Swimming pool water?

mark greenman

mark greenman

Joined
Feb 16, 2007
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662
Hi everyone. So, I live in California, which is earthquake country, and so I'm always looking around for ways to improve my post-quake standard of living. One thing I'm worried about is having enough drinking water.

The apratment I live in has a large swimming pool- so my my question is, is there a safe way to drink that stuff? Are there filters, ect that I should buy?

Thanks!
Mark
 
I believe about 8 drops of bleach per gallon of water will be enough to sanitize it for drinking. Be sure to let the water sit for 20 mins or so after you add the bleach to let it completely dissolve.

There are also many small filters you could use and the pool should already have chlorine in it, but I'd be sure to be careful since you never know what the kiddies do in it.
 
I don't think the bleach by itself would work. I could be wrong but because of the chlorine (or whatever chemicals are used) you would need to distill it. Boiling and condensing the steam should leave behind the nasty chemicals.
 
A lot of the chlorine used in pools is sodium hypochlorite, better known as bleach.

When Hurricane Agnes rolled through the east in 1972, our valley was flooded out. Our house was just above the waterline, and we took water from our above-ground pool to distribute to folks in the flooded areas who had no potable water.
 
Although I wouldn't want to use it for drinking water, a bucket of pool water comes in handy for flushing the toilet.

-- FLIX
 
My dog prefers pool water to his water bowl and has for the past few years.

While I would rather drink tap/bottled water I think you could do much worse then drinking pool water for a short time. Personally I would be worried about the pool water (especially a public pool) not having enough chlorine and having a bunch of nasties in it.
 
I don't know whether it would work or not for pool water, but what about one of those pitcher-style Brita filters? In the event of lack of water, fill the pitcher and it purifies the water of the baddies? Not to mention it can get used every day as well.

We have one in our fridge, seems to work well. Just keep some spare filters around and you're set for a while.
 
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Bromine is typically what's used for (public) pools and hot tubs because it doesn't evaporate so easily and doesn't irritate swimmers' eyes so much. Generally, it's safe to drink pool water -that's the whole point of the bromine- especially since bromine is still effective in the water even after it's done its job, unlike chlorine which gets 'used up'
If it has the that 'bleach' smell (still active), pool water may actually be a better option than surface or tapwater due to local contamination by flood, slides, etc. Pools are a closed system unless they happen to be filling it when the SHTF.

FWIW, chlorine in treated water is typically removed for backflushing RO systems by using a basic charcoal filter (sort of like a big Brita).

I would caution against anyone using a rule of thumb for chlorine disinfection - it depends too heavily on temperature (chlorine evaporates quickly) and prefiltration (turbidity). If you can't see through a glass of the water to start with...

The UN and WHO have some good info on water purification. WHO recognizes pop-bottle disinfection as an effective method as well. I don't think there's any argument that distillation is the most effective method of water purification.

I use 2-3 gallons of hypochlorite bleach for purification/disinfection every day so it's been an eye opener to see when it does and doesn't 'work'. Damn, chironomids are hardy little suckers!!
 
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I would not suggest using pool water straight from a pool. If chlorine and bromine were all that were added to pools, I might not be so leary. Algaecides (many are copper based), clarifiers (long chain polymeric compounds) and a host of other chemicals (cyanuric acid, biguinides) are used. And not all pools are maintained to a level that is safe to drink.

I suggest that if you have a way to purify it removing all chemicals and organics, then water is water. But I would not drink a chemical soup laced with organic compounds (chloramines).
 
A very good friend of mine works for a local water company and I was required to become a Certified Pool Operator by the state in order to manage the pools we had at work.


XMP said:
I don't think the bleach by itself would work. I could be wrong but because of the chlorine (or whatever chemicals are used) you would need to distill it. Boiling and condensing the steam should leave behind the nasty chemicals.
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Chlorine or sodium hypocloride is what is used in most major cities for purifiying the public water supply. The water goes through a few other processes usually settling tanks in order to remove the particulate matter. The purification is done by chlorine. Cyunuric acid is used to adjust the PH of the water to keep the chlorine working to maximum effectiveness. algacides are more commonly used in bromine systems because it is not quite as effective as chlorine. Chlorine is an algacide.

Care does need to be taken to avoid bromine pool systems but for the short term they are not a problem. The water is free of bacteria and viruses that would make you sick. Public pools are usually superclorinated due to the high bather load and I would stay away from indoor pools because of the high concentration of cloromines (used up clorine). Outdoor pools are much better because the sun burns off the cloromines.

The more selective the pool the higher the quality of water.
I would not hesitate to drink the water in my pool when the filter is up and running. In a SHTF situation I always have some pool shock and or bleach on hand to handle things if the power goes out. This past month it was nice to have the pool because we had a serious nor'easter and the power was out for 12 hours I was using pool water to flush the toilets. The pool was not opened yet and power was back on relatively soon but it was nice thought in the back of my head that I had the water if I needed it. I wasn't going to have to fight Joe and Susie unprepared for bottled water in the local food store.

My 2 cents FWIW
trldad
 
Codger_64 said:
I would not suggest using pool water straight from a pool. If chlorine and bromine were all that were added to pools, I might not be so leary. Algaecides (many are copper based), clarifiers (long chain polymeric compounds) and a host of other chemicals (cyanuric acid, biguinides) are used. And not all pools are maintained to a level that is safe to drink.

