Apart from the plumbing, it’s not healthy to shower or bathe only in seawater. That’s why you always shower after going to the beach – salt can damage your skin and hair.
With today’s technology, we could build a complete non-corrosive, plastic infrastructure around this, but it would be like a separate utility, because fresh water would still be needed. Not just for drinking, but bathing and cleaning. This would require its own water distribution plant or tanks, to provide pressure, all the necessary pipes, every street or alley and yard would need dug up, and every house would have to be built or upgraded with that infrastructure. Long and short of it, it’s not economically feasible to implement such a large scale project in a capitalist society where profit is the only reason things will get done. This isn’t profitable.
That’s a lot of cost to install a whole separate system just for toilets
Saltwater makes detergents and soaps less effective or even just ineffective, so you couldn’t really use it for showers, sinks, dishwashers or laundry. And you wouldn’t want to use it for a garden hose since saltwater is basically poison for lawns, gardens and flower beds
Every time you flush your toilet with salty mineral water, you’ve got a huge cleaning situation to resolve. Mineral rich water already leaves rings and stains toilets, and salt does too.
Water in useful quantities is very, VERY heavy. Moving it is difficult and expensive. If you don’t live next to the ocean and pretty close to sea level that’s a huge issue on its own.
Then you’d have to deal installing and maintaining an entire separate plumbing system and maintaing it in the face of quite corrosive seawater
There are mostly economic reasons we don’t do this, but realistically, if we were designing housing totally from scratch, I think there are a lot of things we could incorporate.
We could develop ways to reduce our clean water demands from the aging water infrastructure by using grey water, rain water, salt water, or other locally available options.
We could design homes to thermoregulate themselves better by retaining heat or cold and releasing it as needed, having smart fans and vents that would improve fresh air flow and direct warm or cold air where it would help the most. This would greatly reduce the need for a/c in a lot of areas.
The list goes on, but it would take a pretty big break with tradition to change how houses are built, what they look like, and how they work.
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It’s expensive to build a whole second set of pipes, and salty water is corrosive.
It would probably be terrible on pipes. Salt is very corrosive. It would be difficult to maintain the plumbing, or probably even the sewage.
Pipes and plumbing are expensive. So it would cost a tone of money to have 2 different types of water delived to everyone’s homes.
However using gray water (water already used for cleaning, but not from toilets) for that kind of stuff can be a practical option.
Logistics having two sets of pipes coming into a building some going to sinks and showers and some to toilets
Also showring with salt water isn’t good. Dries skin out and just not good
Logistics aside salt water is very corrosive. It’s doesn’t make sense
Apart from the plumbing, it’s not healthy to shower or bathe only in seawater. That’s why you always shower after going to the beach – salt can damage your skin and hair.
Apart from the mentioned downsides, our traditional waste water treatment is set up around biological treatment.
The bacteria wouldn’t love the sudden increase in salinity
With today’s technology, we could build a complete non-corrosive, plastic infrastructure around this, but it would be like a separate utility, because fresh water would still be needed. Not just for drinking, but bathing and cleaning. This would require its own water distribution plant or tanks, to provide pressure, all the necessary pipes, every street or alley and yard would need dug up, and every house would have to be built or upgraded with that infrastructure. Long and short of it, it’s not economically feasible to implement such a large scale project in a capitalist society where profit is the only reason things will get done. This isn’t profitable.
Hong Kong is the only city I heard of that does that. I imagine this is only done when the city severely struggles with fresh water supply.
It’s extremely corrosive. If you thought lead pipes were a problem before hooo-boy see what happens when you run seawater through them.
Laziness. We could reuse our gray water and collect rain water. They do it in Mexico because they have tp.
Because the salt corrodes everything
Firstly, we aren’t short on fresh water and secondly salt water destroys everything it touches.
That’s a lot of cost to install a whole separate system just for toilets
Saltwater makes detergents and soaps less effective or even just ineffective, so you couldn’t really use it for showers, sinks, dishwashers or laundry. And you wouldn’t want to use it for a garden hose since saltwater is basically poison for lawns, gardens and flower beds
It would smell awful for one, if it wasn’t treated in some way before hand
I’m 1200km (750miles) from the nearest ocean water, with a mountain range in the way. I think that makes it a non-starter.
Every time you flush your toilet with salty mineral water, you’ve got a huge cleaning situation to resolve. Mineral rich water already leaves rings and stains toilets, and salt does too.
Water in useful quantities is very, VERY heavy. Moving it is difficult and expensive. If you don’t live next to the ocean and pretty close to sea level that’s a huge issue on its own.
Then you’d have to deal installing and maintaining an entire separate plumbing system and maintaing it in the face of quite corrosive seawater
There are mostly economic reasons we don’t do this, but realistically, if we were designing housing totally from scratch, I think there are a lot of things we could incorporate.
We could develop ways to reduce our clean water demands from the aging water infrastructure by using grey water, rain water, salt water, or other locally available options.
We could design homes to thermoregulate themselves better by retaining heat or cold and releasing it as needed, having smart fans and vents that would improve fresh air flow and direct warm or cold air where it would help the most. This would greatly reduce the need for a/c in a lot of areas.
The list goes on, but it would take a pretty big break with tradition to change how houses are built, what they look like, and how they work.
Salt water is incredibly corrosive. Look at the underside of any shipping vessel to see how bad it is.
Now, regular water isn’t much better. But salt water is far worse
showering in sea water? Have fun.
Salt