Hi Guys

[Pure-Survival]

I have been hanging about here for a while and thought it was time to join.

I look forward to being inspired by you guys.

Adi

[Ken]

Welcome to the Forums. It's great to have you here!

[crashdive123]

Hello and welcome. When's your site going to up and running?

[crashdive123]

My mistake - it is up, just not complete yet. I read your information on boiling water. How do you come by those conclusions?

[tennecedar]

Welcome to the forum.

A quick question about your site. On your water treatment section you state "When purifying water, we must look at and understand the dangerous particulates that we
are trying to remove. These can be broken down into two distinct components, suspended
solids and microbiological contaminants." Why no mention of dangerous soluble chemicals?

[Pure-Survival]

Welcome to the forum.

A quick question about your site. On your water treatment section you state "When purifying water, we must look at and understand the dangerous particulates that we
are trying to remove. These can be broken down into two distinct components, suspended
solids and microbiological contaminants." Why no mention of dangerous soluble chemicals?

LOL thanks for the welcome guys, I think I'm going to like it here, I like a good discussion.

To answer your questions re my water purifying article. The article is the first in a series of articles on water and only highlights the basics. This article was written to give an understanding of water treatment. I was going to add dangerous soluble chemicals but felt it did not add anything to the article as it is quite a complicated subject and one that deserves an article in its own right.

Chemical pollutants are mainly found in areas of and downstream of human habitation and sites of industry. Although in wilderness areas it can be associated with forestry and mining activity. There is often an indication of major chemical contaminants that are at levels dangerous to man within the watercourse.

Chemical pollutants are often very difficult to remove from water especially in a survival situation. Filtering and charcoal offer the best ways of removing chemicals to a certain degree. Many people believe in using a still to remove chemicals but in reality ambient temperature stills don't produce enough usable water. And, stills using heat are only effective at removing chemicals with a boiling point higher of that of water. If the chemical boiling point is lower than that of water you actually concentrate the chemical. And if the boiling point is the same as that of water you have no effect of reducing the chemical contaminant. To build a still that uses heat takes a lot of skill, resources, energy and fuel so in most cases is well beyond the capabilities of a survivor.

Re my conclusions about boiling water, can you please define your question a little better, I don't know what exactly you are asking me to define.

[Ken]

Re my conclusions about boiling water, can you please define your question a little better, I don't know what exactly you are asking me to define.

Sure. Virtually all organisms are dead by the time the water temperature hits 160*F or 71.1*C. EVERYTHING I have read thus far from reliable sources states that from the second water boils, even on the top of Everest, it's safe to drink (once it cools down a bit, of course).

What do you know that the experts don't know?

[Rick]

Welcome home.

[Pure-Survival]

Sorry mate i dont know what you are getting at, I believe what you have said is not much different to what I have said.

Water at 73c and above will kill most things with time. Cryptosporidium for instance is extremely hardy and will take a lot longer to be killed at 73° C than a virus that same temperature. Cryptosporidium has been shown to survive in water being taken to 98° C and then left to cool.

There are some organisms that that can live in water well over 100°C that most of these have no effect on human beings.

71.1°C is a very precise figure given by scientists, what is neglected by people using the scientific data is that the scientists report data with a +/- % and in the case of water it is +/-2%. Rounding this off to the highest safe degree centigrade equals 73° C.

There is a lot of professional and scientific analysis on water treatment available that has not been muddied by outdoor and survival myths and misinformation.

[Ken]

At 212*F or 100*C anything that will harm us is long since dead.

Your site states:

"There is often a lot of discussion about “what is boiling water?” The term a ‘rolling boil’
seems to be a contentious issue. Water should be brought to a rolling boil; the reason for
this is that the boiling water is rotating within all areas of the boiling vessel, leaving no areas
of cool water. It can take up to two minutes for water to go from 100°C to a rolling boil at any
altitude so it is best to take this into account and boil your water for two minutes and add one
minute to the time for every 300 meter of elevation above sea level. Taking this into account,
in the unlikely event that you chose to purify water at 8000 meters, you would need to boil your
water for around 28 minutes."

