens, on the theory that you have more water holding capacity in the ground under your yard than you do in a rain barrel, and you could trap enough water with bioswales and raingardens to last you a few weeks into a dry season, as compared to the single irrigation you would get from a rain barrel.
113: I say blithely that that has to be a solved problem -- you just need a fitting that goes from the barrel overflow to the storm drain? That must be available.
And like Moby says, half the emphasis in household water retention/infiltration is keeping it from the sewers. The water supply aspect is not the whole focus, or even most of it.
It strikes me as an extension of anti-government, anti-tax silliness, where somehow it is better for private citizens to buy tiny distributed water storage capacity for noticeable money
It's mainly the well-off granola crowd that seems to be doing it. I was considering it to boost my SWPL score.
117 was me.
115: Probably, but they didn't see it in the parking lot of Whole Foods where they had the barrels.
I know. For all that I think it is silly, I would probably do it for my granola cred. I already have worm composting and bees, so I would have to escalate with chickens or greywater.
I want a green roof for our co-op so bad, both because it would be neat and because I bet it'd cool off our top-floor apartment, but we're not going to get one; combination of insurance worries and we've got a cell tower up there which seems to be incompatible.
Speaking of tanks
Do we have to?
My sister sets the bar high. After the chickens destroyed her lawn, she fenced them off and put the entire space to wheat. She'll get her first harvest soon, I figure. She thinks maybe oats next time.
Like a good hippy, her old "lawn" had been a prairie mix of grasses and flowers, so I told her that she is echoing the history of the Great Plains. After this, genetically modified soybeans.
I should point out the much of Pittsburgh doesn't have storm sewers that are separate from the poop sewers. That is being addressed, slowly, after the EPA sued us and order us to fix them or else. My water bill has doubled in the past five years, but that's mainly fixed costs and cutting water consumption doesn't help much.
Buck raised chickens as a teen, and said they were great for pest control on veggies -- they'd patrol the tomatoes and get all the various caterpillars and beetles off them.
120: That's the other thing that keeps happening around here, but only for government or quasi-public buildings.
Probably because solar cells would be useful most months a year but rain barrels won't be.
I feel that the exact opposite would be true here in Ohio.
After this, genetically modified soybeanssuburbs.
Also, can I point out that Moby's problem is ridiculous? Not that the fitting is a bit complicated, but that a sewer agency is so close to maxed out that it is worth it to them to beg the public to please hold back a few tens of gallons each to release more slowly after the peak has passed? That's fucked up. Why is the public supposed to act like tiny extensions and moderators of capacity?
I know the answer, because we've grown out of the design capacity of the old system and events are more intense. But this is like that bullshit Genius bar system at the Apple Store, where rather than design for the need, they're forcing (or begging) the public to do load spreading. Somehow, the public thinks this impingement on their money and time and attention is a better solution than giving money to their government to fix the problem for real.
they were great for pest control on veggies
From what I've seen, they do this by eating the entire garden down to dust. Fucking chickens.
I guess that settles my dilemma. Greywater system it is.
For some reason I believe in distributed power generation. But not distributed water storage. Probably because solar cells would be useful most months a year but rain barrels won't be.
Megan only counts California. That's okay, though.
doesn't have storm sewers that are separate from the poop sewers
Yes, a nearly ubiquitous bad decision made by cities throughout the country. When folks economists talk about the future being richer than the past and how it is OK to push costs forward, they aren't really appreciating how much we rue these retrofits when they come due on our watch.
128: It is more that various green groups are pushing this rain barrels and the local agency is kind of just saying, "Can't hurt."
But the sewer agency is obviously past maxed out. In the paper, I remember reading that it will cost a billion dollars to fix, but googling says some people say it could be much more. Water bills are heading up regardless.
I feel like I should have more to say in this thread, but other people have mentioned pretty much everything I know about the topic.
Although I will say that Megan is such an engineer.
We just got a rain barrel for garden use. Megan, would that $100 per household really buy a lot if you amortize it over the barrel lifetime, say 10-20 years?
I also have a friend who works in developing-country water issues and she thinks that treating all of our source water is a waste, and that the future is on-the-spot treatment of just the potable-water uses. Don't need chloramines in your car-wash or lawn-gardening water.
Moby, I'm surprised that in a system that's having sewer capacity issues that your downspout is allowed to run into the sewer (combined or otherwise). Standard around here is to just run it a few feet away from the building and let it soak into the ground (or run into the street, where it ends up in the storm sewer anyway). Our basement sump pump is hooked into our sewer connection and we know that's illegal and are glad that none of the inspectors during our recent renovation called us on it.
