Why is my polluted water cleaning itself?

[alation13]

I have noticed that I have a layer of clean water sitting on top of my polluted water. https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009954181

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009955719
The temp is nowhere near boiling point (under 30C), the water sieves are pumping the water to my clean water tank there is no chlorine in my base at all, yet my polluted water is turning blue.

Why would that be happening?

[alation13]

I would like to add that I am running the spaced out DLC but when choosing "type of game" I am picking "classic" mode on survival difficulty. Also I am not running a single mod, my game is as vanilla as, Ice Ice Baby.

[Peez Machine]

It's possible you had a pacu variant that cleans water. More likely is that clean water got in there (bottle emptier settings, melting ice either in the cistern or dripping down the ladder shaft, dismantled a pipe with water in it). The good news is that passing clean water into the sieves won't damage them -- the water will just pass through.

While we're here, you can just run the dirty water directly into the sieves instead of venting it out and then spending energy pumping it back into the pipes.

[alation13]

Aside from the pacu, I double checked all the other causes you mentioned. All the pipes are only from either the shower, toilet or CO2 scrubber outlets. The only small clean water reservoir I dug to was emptied 50 cycles ago, long before the polluted water started turning blue.
And yes, it gave me a heart attack when I noticed I was pumping clean water directly into my sieves, but as you said it didn't damage them.

EDIT: Could it possibly be that when the PH2O releases PO2 that is somehow looses it's pollution? Or if surrounded by CO2 it cleans the water?

[Aranador]

So, you have clean water on the floors above your tank, which suggests the water is not 'cleaning itself' in your tank, but spilling from somewhere else. Look for devices that produce steam that gets into this area and cools, or ice being stored or dropped somewhere that is melting.

[alation13]

Originally posted by Aranador:

So, you have clean water on the floors above your tank, which suggests the water is not 'cleaning itself' in your tank, but spilling from somewhere else. Look for devices that produce steam that gets into this area and cools, or ice being stored or dropped somewhere that is melting.

That is what I thought at first, but I checked for spills. The ice biome doesn't have a path to the PH2O tank, the ice I have received as care packages is stored in a locker in my clean water tank, and I haven't seen any leaks from either my plumbing inputs or my hydroponics (which are newer than the clean water). My base is still very primitive (no section over about 32C). I was wondering if I accidentally emptied some clean bottles, but all of my bottle emptiers are set to polluted only and there is about 2000kg of clean water there.

If there is no way aside from steam or the sieves to clean the water, I must have screwed up somewhere, I just can't work out where.

Edit: You can technically boil water at very low temperatures, but due to using Terrariums, my whole base is over pressure not under pressured (hence the temperature required to boil water should be increased). Also as scientific as ONI likes to sound, I don't believe that pressure mechanics are factored into boiling an melting points in this game.

[Aranador]

Have you deconstructed and moved any terraniums, pipes, or other machines that used water? Using the deconstruct tool ant catching a few background pipes in the process can be enough.

[alation13]

I did some pipes but nowhere near 2000kg worth of water worth. No terraniums moved, but if the polluted water sits in the bottles long enough could it possibly change, or could the terraniums leak clean water even if it is not boiled or frozen?

https://steamcommunity.com/sharedfiles/filedetails/?id=3009995014

As you can see the hottest part of my base is the compost heaps sitting at 36C-37C. So nothing is even close to turning to steam.

[Aranador]

Well, the location of the water is straight up wierd, it being on top of your tank roof. It could have been a pacu, and then the water surging upwards from the tank when the two types of water could not mix. I even see you have fresh water sitting atop your poluted water under your pipe output drain, which also suggests fresh water is getting into the pipe network that connects to that drain and being dropped into this room.

The good news is, fresh water going into a seive will not cause any problems.

[alation13]

I didn't realise that pacu could clean your water supply. The tank was more full and up and above the floor level, the water still up there is just the residual that I have not bothered to clean up yet.
Oh well as long as nothing gets damaged everything will be fine, I will just have to be careful when I set up a peppernut farm.

[nerdofanarchy]

Pretty sure the answer is in there, bottler setting or bathroom remodel. Correct if wrong, only that cold pacu cleans the pwater?

[Bobucles]

Blue pacu (gulp fish) will transform yellow into blue water.
It's also possible that steam got into the area somehow. When the steam cools off it'll fall around and make a mess, much like what it looks like.
It's possible that some kind of ice has melted. Perhaps it accidentally found its way into the nearby storage. When the ice slowly rises up to melting, it'll explode out of storage and make a mess.

Perhaps there's another pipe input into the system. One of the connectors goes all the way to the left off screen. If water contamination found its way from there, it'd be hard to find.

[cyberwarlord13]

dupe dropped some ice.
pacu cleaning.
reworking pipes.
it happens. great way to keep it from off gassing early game.

[traevanon]

Having a layer of H2O on your PH2O will keep it from off gassing as cyber mentioned, which is nice. About the only problem is that even a small layer takes up extra squares separate from the Polluted. You can have 200gal of H20 on top of 200gal of PH20 on top of 200gal of Brine taking up 3 squares I believe.

[alation13]

OK that is good, I hadn't considered the benefits of a layer of clean H2O on top. I am about to start again. As much as I liked the efficiency of the terrariums, the extra dupe labour and the constant PO2 emissions from the bottles of PH2O is just insane. Not to mention the pressures you base can get up to if you are not careful.

[OZFugazi]

Originally posted by cyberwarlord13:

dupe dropped some ice.
pacu cleaning.
reworking pipes.
it happens. great way to keep it from off gassing early game.

i'm going with the "dupe dropped some ice" end of shift sort of thing. the amount of water on the floor above the tank and water inside the tank would amount to several loads of ice, or one dupe that could carry a great deal of ice, dropping and melting on the floors above (edit: or where your heat is most present). at one point while you had a block present... then removed the block to drop the water into the tank (probably under the ladder). leaving the residual water on the floor that hasn't been mopped up yet.

there is also a bit of water on top of the PW to the far left, which might suggest the plumbing may have dribbled a bit of water from it onto the PW that originally drains from it.

either way.. there is noway for PW to purify itself..

all the best.