Again I ask you, why do you recommend boiling for 28 minutes unless you just want to waste fuel?

"Heat kills microorganisms, and virtually all enteropathogens are readily killed at temperatures well below the boiling point. The process of heating water to a boil makes it hot enough long enough to disinfect it, even at elevations as high as Everest Base Camp (references 1,2). There is no need to boil water for 5 minutes, 10 minutes, or 20 minutes, as some guide books recommend! Bringing water to a boil is adequate for disinfection." http://www.high-altitude-medicine.com/water.html

[Pure-Survival]

Okay Ken, I see where you're coming from now. You have misunderstood what I have said, maybe I did not make it clear. At 8000 meters it would take 26 minutes for your water to reach a temperature that it would boil at that pressure. Water boils at 73° C at 8000 meters. Add two minutes to the heating time to make sure all the water within the container is at the boiling point, this is 28 minutes.

[Ken]

Okay Ken, I see where you're coming from now. You have misunderstood what I have said, maybe I did not make it clear. At 8000 meters it would take 26 minutes for your water to reach a temperature that it would boil at that pressure. Water boils at 73° C at 8000 meters. Add two minutes to the heating time to make sure all the water within the container is at the boiling point, this is 28 minutes.

Okay, I see.

What you wrote was "you would need to boil your water for around 28 minutes." but what you MEANT was "it will take 26 minutes for your water to reach the boiling point," right? This makes no sense at all to me.

Therefore, my next question is, how could you possibly know how long the water will take to boil at 8,000 meters given the fact that you made no mention of the starting temperature of the water when you began to heat it?

[crashdive123]

One things for sure - I will not be boiling water at 26,000 feet unless it is in an aircraft. To clarify my earlier question to you Pure - In your intro you didn't give out any info about you. You know, things like wilderness or survival experience and training. Part of the world you are using as a reference (world of difference in survival in the Mohave Desert or at the North Pole). You have a site in your signature that offers survival information. I was just curious what experience the one offering that information had - that's all.

[Pure-Survival]

Water is a liquid, not a solid as ice or a gas. If you're at 8000 meters the difference between a couple of degrees is not going to make much difference to the time it takes for water to get to boiling point. My point in the article is that you don't need to boil for extended periods of time. On the whole water is safe once it reaches 73° C so water can be made safe at any altitude.

At 8000 meters in most locations on the planet water is relatively safe to drink without any treatment at all. It is very unlikely that you would be treating water and if you were you would treating it by chemical means as this would be the lightest most energy effective form of water treatment. Other forms of water treatment would be too heavy or reliant on heavy fuels to be of any use.

You're just being pedantic with your line of questioning and refuse to be bated in this way. The fact is there is a lot of myth and misinformation within outdoor and survival literature. My aim is to dispel this myth and misinformation.

[tennecedar]

Would you care to give some back ground on yourself. Training, vocation, life experiences,etc. Just so I know where ya coming from concerning you being able to dispel this myth and misinformation. Thanks

[Pure-Survival]

One things for sure - I will not be boiling water at 26,000 feet unless it is in an aircraft. To clarify my earlier question to you Pure - In your intro you didn't give out any info about you. You know, things like wilderness or survival experience and training. Part of the world you are using as a reference (world of difference in survival in the Mohave Desert or at the North Pole). You have a site in your signature that offers survival information. I was just curious what experience the one offering that information had - that's all.


Ok mate your original post makes sense now. A little about myself, I've had an interest in the outdoors and survival since I was a kid living on Exmoor in the UK learning country ways from the old boys and living in Australia and learning skills from one of my best friends and his family who were aboriginals.

I studied survival was in the British Army and continued to study and teach survival whilst working for international security companies in 47 locations around the world including Africa, South America, Central America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Nowadays I teach outdoor skills and survival on a voluntary basis for a number of organisations in the UK and have recently set up a website which will hopefully be an information resource although it will probably take me a life time to complete.