I suggest that if you have a way to purify it removing all chemicals and organics, then water is water. But I would not drink a chemical soup laced with organic compounds (chloramines).
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Codger is absolutely correct. Pool water is a chemical soup and I would not recommend drinking it unless it was a life or death situation. It is safe for flushing toilets, washing, bathing and other non-ingestive tasks. To cook with or drink it I would recommend a good activated carbon filter or distilling it before use.
 
While I don't believe pool water to be the best option, I am not sure you should avoid it like the plague during an EMERGENCY. I would look at my water heater before pool water. Most homes have a 30-50 gallon tank sitting right there. Just shut them off before draining them.

I am not sure, but if pool water was that bad for you, I can not see them allowing small children to swim in a public pool all day long all summer. I think we all agree that those kids will at some point, everytime they go swimming, choke and drink pool water. How many times do you see kids taking a mouth full of pool or even lake water and spitting it at someone?

If it was that bad, the lawsuits would have been flying by now. I guess I look at it like this, I would rather drink pool water and maybe shorten my life by a few months, than not drinking it and dieing of thirst in a few days. Not one of us would sit under the exhaust of a car for five minutes, but we never think twice about sitting in traffic with 10,000 cars around us running for a few hours. You think you are not breathing in exhaust gases?

The point is, it is not forever. It is a short term thing we have to do to survive. Drink pool water, you may die, but I seriously doubt it, but not drinking anything, you will die.
 
I don't know if I would want to live on it, but for short term survival I would imagine that it would be fine. In an urban environment It will certainly be better than any other open water around (lakes, ponds etc.) I know as I kid I drank my share of pool water just by goofing around in it all day.

It's not going to stay clean, though. Without maintenance, It will start to turn. Any chemicals you could use to treat the pool would be better used treating small amounts of drinking water.
 
Maybe what we need is (from one of you swimming-pool-chemist types) a good, low-tech way of turning chlorinated pool water into something drinkable. Preferably one that doesn't require a full-on backpacker's water filter.

Reason for my interest: I live in a desert city in which there are VERY MANY private swimming pools. I see these as one of the best potential sources of water in the event that something goes wrong and the running water stops. (And, since an awful lot of the 3 million people among whom I live live more than a day's walk from naturally-available large bodies of water, and would have trouble making it there on foot during a 120-degree day, any possible water source has to be of interest to me in any kind of "what if?" emergency planning.)

So: if you needed water, and what you had was a backyard pool (I'll let that be the assumption, since that's by far the majority of what's out here), and it was kept clean (before our hypothetical survival situation) by chlorination, what are good, low-tech means of making it safe to drink? Maybe a charcoal/sand filter, for example? We do have a lot of solar radiation going on out here, so a solar still might be workable--but it's very hard to get much volume from those, as Cody Lundin has noted (that desert survivalist has observed that every single time he's seen someone dig a solar still in the wild, that person has expended more water in sweat and effort than he can get from the solar still--even using damp soil and supplementing with plant material.)
 
A solar still is workable with a pool. Make a large bat-wing clear tarp angled toward a suitable container. Small solar stills produce small water. Think bigger, like 12x12 feet or more over the pool itself. A gallon or two a day would be a reasonable expectation in a sunny environment, I would think.

WHile chlorine itself will dissapate in sunlight, chloramines won't. They concentrate in the water. Chloramines are compounds of chlorine and organics. Chlorine is an oxidizer. If oxidation is not complete, the compound is formed and stays in the water until chlorine level is raised to complete the oxidation process. Thus the term "Burning out a pool". Think of the unoxidized compounds as charcoal. The oxidized organics are ash.

Cyanuric acid is not used as a PH adjuster. It helps to bind chlorine into the pool water to slow evaporation and loss to the sun. PH is adjusted with muratic acid (PH-) or soda ash, or sodium bicarbonate (PH+ and Total Alkalinity +).

Would I die if I drank pool water? No. And I wouldn't die of dehydration before I resorted to it. But I would look for a way to purify it. Crypto isn't killed by normal sanitizer levels, and phosphates and other chemicals and compounds present in most pools are not good for you.
 
Hi, Codger--and thanks. I'm still a little nervous about the solar still / 2 gallons a day likely limit out of a solar still. (Understand that I'm envisioning using the pools at various family residences, scattered throughout a large metro area. If, say, the electricity and water went out, we'd be looking at having some or all of an extended family with one pool as the main water resource. Now, there is good news to this: a pool does have enough water to keep even, say, 10-15 people alive for rather a long time. But I'm not confident that 2 gallons a day would do it.) If, say, we needed more like 20 gallons a day, or more, what about other methods of purification?
 
Then in that case I think you would need to make a wood-fired distiller of some sort, converting water to steam, cooling and condensing it back into water.

The resource of a hot water heater was mentioned, but don't forget that you can drain your household plumbing through an outside faucet as well. They are usually lower than most of the indoor plumbing. You may have to open indoor sink and shower faucets to allow air to enter the lines before you can drain the plumbing completely.
 
Hey guys, thanks for the responses. Do you think a Brita filter would be sufficient, or should I try and locate a more thorough filter to have on hand?
 
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