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Post by David_and_Nita on Feb 17, 2012 15:23:01 GMT
This was posted awhile back:
Dear Community Residents,
Despite numerous announcements from CCSD reminding all community residents that connecting sweet & raw water pipes in their company provided housing is strictly illegal, some residents still continue to carry out this prohibited act. When a resident connects the sweet water to the raw water pipes at their house, neighbors may experience contamination of the potable water system, which creates a serious health hazard. Rectifying the problem is tedious, time consuming & very costly, and also causes unnecessary inconvenience to community residents. Cross water connections are a direct violation of established company guidelines & carry a penalty charge of $2,000, disciplinary action & possible termination from the company.
The following are examples of cross water connections:
■Interconnecting drinking water pipes to raw water.
■Interconnecting drinking water pipes to irrigation pipe/hose.
■Connecting a gardening hose to sweet water heaters for car washing/lawn care/other purposes.
Residents are once again kindly reminded to adhere to company guidelines & to report any cross water connections that they are aware of to the Residential Home Improvement Coordinator immediately.
They are really cracking down on this. SO - if someone filed a complaint about taste or quality about some section of the camp they are going to go through the homes in the area if necessary to make sure that it is not because of cross-connections between the two systems.
Me? Termination wouldnt be good enough. There is no way that $2000 will cover the health affects of contaminating the drinking water and I could care less who gets hassled or how bad they get punished when they track down the perps who do contaminate the system.
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Post by Carolina on Feb 17, 2012 20:08:06 GMT
o
I am still very concerned about our water as my husband's skin has really flared up - yes of course they checked our water too and said everything was ok but I am still going to have our water tested in Scotland - I cannot understand why we can't have decent water in KSA - we have lived all over the world including West Africa and had better water there than here - so many children/babies are having rash problems etc due to the water here.
To be quite blunt the raw water is a danger to everyone's health.
I note that other compounds in Khobar only use sweet water for everything.
Carolina
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Post by SunkissedTexan on Feb 18, 2012 7:47:50 GMT
Ditto! If one of my neighbors are breaking the rules just because their hair isn't getting that fluff or their skin is not getting their glow and putting other people in jeopardy I'd hope Aramco does check randomly and frequently to make sure no contamination occurs for other residents.
Rules are rules, whether we like/agree with them or not.
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Post by Carolina on Feb 18, 2012 7:59:29 GMT
o
Yes I totally agree rules are rules - so maybe that is why our water was contaminated - although once whatever they were doing i.e. water people - they came back and checked our water and said it was ok - still worrying about skin breakouts - never seen my husband so bad but we are off soon to Scotland so hopefully his skin will improve with the high quality of soft water that we use there.
I still don't know how certain people know how to switch the water or whatever they did - we use bottled water for everything i.e. cooking and making tea etc.
Carolina
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Post by RT_Aramcon on Feb 18, 2012 18:00:56 GMT
Some of the negative reports about the RT "Raw" water are being a bit overblown. The RT raw water is sweeter than Dhahran's current supply of raw water.
The one drawback about the raw water is that it has more salt in it, so it will corrode your washing machine more quickly, this is why the diswasher is hooked into the sweet water.
Look on the bright side, less bath salt to add to your bath!!!
In addition I have not seen any bold women at RT, so some of the hype about hair loss on the forum is just hype.
"I can report many women here on our compound are seriously suffering with hair loss - we know it is ..."
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Post by vpainter on Feb 18, 2012 19:21:56 GMT
FYI:
I brought back a TDS (total dissolved solids) meter. I tested our sweet water in DHA and the reading was 139ppm. U.S. water districts are from .50 - 200ppm (mg/L). I tested our raw water and it is over what the meter could read which is up to 999. Comparison: The Texas city of Cleburne's 2010 TDS was 202ppm at its lowest level and 210ppm at its highest level.
Wikipedia:
The United States has established a secondary water quality standard of 500 mg/l to provide for palatability of drinking water. Water is considered fresh water at < 1500 mg/L TDS
The test was done with this type of TDS meter:
Electrical conductivity of water is directly related to the concentration of dissolved ionized solids in the water. Ions from the dissolved solids in water create the ability for that water to conduct an electrical current, which can be measured using a conventional conductivity meter or TDS meter. When correlated with laboratory TDS measurements, conductivity provides an approximate value for the TDS concentration, usually to within ten-percent accuracy.