[Ken]

Water is a liquid, not a solid as ice or a gas. If you're at 8000 meters the difference between a couple of degrees is not going to make much difference to the time it takes for water to get to boiling point. My point in the article is that you don't need to boil for extended periods of time. On the whole water is safe once it reaches 73° C so water can be made safe at any altitude.

At 8000 meters in most locations on the planet water is relatively safe to drink without any treatment at all. It is very unlikely that you would be treating water and if you were you would treating it by chemical means as this would be the lightest most energy effective form of water treatment. Other forms of water treatment would be too heavy or reliant on heavy fuels to be of any use.

You're just being pedantic with your line of questioning and refuse to be bated in this way. The fact is there is a lot of myth and misinformation within outdoor and survival literature. My aim is to dispel this myth and misinformation.

I don't believe I'm baiting you in any way. Your site advises "you would need to boil your water for around 28 minutes." I believe THAT is misinformation, unless you know more than these guys do. http://www.high-altitude-medicine.com/water.html

The statement "you would need to boil your water for around 28 minutes" is clear and anyone who understands English would not misinterpret that to mean that it will take 26 minutes to reach the boiling point, as you suggested in one of your other posts above.

My feeling is, if you want to claim yourself to be an expert, and you apparently do, and offer training classes, which you also do, you should know what you're talking about and be prepared to defend your words of advice which are contrary to those made by recognized experts.

[Ken]

And how can you say this?


At 8000 meters it would take 26 minutes for your water to reach a temperature that it would boil at that pressure.

[tennecedar]

A little about myself, I've had an interest in the outdoors and survival since I was a kid living on Exmoor in the UK learning country ways from the old boys and living in Australia and learning skills from one of my best friends and his family who were aboriginals.

I studied survival was in the British Army and continued to study and teach survival whilst working for international security companies in 47 locations around the world including Africa, South America, Central America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Nowadays I teach outdoor skills and survival on a voluntary basis for a number of organisations in the UK and have recently set up a website which will hopefully be an information resource although it will probably take me a life time to complete.


Just to make sure, you haven't climb everest or have a tv show with the word versus in the title have ya?





just kidding sorta

[crashdive123]

Ok mate your original post makes sense now. A little about myself, I've had an interest in the outdoors and survival since I was a kid living on Exmoor in the UK learning country ways from the old boys and living in Australia and learning skills from one of my best friends and his family who were aboriginals.

I studied survival was in the British Army and continued to study and teach survival whilst working for international security companies in 47 locations around the world including Africa, South America, Central America, Eastern Europe and the Middle East.

Nowadays I teach outdoor skills and survival on a voluntary basis for a number of organisations in the UK and have recently set up a website which will hopefully be an information resource although it will probably take me a life time to complete.

Thanks for the additional info.

[Pure-Survival]

Ken you spotted a mistake I made in the wording with in the article. Well done, you are the only person to highlight my mistake and that article has been proofread and scrutinised by my peers, including a current military survival instructor and a multi pitch high altitude sports climber who regularly climbs at 8000 meters.

I have said I am interested in and have experience. I have not suggested I am an expert.

[Ken]

Ken you spotted a mistake I made in the wording with in the article. Well done, you are the only person to highlight my mistake and that article has been proofread and scrutinised by my peers, including a current military survival instructor and a multi pitch high altitude sports climber who regularly climbs at 8000 meters.

I have said I am interested in and have experience. I have not suggested I am an expert.

Great! Then we're still friends. I don't want any British Army guys coming after me. :gagged: Some of you can be pretty tough b*stards.

[Pure-Survival]

Just to make sure, you haven't climb everest or have a tv show with the word versus in the title have ya?

As for Everest no never climbed it, never seen the point but have ran a couple of mountain marathons in the Himalayas and hiked quite a few high altitude routes around the world.

As for TV, i stay well away from it, i know how they mix words and distort the truth. Although i was working in a team for a company in Russia that advised on security and survival for an expedition by TV personalities that travelled around the world which was televised. That was back in 1993.

Friendship is earned through respect; respect is earned through knowledge and experience:winkiss: :laugh:

[Runs With Beer]

Welcome to the forum.

[Gray Wolf]

Welcome, looking forward to your posts.