UKC

Does anyone out there have any skills in determining water purity?

I only ask as I would like to know how detrimental to the purity of distilled water would it be finding a dead pigeon in the header tank??

Thank goodness tomorrow is Friday

In reply to the sheep:

Well pigeon soup is just water with a pigeon in it and that's edible...


*don't do that.

In reply to the sheep:

You've got distilled water in a header tank!!!

In reply to Oceanrower:


Don't ask, its fekin huge too!

In reply to the sheep:

How long dead - skeleton, gelatinous or freshly drowned?

In reply to Jenny C:

A fairly recent fatality by the look of it, however the old nests on one of the lids complete with egg shells would suggest that more than one bird has been living up there before todays discovery.

In reply to the sheep:

A dipslide test would give you a reasonably accurate bacterial count, there's probably a local testing company that can take one. My area of knowledge is purity of machine tool coolant tanks and I use dipslides a lot to detect bacteria and fungus. From grim experience I'd offer the unscientific advice that a dead pigeon will have quite a significant impact on purity of a water based system, and that ditching it and sterilising the system is the only course of action I can suggest.

In reply to the sheep:

Well Feeding pigeons in Trafalgar square has been discouraged for years now. They deemed them a health and safety, salmonella nightmare. Pigeon poop = salmonella. In short, I think you would have been sampling it for a while by the sounds of it ?!

In reply to the sheep:

Have to ask, what tipped you off to the fact there is a dead pigeon in your water tank?

I am guessing you didn't read it in the obituaries section.

In reply to the sheep:


The true story of what happened to a bunch of us in Wales:

*We stopped by a high, small mountain stream and drank deeply from it.

*We set off again upwards.

*50 yards further up the stream we found the remains of a long-dead sheep in the stream. Water was flowing through the remains.

*No harmful effects.

Edit, to 'the sheep', I've just noticed your user name and I assure you this is not some horrible joke

In reply to cap'nChino:

Due to investigations into legionella in the mains water system we were looking into the distilled system to ensure there was no possible way it could get into that system. Investigation of the antiquated pipework took us to a huge header tank on the roof with the dead birdie. Now there is a debate about whether we condemn the entire distilled system!

In reply to the sheep:
To contaminate a swimming pool size worth of fresh water you need an amount of human feces that's roughly the same weight as 4 grains of sand. That would raise the bacterial count above WHO standards. Weather or not it's safe to drink is a different matter. But you'd be more likely to get sick

if a bear does one in a big fast flowing stream it's not safe to drink to WHO standards.

The less human like in diet the animal the less bacteria it contains in it's feces. With the exception of dogs.

there might be a chlorinator post distribution tank, in that case your probably OK

In reply to the sheep:

legionella is more likely to live in a badly maintained/designed hot water system

In reply to the sheep:

Yuk.

Do you need to condemn the whole system? Can't you just flush it through and stop future birds getting in?

In reply to the sheep:

you can't drink distilled water ? it's bad for you ?

In reply to the sheep:

Is there anything to stop you removing said pigeon and water (by removing the water from the header tank end of things) and refilling it and seeing if bacteria you don't want comes out of any taps, before condemning the entire system?

In reply to Inhambane:

I've had a thought it must be at his place of work for something technical?

If it's for something like that I can see why people might be panicking about whether to condemn the entire system, and why the money the company makes could be effected.

In reply to Timmd:

if there is legionella or a pigeon in the distilled system then all the water purity results will be up the spout

In reply to Inhambane:


Is that a pun?!?! [I've got one in the pipeline too ]

In reply to Inhambane:
Yes, if it's hospital related, I guess that makes it especially serious.

I wonder what the water is for?

In reply to abseil:

That's such a drippy thing to say

In reply to Timmd:

We are a research institution, the bog standard distilled is used for some basic solutions, autoclaves, some aquarium work etc. We were aware of purity issues and had moved away from polishing the distilled water to get ultra pure to having a mains feed to an inline purifier with a reservoir feeding the final polishing unit.
We were never fully allowed to investigate the distilled system previously as the header tank is semi external on the roof with access only via a plant room and Estates are very keen on keeping us out of those areas.

In reply to the sheep:

If you have a milliQ system or similar for ultrapure water it has built into it a UV radiator system and a 0.22 um filter so there shouldn't be anything biological getting through it. Any dissolved salts would change the resistance readings so would be immediately obvious. You should be getting about 15-25 Mega ohms (the higher the better).

If you are using the basic distilled water for anything like making up reagents you should never assume the water is sterile and always filter or autoclave solutions if you need them sterile. Most simple distilled water isn't very high Ohm but you can test this if you want.

In reply to gethin_allen:
The problem is the header tank and birdie is downstream of the purification unit!

In reply to the sheep:

That sounds like a very silly system...

If you need a purified reservoir, then it needs to be adequately sealed against contaminations, either airborne, or dead pigeon-borne.

If a bloody pigeon can get into the header tank, then it's most certainly not adequately sealed against airborne contaminants...

In reply to abseil:
Yup, done that too.

Also no harmful effects, phew.

In reply to the sheep:

Because they knew exactly what was up there?

In reply to elsewhere:

Maybe they don't want people falling off the roof?

That’s a mad system.
Distilled water will be more corrosive and start to dissolve the “antiquated” plumbing so ending up impure again. Also, removing the chlorine from the water will leave any bug free to flourish. Did I miss why you need distilled water? UV, ozone or chlorination will keep the bugs in check and as suggested a deioniser to treat the water where its used will be more reliable for purity.

Your local water company should be able to test the chemical and biological purity of the water.

In reply to All

It's an utterly bonkers system, the more I find out the worse it gets. The need for an external header tank after the purification process is beyond me. The only thing I can think of would be that it historically fed the cage wash facility that used to be on the top floor.