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Uman
Senior Member
Posts: 161
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Post by Uman on Feb 19, 2012 2:58:35 GMT
So the locals are complaining about the water quality in RT hey? As a potential employee to be based in RT it is concerning to say the least. If I am OKd to go I will have to make a last decision( to go ) most probably within a month or two. So now, at the moment, Im researching about hard water etc...here.. www.freedrinkingwater.com/It seems the reverse osmosis system looks to be the best....I wonder why we cannot use them at Aramco. Also, is high blood pressure an issue there? high blood pressure from the increase sodium intake...? Questions I dont think my recruiter can answer... Im trying to be informed here ok? |
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Post by Carolina on Feb 19, 2012 3:59:17 GMT
o
All I can further input here on RT is that on my return from Scotland (end of March) I will have the water results and will certainly report them back to you all and the Water Dept here in Aramco - wonder what the results will be??
Carolina
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Post by GroveWanderer on Feb 19, 2012 6:51:07 GMT
Leaving aside for a moment, the other questions about the effects of the raw water on skin and hair, there's no way it's going to cause increased sodium intake, as a) you don't drink it (or shouldn't, you should only drink the sweet water) and b) the main minerals contained in hard water such as this are calcium and magnesium carbonates, along with possibly chloride and sulfate compounds.
The sweet (potable) water provided in houses is perfectly safe to drink, according to all applicable standards, though an activated charcoal filter is useful to get rid of the slight taste of chlorine that many people seem to notice.
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Post by GroveWanderer on Feb 19, 2012 7:07:54 GMT
Incidentally, I asked them to come and check the chlorine levels in the sweet water in my house one time as it seemed a little high. When I asked them why the chlorine levels seem to spike from time to time, they told me that it is precisely because so many people make illegal cross-connections so raw water gets into the sweet water pipes and when this happens they need to over-chlorinate the sweet water to counter-act this.
So if people didn't keep making these cross-connections, the sweet water would probably taste better.
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Post by Twofeets on Feb 19, 2012 8:20:48 GMT
Uman,
There has been no evidence of the water causing health problems. As far as sodium and hypertension, most up-to-date doctors will tell you that correlation is faulty as well. It takes enormous amounts of salt to alter your BP, hypertension is normally a result of heredity, weight, physical conditioning, and other factors.
While the water can be annoying at times, as has been said, a lot of it seems to be completely overblown. The sweet water we have from the kitchen tap taste as good as most tap water from the US and hasnt shown any problems. I do miss the feel of showering in soft water, but the raw water here is better than a lot of well water we us in the US.
That being said, depending on your job offer, Ive found the work hours, living conditions, benefits, and pay to be well worth the move. They are slowly improving the infrastructure here, and the trade off has been well worth it. If I was holding out for Utopia Id still be working 80+ hours a week and drowning in debt and taxes ;-)
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Post by Sandi on Feb 19, 2012 11:25:27 GMT
I'm in the Dh. ballpark apartments. I was drinking bottle water but then decided to drink the sweet water after someone mentioned it was perfectly fine to drink sweet water. However I had to return to drinking bottled water because on several occasions (Thursday mornings) I had to spit out the sweet water as it was like taking a mouthful of disinfectant. Maybe a heavy dose of disinfectant is sent through the pipes on Wednesday evening.
As far as raw water is concerned I always have to rinse my face with sweet water after taking a shower. Otherwise my face begins to feel itchy and irritated. And clothes certainly don't fare well during machine washes using raw water. But, apparently, in the 1980's it used to be worse when often brown water would end up in the washing machine and all the white clothes turned browny white.
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Uman
Senior Member
Posts: 161
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Post by Uman on Feb 20, 2012 2:58:07 GMT
Thats terrible.......when will they modernise the water systems I wonder?
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Post by Carolina on Feb 20, 2012 4:31:35 GMT
o
I will be contacting Edinburgh University this morning to ask them how I take samples to them from our raw water and sweet water i.e. they may wish me to take samples at different days and times.
It will certainly be interesting to report back to the forum but especially to the Water department in Aramco of their findings etc.
I will also take time to contact Water Department here to ask if they have any recent results.
Only way to do this to put our mind to rest but as I write my husband skin now bleeds with the water as his skin is not healing despite applying a lot of steroid cream - which should not be used long term.
Thank goodness we are going back just for clean and safe water and then on to Cyprus where the water there is also safe and clean otherwise on a positive note we love our time here in KSA and Ras Tanura pity about the water in this day and age it is unacceptable.
So the debate goes on.
Carolina
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Post by David_and_Nita on Feb 20, 2012 5:18:14 GMT
I am not sure that it would be very smart to carry, test, and report on ysis of RT water on one's own initiative. At least not publicly.
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