Pro­duc­ing large amounts of blackwater

Jacob, I am afraid I can­not say any­thing about Amer­i­can brand names of mixed-​bed-​filters, but maybe Bill Lit­tle is able to do so.

As your other ques­tion is con­cerned: Yes, rain­wa­ter is good, some say: it is best. Today, the rain is often falling down with an acid char­ac­ter already because of the inten­si­fied CO2 and other acid sub­stances (from indus­trial emis­sions) in the air. We did not encounter any prob­lems by that. What you have to obey is that the rain should not be used in the first hour espe­cially in indus­trial regions; there should have been a cer­tain “wash­ing” of the often pol­luted air before you use it. And it should not run across rather dirty roofs or other mate­ri­als before being col­lected.

But if you obey such sim­ple rules, rain water is very good indeed. And cheap!

I was plan­ning on using a rain­wa­ter bar­rel that attaches to a roof’s gut­ter, now I won’t. So just wait one hour before using it, the pol­lu­tion in it dis­si­pates that way.