136.last: My downspout and my sump pump run into the storm sewer. You bet your ass they check. They require a dye test whenever you sell a house and if any of the wrong water gets in the sewer, you can't sell.
I also have a friend who works in developing-country water issues and she thinks that treating all of our source water is a waste, and that the future is on-the-spot treatment of just the potable-water uses. Don't need chloramines in your car-wash or lawn-gardening water.
This is basically how they do it at Chaco, where all the water comes from a very deep well and is non-potable right out of the well. Water for the sinks and so forth is treated to make it potable, while water for the toilets, fire suppression, and other uses is not.
138: I thought water from deep well was usually good to go.
139: For typical depths, yes, but when you go this deep (3000 feet) the water has all kinds of minerals in it.
The Ogallala Aquifer has nice water. Maybe they should try that.
I have mixed feelings about rain barrels.
They sound kind of cool--until they inevitably turn into breeding grounds for mosquitos.
That's why you have rainbarrel goldfish.
When the goldfish get out of control, a simple egret, or perhaps a heron, can restore order.
The Ogallala Aquifer has nice water. Maybe they should try that.
It's a little far. Plus, you know, already being depleted rapidly.
Ospreys are useful in reducing an oversupply of egrets.
I don't know what to do about too many ospreys.
DDT!
The rain barrels I've seen have screens on the top.
148: that'd also take care of the mosquitos. QED.
145: Wikipedia says that water levels have been rising in some parts of the aquifer.
The chlorine was so high at the hotel pool last weekend that my black shirt became a tye-dye looking tan shirt. I was kind of mad. Also my eyes hurt like hell, and I'd barely opened them underwater.
A guy came by after we'd been in for a half hour or so (with the babies) and informed us that levels had tested high that morning. Fuck you, says me.
152: Well, it also says:
Water conservation practices (terracing and crop rotation), more efficient irrigation methods (center pivot and drip), and simply reduced area under irrigation have helped to slow depletion of the aquifer, but levels are generally still dropping.
Apparently my eyeballs aren't swarthy.
Elder is pink and tender and not swarthy at all, and got out of the water after ten seconds, so in hindsight I wondered if it felt irritating to her. Younger is more heebie-complected, and he did not show any skin irritation from the whole thing.
156: Right, but the important parts (central and eastern Nebraska) are doing well. Apparently, all the water doesn't run down to Texas.
Apparently, all the water doesn't run down to Texas.
Indeed, the Texas Plains are in big trouble. I went through there recently and it was pretty striking.
Elder is pink and tender
Medium-rare.
Anyway, Nebraska has been much more responsible in dealing with the Ogallala than any of the other states it underlies. Texas in particular just keeps pumping and pumping.
Texas will water your lawn all night long, baby.
161: The center-pivot irrigation systems point down, not up. Hurray.
Elder
heebie went to an LDS pool party?
My basement waterproofing/sump pump was just put in today! (after ignoring it for twenty years). And the sump pump does just flow out onto the lawn* along with the downspout.
136: I have been looking at a rain barrel/rain garden system. Main concern is that the rain barrels are relatively small in comparison to the amount of rain that would fall on my roof in storms such as we've had this spring, so the overflow system would have to really be capable and the ones I have seen don't give me confidence that they are up to the task. I'd be interested in your experience, Nathan. (I'd have to "reverse" the flow of the gutter and do some drainpipe work to get the water to the potential rain garden place--so also laziness.
*Or actually out beneath a mondo rhododendron (just started to bloom this year).
she thinks that treating all of our source water is a waste, and that the future is on-the-spot treatment of just the potable-water uses
That makes a lot of sense, if you're putting in new systems now. Here, though, the cost of plumbing a second non-potable delivery system (purple pipe) is usually prohibitive. Just like putting a separate stormwater system in addition to your sewer system.
I thought water from deep well was usually good to go.
It's like I wasn't even talking up there at the beginning of the comments.
What about a rain jacuzzi?
Went swimming one time in a pool that had caught a ton of rainwater. It was noticeably soft and silky.
It's like I wasn't even talking up there at the beginning of the comments.
That's different from pouring sewer water into the ground, isn't it? Anyway, every rural house that I've ever known drinks untreated well water if they can drive a well.
I have enough trouble driving a golf ball.