After a water main leak, flood, or hurricane, the supply of clean drinking water is interrupted. Therefore, you may need to use disinfected, boiled, or bottled water until the water supply is restored. In this article, we are going to share with you some methods that will help you disinfect drinking water from the comfort of your home. Keep reading to know more.
The instructions below can help you boil or sanitize water to kill microorganisms in the water. The good thing about these methods is that they will not destroy other common contaminants such as some chemicals, salts, and heavy metals.
First, be sure to use properly disinfected water. This type of water is safe for drinking, cooking, and washing clothes and dishes.
1.Boiling method
First of all, if you don’t have bottled water to drink, you can boil whatever type of water you have access to. Boiling for a few minutes is enough to kill different types of pathogens, viruses, protozoa, and bacteria, according to reports released by the WHO.
Sometimes the water is cloudy. To clean it, all you need to do is pour the water into another container through a filter or coffee filter or a water towel.
Keep the water boiling for a couple of minutes for proper disinfection. At high altitude, say 1000 meters, you may need to wait a few more minutes.
After boiling the water, you need to remove it from the heat and wait a few minutes for it to cool down. Make sure the container is covered.
2. The Bleach Approach
If the water tastes flat or strange, you can add a small amount of salt in one liter of water. Alternatively, you can pour the water into another container and then into the first container and then repeat the process a few times to correct the smell.
For the bleach method, you should use chlorine bleach for proper and safe disinfection. Normally, the active ingredients of this bleach have 6% sodium hypochlorite. It’s not a good idea to go for colorfast or scented bleaches, as they have added cleaners.
Find a clean eyedropper and use it to drop a few drops of bleach into the water. For a gallon of water, you can add as little as 6 drops of bleach, which will be more than enough. However, the amount can be increased if the water is still quite cloudy or smelly.
Finally, you must stir the container and keep it covered for half an hour. If the water emits a bit of a chlorine smell, you can repeat the process and let the container sit for another 15 minutes.
To summarize, if you are looking for an easy method to disinfect your drinking water in an emergency, we suggest you try either of the two methods described in this article. Hopefully these tips will help you make the right choice and drink only clean water.
