Just need to vent...

You guys seem to know more about water than I'll ever know. I avoided chemistry.

What characteristic of water causes black mold like formations. On shower heads, in drains, all over washing machines so bad chunks come out on clothes (cleaner cycle run regularly with Tide product, seldom use bleach, have run load with it and even vinegar). City water. Buried pipes 50 years old. No idea what they are made of. House pipes plastic.

Two bathroom sinks. So gunked up so badly about every 3 months I have to snake them. No hair, just this black crud. In my sink nothing but toothpaste, shaving cream and whiskers go into the sink with liberal water in cold and hot. Soap and liquid hand wash too. Last house I lived in 30 years and don't recall ever having to snake.

 

Well, barring any breaking news articles announcing we are being overrun by saprophytes, I can say that I too have noticed these essential organisms acquiring a hardiness and becoming more populous. Slime molds are a different thing altogether though, more like an amoeba. Not an area of expertise with me, but certainly a fascination. The colors are somewhat regional. We get pinks and yellows here in Arizona. Seen around the waterline in a toilet, on shower heads, and on the screened aerator end of every faucet spout in the house. Our relationship with them is mostly a mutually beneficial one, but if they ever decide to come for us we'll be horribly outnumbered.

 

That must have been the yellow stuff was I found inside the shower head once.

If the black gunk is just in the drain, it is a build up of bacteria and fungus. I have a citracidal gel to keep in check. It is a general microbial that is thick enough to stay in contact with the gunk for hours. Also will mix drain cleaner and bleach with a shot of hydrogen peroxide to get it foaming to hit all the nooks and crannies from time to time.

 

Is there a need to kill it? Doesn't seem to get in the way much for me; I mechanically unclog the bathroom lavatory drain once a year or so, it seems, and I mostly blame hair. The black gunk is there, I scrape most of it off and flush it away and wash my hands.

Would regularly using a general antimicrobial on it risk breeding better, stronger, faster black gunk resistant to that antimicrobial?

 

It and a white fungus was in the overflow drain to the sink. Couldn't mechanically clear that.

Citracidal is made from grapefruit seeds. The active compounds are a mix of flavonoids and phenolic acids. A large group of compounds that have multiple modes of actions against microbes. The crud isn't being exposed to a single compound to adapt too. It might just be breaking down the biofilm holding everything to side of the pipe.

Some flavonoids show promise of making antibiotics more effective. Even against antibiotic resistant microbes.
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s11101-018-9591-z#Sec18

 

Several recent posts here have caused my pupils to dilate. The ones in my eyes I carefully avoid knowing whether other pupils are dilated or not.

 

My pupils may dilate when particularly attractive people pass by.

But the recent posts here have been mostly text.

 

Sidewalks? Montana?

I'm trying to remember if any of my Montana relatives had sidewalks. But they were generally not urban Montanans.

 

Isn't that how Flint Michigan got into trouble? To save money, they dropped their supply from Detroit, and switched to the nearby river. And didn't pay attention to the chemistry differences.

 

Billions in health effects, hundreds of millions in plumbing damage and replacement water delivery.

But they saved a couple tens of thousands in training and treatment stocks!

 

KARMA: Chaos engulfs Michigan Republicans after election-denying chair’s removal | Michigan | The Guardian

Michigan’s Republican party has devolved into feuding factions – and at this point, it’s not even clear who, if anyone, is in charge.

Kristina Karamo, the Michigan GOP’s election-denying chair, was ousted in a 6 January vote held during a special meeting called by state committee members critical of Karamo. But she and the faction that support her have refused to step down, further inflaming the chaos that has engulfed the swing-state Republican party with just months left before the 2024 presidential election. On Saturday, the party will meet to vote on a new state party leader.​

Michigan Weather report:

Sat 20 | Day
26°
57%
NNW 18 mph
Cloudy with snow showers mainly during the morning. Very cold. High 26F. Winds NNW at 15 to 25 mph. Chance of snow 60%. Snow accumulations less than one inch.

Sat 20 | Night
21°
5%
WNW 13 mph
Partly cloudy skies. Low 21F. Winds WNW at 10 to 15 mph.​

Bob Wilson

 

our 1st MT property decades ago didn't even have paved roads for the last couple miles. Good exercise walking to the mailbox. Not good aporoaching mail box on foot if bear cubs are near by ... but as we age, we tend to make more Md visits & such. Logan medical center - a 7 minute drive even in the snow.There are trade-offs being in town. We do miss the sound of wind hissing through the Spruce-fir & Tamarack.
On very narrow residential streets, we do NOT enjoy knuckleheads that park directly across from each other - so that the snow plow leaves an even skinnier path for just one single car to barely get through.
.

