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Can I shower in salt water? Then all I need to do is desalinate drinking water. “Distributed” home desalination for drinking water seems like the best approac
by luxuryballs 3y ago
Can I shower in salt water?
Then all I need to do is desalinate drinking water.
“Distributed” home desalination for drinking water seems like the best approach in my mind, then people can pay as much or as little they need, but I have no real data to back this up.
- mschaef 3y ago> Can I shower in salt water? You at least need special soap: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_soap https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saltwater_soap
- nickff 3y agoYes, you can shower in salt water, but you won't feel as clean in the end. You also use water for washing clothes and dishes, as well as washing your hands, watering plants, and various other tasks, for which salt water is unsuitable.
- jakear 3y agoNo. Unless you want salt-caked hair. And body. Curious, have you ever been to a beach?
- luxuryballs 3y agoyeah but I usually feel quite refreshed after coming out of the waves, but keep in mind we don’t need clean feelings to survive, we do need fresh drinking water
- jakear 3y agoSalt overexposure is liable to dry up your skin and cause rashes/cracking leading to vectors for infection.
- stOneskull 3y agoyou see that with surfers. at 30, they look like they're 50
- smolder 3y agoAnd you're attributing this all to sea water exposure? My intuition is that sun exposure would be a bigger factor.
- stOneskull 3y agoa little from column A, a little from column B
- soperj 3y agoIs it? My parents have a salt water pool and swim in it daily through the summer.
- jakear 3y agoAnd they never shower?
- ianburrell 3y agoSalt water pools contain 10x less salt than the ocean. You can safely drink from it.
- bobbean 3y agoI'm not even remotely knowledgeable about this, but I'd assume saltwater would wreck plumbing. The connection in and out would probably be degraded much quicker. Then the water treatment plants would have to deal with dirty salt water, which is probably more difficult. On top of that all the brine that people produce in their homes would have to be disposed of, and I'm sure many people would just end up flushing it down the drain. So the water treatment plant would have to deal with highly concentrated, contaminated saltwater.
- beembeem 3y agoBingo. Corrosion. Everything would need to be "marine-grade" aka expensive to plumb :)
- dghlsakjg 3y agoHaving worked on and plumbed boats, the bigger issue is actually growth and especially mineral deposits. Corrosion is less of an issue since most plumbing is actually plastic at this point. Although any water that goes into an appliance needs to be fresh water, so it would really ONLY be for showering. Sewage in particular will create hard deposits in plumbing that needs to be dealt with every few years at a minimum. Frankly, unless you are in a rather extreme environment, like a desert, or a boat where you have to carry or make all your own fresh water, saving a few gallons on showering and washing is pretty inefficient. You could have a far larger impact by changing habits, and ensuring low flow appliances.
- smolder 3y agoInterestingly, there is one house that I know of with both hot and cold freshwater plumbing as well as hot and cold salt water plumbing: the Breakers mansion, built by the Vanderbilts. I'm sure they spent fortunes maintaining that plumbing and think the tour guide said something to that effect, but everything was a show of wealth there. One room featured platinum wallpaper, because, why not?
- tibbon 3y agoI've been wondering if one solution is having dual plumbing in some houses, that includes a parallel system for non-drinkable (but otherwise clean) water.
- smolder 3y agoI believe that's called a grey water system.
- jjk166 3y agoYou're likely better off treating and recirculating the same fresh water for bathing. You can also potentially save energy on heating the water with a proper setup.
- mcculley 3y agoYes, I do this on boats quite often. It is unpleasant compared to showering with fresh water.
- omoikane 3y agoRelated, it seems inconvenient that we haven't evolved to be able to just drink salt water, like cats can.
- graphe 3y agoInsightful. Have we been attacking the problem the wrong way? Gene editing is another field, in the future perhaps we'll see edits to the kidneys to save water.