How to Clean up Muddy Water

Most of these additives reduce the PH of the water. To raise it up around neutral just add a bit of soda ash or even Bicarb Soda at the same time as you add the flocculant.

Perfectly safe to drink the water, providing you use a water purifying tablet or boil it before use, as this type of treatment is used in water treatment plants.

Hi Shaker and Notso

Shaker, I have not tried your recipe, so will be another one to try. If you read my short Blog, you will have seen that Scrubby has put another idea up as well, the fine white ash from your campfire, and leaving overnight with the same results, so thanks for posting your method of settling water.

Notso, thanks also for your comments. Would it be beneficial to add the Bicarb Soda to the water at the same time that I add the Epsom Salts? When we used it for our showers, we did not even know that it was Murray Water, mind you we did not drink any of it, knowing that it would have contained high bacteria counts.

Cheers

Stephen

Magnesium Sulphate (Epsom Salts) are not acidic so adding an alkali would have no beneficial effect if you use Epsom Salts.

Aluminium Sulphate (Alum) on the other hand is acidic. Hence the need to neutralise the acid for drinking purposes. When using Alum in water treatment the acid and alkali are either added at the same time or the alkali is added later. In a batch process envisaged here then they would probably be best added at the same time.

If the feed water is fairly alkaline then it may not be necessary to add alkali at all.

Stephen/Notso,

From my experience, using alum and an alkali together does not work.

Better to use the alum first, let it do its thing, then add the alkali to raise the ph. We used to use Hydrated Lime to raise the ph. Don't know how successful this was as never checked the ph.

Another hint to increase the floccing effect is to dissolve the alum etc in hot water first, then add this to the water to be cleared........works much quicker than adding the dry ingredient.

As well as stuff already mentioned in the thread, you can use cement powder, some of the iron salts and I think, even liquid acid. Not so safe, for the last one. :-)

Never ever used Epsom Salts..........always feared what effect it might have on one's system. :-). Drinking alum water can have some a similar effect too.

Bob

The problem is that that the sediment builds up in the HWS, be it a portable style or fixed.

Hi Peter and Shaker

Even though we were in and out of the water with the warm weather, it was very nice and refreshing to have that warm shower at the end of the day to freshen up and to wash our hair.

I know Adelaide used to have some of the worst tap water in Australia, but over the years things have changed and no longer is the water off colour when it come out of our taps. That fine silt would build up in any HWS and shorten the life of both the element and the storage cylinder, by many years, while now, the silt build up is a thing of the past.



Cheers



Stephen

Hi Mark

Thanks for that and its great to hear that you have had the same results from other water sources apart from the Murray. If you could, you should paste your above reply to the Blog, so future readers will be able to see your great reply, where as forum post replies can often get lost if you are not looking for the right thing.



Cheers



Stephen