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Coffee maker water purification revisited for people that might like to know alternat

9K views 13 replies 6 participants last post by  Billofthenorth3 
#1 · (Edited)
Some time ago I asked if a coffee maker could be used to make water safe to drink, many people thought not as the temperature wouldn't get hot enough. Just now I thought to stick a meat thermometer into my freshly heated coffee, it was just over 165 degrees. So a google search or two and we find that 145 to 165 degrees is the temperature that food is heated too to kill pathogens and milk is pasturized between 145 and 149 degrees. Honey is pasturized at 161 degrees.

Hmmmm, so why is water different, why would water then need to be heated to boiling, 212 degrees to kill the same bugs?

It seems that boiling is used because it is the simplest way to ensure the water is hot enough to kill germs if you don't have a thermometer.



There is some dissent on the internet though, some sources still claim that lower than boiling temps get 'most of the pathogens' but these are usually articles from non-experts and they might just be 'making sure'.


If fuel is an issue and you can ensure a 165 degree temp you probably won't have a problem.


Probably this would work best for water you might be tempted to drink without treatment anyhow like rain water you have collected or the stuff in your tub as you wait for FEMA to get to you not real heavily contaminated water. Are you gonna have a coffee maker after TEOTWAWKI and the electricity to run it?


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We made spaghetti with the muddy water we filtered out of this Utah sink hole so it definately saw 212ish degrees. By the way, though it was a 2 micron filter the water was still orange.

http://www.survivaltopics.com/survival/how-long-must-water-be-boiled-revisited

http://www.livestrong.com/article/484769-benefits-of-drinking-boiled-water/

http://www.cdc.gov/nceh/vsp/training/videos/transcripts/microworld.pdf
 
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#3 ·
#4 ·
Bill .. I can't argue with the fact that simple pasteurization will kill the bugs... but water is pretty much a universal solvent if you think about it,.. more things disolve in water than just about any other fluid , including your strongest acids. There is a possibility, depending on source, of toxic things in the water.. pasteurizing, or even boiling, alone, depending on source, may not make water safe to drink. Just saying....
 
#7 ·
Bill .. I can't argue with the fact that simple pasteurization will kill the bugs... but water is pretty much a universal solvent if you think about it,.. more things disolve in water than just about any other fluid , including your strongest acids. There is a possibility, depending on source, of toxic things in the water.. pasteurizing, or even boiling, alone, depending on source, may not make water safe to drink. Just saying....
I don't disagree but if you NEED water now to live for the next few days you do what you can to make it as safe as possible with what you have.
 
#5 · (Edited)
Yep that is correct AmmoSgt. It depends on what is in the water making it dangerous. "Bugs" you can boil, chemical contamination can make you ill, or kill depending on the levels involved. It can run into some really rigorous chemistry to negate dangerous chemicals. I don't even deal with that level of water treatment. I have a "C" Surface Water License, the folk who deal with taking care of run off chemicals into the rivers and lakes usually are engineers with a "A" {top level} Surface Water License. Depending on the chemicals, they can't always make the water safe.

Edited to add Ground Water.

In the past Ground Water, ie. deep wells, aquifers were safer sources of water. While that is still true, in our day and age nothing chemical should be taken for granted.
 
#9 ·
I would think that relying on a coffee maker to sterilize your drinking water is a marginal practice but if unprepared for a survival event and you had electricity would probably work. In a situation where the water stopped coming out of the tap or one was out of the home, electricity may also not be available. A coffee maker usually only heats the water for a short period of time and it may be insufficient. Also, if I had electricity or gas I would probably just boil my water in a pot to make sure any critters in it were dead. That being said, I don't like drinking dead critters so my plan for water back up involves planning ahead and filtration. I collect rainwater and have about 450 gallons of standing storage all the time. I always have bleach on hand. I plan to treat my rainwater with chlorine, let it sit, then filter in my Berky filter for drinking. That way the .00001% of viruses and pathogens not filtered out by the Berky are killed before I ever filter them out of the water. Berky also sells filters to remove naturally occuring arsenic if one feels it necessary.
 
#10 ·
I want to add , after rereading my posts on this thread , that I support and practice and provide for alternative water purification methods in my own preps ... My primary back up are little bottles , vials really, with eye droppers that I will fill with fresh bleach come SHTF, and I also have some $10 filtration bottles designed for almost clean water that have about a dozen chorine tablets for suspected contaminated water that come with them ... Both are inexpensive and better than nothing and part of my trade goods, and I would certainly use them if I had nothing else. They basically do what Bills coffee maker does and not much more. Boiling or pasteurizing basically does the same thing as Chlorine treating water.
I also have a stockpile of coffee filters and some funnels, and I rotate my coffee filters. I also have the Katydyn style camping filters.. I also have water test kits http://www.filtersfast.com/Watersafe-Well-Water-Test-Filter-Kit.asp

I might add that coffee filters are good for all sorts of things , We also use them to filter cooking oil so we can reuse it.. extending our cooking oil supply.

Clean safe water is the basis of staying healthy come SHTF... the old "water water everywhere, and not a drop to drink" thing.

IMHO you can not over prep on clean water.
 
#11 ·
This is a general knowledge thread it's not about making coffee or using a coffee maker as your first line water treatment array. Like knowing how to make primers or doing that emergency appendectomy (like in the submarine movie) if no other alternatives are available.
 
#13 ·
If we're saying that electricity is available to run a coffee maker, which is a mighty little hefty load in amps, then it's possible to get by if we're not talking the complete end of availability of fuel, to using a home water distiller, I use one near every day, it takes about six hours to distill well water of one gallon at a time. The distiller only cost about $200, and you can get them in varying capacity for semi reasonable prices, and mine has had over a year of use. What it does is boil the water, the fan operated head has finned tubes that cool the steam to droplets of water that drop into a gallon glass decanter, and I wipe the sedements out every so often. Beats drinking the water with a little bleach added or getting so much iron in my system that it might be bad, some lime scale comes out too.
But that is six hours for a gallon of water, I guess if you have a generator anyway, some fuel, and the generator can handle a water distiller use, then one can pretty much go over to a muddy puddle or the local dirty river and get some water going till main services come back up.
I guess anyone can distil their own water even if they use a wood stove and set a kettle of water on the top, with some sort of home made copper coils like a whiskey still to get some water, without a fan I suppose.
 
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