Hacking Water | Hacker News Reader

Hacking Water

joeyh.name

201 pointsedward36 comments

Definitely a +1 for the image descriptions. This is a pleasure to read with a screen reader. I haven't seen a website doing such a great job in ages. No one, except the BBC (which sucks at accessibility in other ways) and accessibility focused websites really does that. This guy deserves so much respect for this.

Take note, UI designers: In same crucial areas, you are far behind people writing HTML by hand.

I don't know where you get the idea there's a significant difference between these groups with respect to their attention to accessibility.

My experience is that accessibility to a site is inversely proportional to the amount of JS it contains.

And UI designers love having a lot of JS...

Joey probably uses ikiwiki, I imagine.

I have blind friends. So.

I wouldn't have known about them if you hadn't posted. Kind of a bummer Chrome doesn't show alt text on hover any more.

I think the one shown on hover is `title` text?

WebDev here, this is correct.

Ah, I've been doing a lot of plumbing with PEX lately as well. It's really a pretty nice material to work with. As a total amateur I've done hundreds of crimps with zero leaks. The 3/4" stuff is much tougher on the arms than 1/2". Heartily recommend if you have any interest in DIY home plumbing, or, say, legos.

Another link on the subject: https://www.mrmoneymustache.com/2011/11/23/how-to-become-a-k...

Those sharkbite connectors are the bee's knees. So easy to bridge copper to pex if you have piping that will evolve a bit. They are expensive, however.

Plex is the best. People should use it wherever possible.

I love working with PEX. You're spot on with the Lego comment, as it does remind me a bit of building stuff like that.

Joey is one of the oldest (and still active) Debian contributors. Patreon page: https://www.patreon.com/joeyh

Joey was very active in Debian, but has retired from it in 2015. http://zgrimshell.github.io/posts/interviews-with-floss-deve...

I never understood clearly why Joey left the Debian Project. It was right after the SystemD Wars, but I didn't get the impression it was over the switch to systemd itself. Maybe, the level of acrimony displayed by people he used to, or would like to continue to, respect?

I enjoyed this:

> My passion is making Free Software because it seems to be the software that lasts, the software that turns out to matter in the end.

I really enjoyed the read. I'd love to do something similar in the future. Thanks Joey!

Not likely the audience for this, but since I spent an hour hunting it down, the spade tool is called Wilton Thinline spade tool, just ordered the 10 inch.

Water filtered? Or assume water is safe?

There's probably a macro level filter (dirt and maybe silt) sitting in front of the pump. (Something like that would not filter microbial pests, which I assume is your concern.) I hope the water is filtered or treated in some way.

With acid rain and other hard-to-control phenomena affecting water quality, I would imagine that something pretty powerful would be required.

A biosandfilter [1] is not hard to design and build and removes the most common contaminants. Acid rain does not directly affect human health. [2]

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biosand_filter

[2] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acid_rain#Human_health_effec...

The real thing to worry about is giardia parasites, spread by feces contamination uphill (human or wildlife). It's the reason I wouldn't drink wanter in the backcountry unless it's directly from high snowpack.

> It's the reason I wouldn't drink wanter in the backcountry unless it's directly from high snowpack.

If you are at a certain elevation, and it is known that there are no villages above you or mining going on, any flow coming down the slopes is likely safe to drink, regardless of whether you know for sure that it comes from a snowpack. It has been argued that filtering water in the backcountry is often unnecessary, in spite of what companies like MSR suggest with their marketing.[0] Certainly, if you visit mountain ranges like the Carpathians, the Chilean side of the Andes, or the Pamirs, you can see that travelers and locals alike fill their bottles from the waterfalls without incident.

[0]https://slate.com/technology/2018/02/filtering-stream-water-...

Yeah, that's what I've read. I was mostly handling water in well-travelled wilderness in the Appalachians and Rockies, though. And from what I understand there's enough of a disease load in say, the deer population in the Sierras, that you might not want to be doing it even if you don't think there's humans upstream. shrug Wasn't a huge amount of trouble, my brother has a pretty high-end pump filter.

This seems to suggest that birds can't carry giardia. Do we have any reason to think so?

> The real thing to worry about is giardia parasites

Is boiling water an effective safety precaution?

> Is boiling water an effective safety precaution?

For giardia and most other disease-causing microorganisms, yes. Boiling (for a few minutes) is enough to kill them. But it doesn't fix everything (e.g., heavy metal contamination, botulism spores).

Has a healthy adult ever been harmed by ingesting botulism spores? You're not supposed to feed honey to babies less than 12 months old because it can contain botulism spores, but for people older than that honey is considered safe. See http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/aa142

Sure, and there is a pretty low background rate of botulism anyway. But I don't want to say "this is a completely safe way to make water potable" when I know some additional corner cases apply.

Why bury that manifold?

Don't want the fittings to burst in freeze.

Also while PEX can survive being frozen, I have not seen much about total number of cycles it might sustain before weakening.

Edit: Also I want to be able to drink water in winter.

Also I don't believe the UV rays from the sun are good for it. I think it weakens it as it does with PVC.

I'd be curious to know how much water expands under freeze vs how much PEX is compressed at a crimp fitting. It's not the same kind of force but the relative magnitude might be interesting.

Matt Risinger (austin-based homebuilder) did a freeze comparison between copper, pex, and sharkbite fittings some time back. It was pretty interesting.

At this point, I'd probably go for PEX-A (compression band) over PEX-B (the crimp style) because of the risk of getting the crimp not completely correct.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OOeBJ8mDr8Q

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