 

It likely would be illegal only if someone downstream had prior water rights to it, such as in the over-allocated Colorado River Basin.

Apparently my state has some similar water laws. Locally, no one had such recorded water rights to most such rainfall (our streams have only short distances to reach salt water), so local government filed its own preemptive claims to get ahead of any private parties, and explicitly permitted property owners to collect that rain water. Thus protecting the many of us who were already filling rain barrels.

 

water rights in & around coastal touristy Cambria CA seem to have been morphing over the past several decades. We looked at property for sale on the outskirts of the area and discovered that many of the owners sold off their water rights to neighboring land owners. guess that's one way to assure water tables don't get drawn down by the neighbors.

 

That's the short story.

 

Are they dilating toward acuity (and understanding) or the great blur of the circumspect

Something else comes to mind when discussing water quality. There may be issues with the sacrificial anode in the water heater. More of a contributor maybe instead of a cause. Might want to have that checked in the due course of periodic maintenance.

In the grander scheme, all the pollution that has been and is being added to the system, and our increasingly less effective means of producing safe drinking water, are creating more resistant varieties of muck similar to antibiotic resistance. Difficult to predict what may happen with this, but it probably won't end well.

 

Scented liquid soap in rest rooms.

One of the sopranos brought her incredible cranberry walnut cake to rehearsal today, but I had to use the rest room first, and then I had to handle the delicious cake with my hands reeking of fake lavender or whatever the *%^$ the soap is supposed to be. And it still hasn't worn off, and I know it won't for hours and hours.

 

I use water and a 'home-brew' bottle of spray sanitizer, containing a 40% CH3CH2OH solution - widely available in some drug stores.
In fact, if you're a servicemember you can get the same sanitizer in a roughly 60 oz bottle (.175l) for about $10USD.

I generally eschew the soap in public restrooms.

 

CH3CH2OH is ethanol for readers not aspiring to chemistry eliteness. It and other short-chain alcohols bother microbes and viruses with dehydration. This messes with protein folding. Gigacellular organisms like us shake that off by having vastly less surface area per ... anything. Also we are dead on the outside, epidermally speaking, allowing dehydration and other affronts to be withstood.

If your general-use sanitation facilities only offer oddly scented soaps, BYO because we are talking about <50 grams here. Paw sanitation is a good thing, and ethanol wipes might not always get 'er done. BTW wipes are good for your tray and other high-contact surfaces while flying commercial.Then, count to 10 slowly. Believe me, or do internet search. You won't like it.

The whole thing about environmental biology, personal version, is 'how many people have touched that thing before you recently'? Because you cannot know about them. Potty rooms on commercial flights are cleaned between, because, you know. Other surfaces? Staff have about 15 minutes in N out. What you YOU think?

==
This leaves cruise-ship goers in the lurch because norovirus is particularly hardy and infective at remarkably low doses.

 

My...er....'home brew' sanitizer is only recommended in cases where the scented soap is the only other 'sanitizer' on offer.
Since my sweet CFO is adversely affected by strong scents, it's 'good 'nuff' for most REAL critters such as staph that got missed (or deposited) by the staff.
Not sure about the exact way that soap doesn't kill viruses (because they're not alive to begin with) but I'm told that it dissolves the fat membrane and the virus falls apart like a house of cards and doesn't die.
I used to use dern near 100% ethanol in a spray bottle but then....evaporation.
Dilute it with enough water so that it will stick around long enough to kill (most) bugs and disassemble (most) viruses......and....you have a roughly 40% concentration.
Or?
Roughly 80 proof.

My history with CH3CH2OH goes back to all of the supply chain issues with the 'vid.
Telecomm techs use CH3CH2CH2OH (1-Propanol) or C3H8O (2-Propanol or regular old Isopropyl alky) for cleaning really small bits of glass.
Careful shoppers can use ethanol in lieu of propanol, which is not so much of a thing in the telecom biz but I DID come upon a case once upon a time, which caused me to remember that somewhere back in the dark folds of our nation's history Hooch (Ethanol) played a very VERY non-trivial role.

WAAAAY back in the day, sailors used to use ethanol to fuel torpedos and sanitize surgical suites and do all sorts of things. You never EVER wanted to order gallons of alcohol, or even ethanol because......you might wind up with a slightly diluted blend.
End users in a surgical suite may or may not notice the difference.
Those aboard a submarine might be much more negatively affected.
IYKYK.

The more- clever purchaser might instead order a gallon of Sanitizer, Surgical - CH3CH2OH.
It's a thin layer of camouflage but often as not, like my sanitizer, good 'nuff.