Fact – eating and drinking healthily is neither convenient or cheap.
By following the guidelines here, you will ensure ensure you get the best from your living water and avoid plastic contamination. Ask yourself if what we have written here makes sense or ask us when you drop in.
To know how to look after spring water and your bottles, think about it as you would any fresh perishable food.
Heart Spring bottles are BPA Free, so they are not as strong as most bottles on the market. BPA is a hardener which is bad for people but good for profits. Our type of plastic is the best available but it also requires you to provide the right conditions to keep yourself safe.
Many of us have had the experience of leaving water in a parked car which can easily get to 60 degrees in the warmer months. You can taste the plastic because heat damages the integrity of the plastic. Also the beneficial microbes in the water get destroyed and algae spores find the right conditions to bloom (turn green). Invisible algae spores naturally exist in the air and water all around us and are safe it it comes from a clean source. Algae has many beneficial health benefits. As a rule it is best to remove visible algae from your drinking water.
The bottles and your dispenser should be looked after in the same way we look after spring water. Our water springs to the surface at eight degrees from hundreds of metres down where it is moving, dark and cool – just the way it likes to keep fresh.
So in your house, the water and bottles do well in similar conditions. For example, a pantry is ideal for storage of all bottles – empty or full. With your empties, draining them completely as algae loves to grow in small amounts of water as it warms easily.
Only buy what you need until you can come in again. That way you minimise the time your water is sitting in the bottle – movement keeps it fresh, so you can rock/shake the bottles if they have been sitting around for more than a couple of weeks.
Your dispenser should also be positioned with movement, light and heat in mind. Otherwise you will start to see algae form inside the dispenser tap, then in the dispenser itself. Once it gets inside a bottle or in the dispenser you need to treat the whole system (see cleaning below).
A neoprene bottle cover from us could be the answer to reduce light and heat.
Typically, your conditions will probably will never be perfect but if you do what you can it may be enough. Ask me when you drop in for any specific questions. If you never have to clean your bottles or dispenser then you have it right. Water is a solvent and so can be self cleaning in the right conditions.
If the surface you are storing on is rough or dirty, we suggest placing the bottles on cardboard or something soft. If you tilt and lift rather than push or pull the bottles, you will protect their bottoms. This way your bottles look nice and when you bring them in to the bottling unit it will help keep our place clean too.
Cleaning
Don’t use dishwashing detergent – it will clean the visible algae but it is not an anti-bacterial so the green will return.
Remove visible algae. We have bottle brushes at Heart Spring. You can come in and use ours or buy one from us. To clean your taps, you can use ear buds or a small brush. The taps undo into smaller parts and are best cleaned in a small bowl, soaked overnight, before you clean the dispenser itself.
Brushes are usually synthetic so use minimal pressure to minimise scratching which gives algae somewhere to hold onto.
Vinegar is cheap, non-residual, non toxic and will eliminate algae. So will bicarb or hydrogen peroxide but don’t mix them together.
Use 200ml vinegar with 400ml water in your bottle or dispenser and shake it around so that it touches all the surfaces. Every couple of hours shake it again for 3 or 4 cycles. That way the cleaning solution is in contact with all surfaces for some hours and the algae has nowhere to hide and spread again. To break the breeding cycle, you should clean your tap, dispenser and bottles to eliminate it from your system.