Ratio of Bleach to Water for Purification

[woodsman]

Regular (5-6%) unscented Bleach / cloudy water

1 teaspoon / 5 gallons
1 tablespoon / 15 gallons
1 cup / 240 gallons
1 pint / 480 gallons
1 quart / 960 gallons
1 gallon / 3840 gallons

for clear water you can halve the amounts of bleach.

(Source: [url=http://www.doh.wa.gov/phepr/handbook/purify.htm]Washington State Department of Health[/url])

[geriatric]

How soon after dosing can you drink it?

UK army has instant-drink tablets but water TASTES like poison!

[woodsman]

I really don't know - I would not drink this water - I only use it for washing etc. I add bleach so it kills algae and who knows what else and replaces the skanky smell with the odor of chlorine - sorta like big city water

[catdance62]

I put about just about 1/2 a bleach capful of bleach in my dogs' automatic waterer to keep the algae out. It's 5 gals. (I think) and it works and doesn't even really smell like bleach. They dont' even notice it.

[woodsman]

From what I've heard dogs can smell you it if you dip a finger in the bucket of water. They most probably don't mind the low concentration of clorox.

[woodsman]

I have found another interesting web page dealing with purification of drinking water: Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water.

I was looking for something more reliable than liquid bleach available at the local stores to keep the cistern water from becoming its own ecosystem and stinking to high hell, so after asking Snooty Fox i went to Prossers in SI and bough 10kg bucket of granular calcium hypochlorite for 97 BZD.

According to EPA you make a solution of 2 gallons of water and a ¼ ounce of (one heaping teaspoon ) and then use that to treat water in 1:100 ratio. So if you mix 2 gallons this would be sufficient to treat 200 gallons of water.

Now I would probably mix it a little stronger, like an ounce of calcium hypochlorite per 1 gallon, just because I have a few 1 gallon bleach bottles perfect for mixing the stuff, and besides, I'd like to mix enough to treat at least the whole 660 gallon rotoplas. With 1 ounce per gallon I'd be making the solution 8 times stronger so the gallon would be enough to treat 800 gallons - so lets say the whole bottle shy of 1.5 cup would be enough for the 660 gallon rotoplas.

One last thing - make sure you drop th granules in the water - not the other way around.

[Dave Bunk]

We have really bad sulphur water in our well. We dose it once a week with a pint of bleach, and use it immediately. We bleach our vats once a month and by the second day the bleach has evaporated, or the smell is gone.

[woodsman]

I don't drink that water so the smell or taste I don't mind. And when you run the shower - it smells - clean