Small status update. Holiday weekend is gonna mean Friday’s comic is a skip, too much going on. But the next comic is in progress, so Monday is the next update.
Small status update. Holiday weekend is gonna mean Friday’s comic is a skip, too much going on. But the next comic is in progress, so Monday is the next update.
This is on a Farm, right? Why don’t they have well water? And why the dechlorinator and not a water filter?
Well water can be pretty nasty, depending on where you live.
I was in a university that had an artisan well that they couldn’t use (and had to be on city water) because it had high levels of arsenic in it. A relative had a coworker who got bone cancer due to uranium in his well water (probably from granite in the area). You can filter the uranium out, but some people might just rather being on city water than worrying about that. There have also been some areas contaminated from practice using firefighting foams containing per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances, or PFAS, that have gotten into the groundwater.
I feel obligated to note that some city water can be bad too (other than chlorine). The EPA normally provides information on water quality.
My house is on a county water system. Maybe theirs is too. (We also have a well, but we don’t use it to drink or bathe any more.)
I live a little ways outside the city proper too, but still have “city” water from a line. Used to be well water in the house I rent. The city tried for years to get my landlords to switch over so they could bill them, and they wouldn’t go for it. When one of the two wells they had quit flowing, they threw so many roadblocks in there way to keep them from drilling a new one that they finally gave up.
So now I, and about half of the houses they own, are on city water. And a ton of chlorine in it. To the point where if I don’t let it sit and evaporate out, it’ll kill my houseplants.
Is it possible to filter it? There’s minerals in my water and it tastes awful, so I use a Brita filter. I use it to make ice cubes and even go fill my humidifier. If I don’t put filtered water in it, the minerals burn in between the electrodes leaving black specks in the bottom of the housing and I’m sure shortening the life of the appliance.
Some things are easier to filter than others. The bigger the molecule, the easier it is to filter. Smaller molecules are harder to filter. Distilling or deionizing are considered the best way to make sure that nothing is left in the water, but you might want some minerals in the water to provide them into your diet and they are expensive.
I know that I have had high amounts of calcium in the water that filtering with Brita or others did nothing to fix. It was also extremely hard on plumbing, appliances and clothes. I had all my clothes, no matter the age, start getting holes and fading due to the sediment left in them. Very hard water tends to corrode or erode everything.
You have to be careful with well water with houseplants too. Something as common as hard water can cause issues with nutrient uptake and pH. It can depend on the type of plants, how hard your water is, how you water the plant (top or bottom), how dry your climate is (drier and hotter climate means you water more), and other things. For some it might end up a problem, but that is why rain or distilled water is generally recommended.
Given Todd, Selkie and Amanda can make visiting a day trip, there’s no reason it can’t be connected to the water mains. Whether its possible depends how far the farm out is from town and the specific decisions of the local county government.
And if it isn’t connected to the water mains – I know America has this whole private industry that specifically does water deliveries to places like farms outside town limits. Its like a milk run – they come by with a big truck every week or whatever frequency you order and pour a set amount of galleons right into your tanks.
Its more reliable than rain tanks or well water, means that you outsource all of the necessary water purification and chlorination, and lets you just plain have bigger farm operations. And since its intended you have bulk water delivery, I guess the theory is that it costs the farm less than if what the water tariffs to the county would be if they did hook up the mains?
Oooh are we gonna get a Sarnothi biology lesson soon? This should be fun.
Wheres Selkie i wanna see her face
How would a Sarnothi know what fire smells like?? Aren’t these refugees fresh from the lake, not ones who’ve spent time on land and gotten to know things that can only happen in the air?
I mean I can imagine spending a little time underwater and learning some new concepts I’m unfamiliar with but I don’t think they’d become part of my descriptive vernacular within a matter of weeks.
Sarnothi grade-school science classes! A favorite experiment is filling an upside-down beaker with a bubble of air and then lighting a match in it, showing how the match uses up O2 and goes out.
When the match is pulled back out, the char gets into the water, where they can smell it.
Maybe it is an odd translation of another word that they have related to something else, like echo abilities.
Wondered that myself. And then I thought of sulfur. Shallow wells here where I live definitely smell like sulfur. Wonder if that’s what they’re smelling?