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+--- Thread: Free distilled water for humidifiers. (/Thread-Free-distilled-water-for-humidifiers)
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - zonk - 09-06-2012
I can buy distilled water from supermarket, Its about 75 cents Liter. Usually found with the cleaning stuff, mainly used for steam iron and steam mobs. Also in garages and auto parts shops.
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - Sleepster - 09-06-2012
(09-06-2012, 08:29 PM)PaulaO2 Wrote: I had a similar discussion with a friend of mine from the UK. She could not understand why USians were so wasteful and used dryers when a clothesline is free.
Part of that is because energy is cheaper in the US. But even so my mother would never use her dryer unless it was rainy outside. Where I live now the climate is so humid we wouldn't get much use out of a clothesline. My wife keeps asking for one, though.
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - oldteddybear - 09-06-2012
The water from a de-humidifier or air conditioner is not distilled water but condensed water and will contain a concentrated solution containing any pollen, viruses, spores, etc that is in the air. The most you could say about it is that it is partially demineralized but a medical nightmare. To use it you would really still need to boil and filter it and by the time you do that ... it would cost more than the store stuff. I am wondering if you are pricing demineralized water. Distilled water does not have much in mineral content but has not been passed through the IX collumns to remove the trace amounts of minerals that pass throug the distillation process and have a guaranteed mineral free status.
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - archangle - 09-06-2012
(09-06-2012, 09:59 AM)JJJ Wrote: Modern clothes dryers are not vented. The moist heated air inside the drum is circulated through a cooler where the water vapor condenses into water. The water is then expelled down the drain. This is essentially distilled water, since condensing water vapor is exactly how distilled water is made.
So it's distilled water mixed with whatever germs, dirt, lint, pollen, sweat, bodily secretions, etc. were on your clothes and made it through the filters in your driver. Plus some of the chemicals that were in your clothing and the laundry detergent.
Realize that even true distillation isn't a magic 100% purifying process. While solid material like minerals are left behind, chemicals that evaporate do end up in the "clean" water at the end in certain concentration. For instance, if you mix alcohol and water, you will get some alcohol at the end of the process. In fact, that's how they make liquor. To get a pure product out the end, you need to control the chemicals in the original water, and you need to precisely control the temperatures and pressure.
A dryer is NOT a safe water purifier.
Tap water is going to be 100 times safer than the stuff that collects in your dryer condensation tank.
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - JJJ - 09-07-2012
(09-06-2012, 11:07 PM)archangle Wrote: So it's distilled water mixed with whatever germs, dirt, lint, pollen, sweat, bodily secretions, etc. were on your clothes and made it through the filters in your driver. Plus some of the chemicals that were in your clothing and the laundry detergent.
No living pathogen is going to survive the heat inside the dryer. As for the rest, Wilorg presumably wears the clothes that come out of the dryer and suffers no harm in doing so. Bottom line: Wilorg has been using the water from his clothes dryer condenser in his CPAP humidifier without a problem.
Meantime, I'm scheming how to make money selling distilled water, which I can get her essentially for free, to the Swiss. Lessee now, shipping costs are going to be a killer, but if I can get $16 a gallon ...
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - zonk - 09-07-2012
(09-07-2012, 12:34 AM)JJJ Wrote: Meantime, I'm scheming how to make money selling distilled water, which I can get her essentially for free, to the Swiss.Ice to the Eskimo
![[Image: iceberg-300x199.jpg]](http://graduatedandclueless.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/03/iceberg-300x199.jpg)
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - archangle - 09-07-2012
(09-07-2012, 12:34 AM)JJJ Wrote: No living pathogen is going to survive the heat inside the dryer. As for the rest, Wilorg presumably wears the clothes that come out of the dryer and suffers no harm in doing so.
Let me know when he starts filtering his drinking water through his clothing, and letting it sit and ferment for a while before he drinks it.
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - DocWils - 09-08-2012
The reason distilled water can be so expensive here is the same reason why everything is so expensive here (compared to the EU) - they can get away with it - Switzerland is essentially the Ferengi home world, and capitalism run rampant - however they can take your money from you they will, and the Swiss have not had a habit of complaining about it - we even have the government helping in keeping the costs high by allowing monopolies and high import tariffs. If I went across the border to Germany I could buy ten litres of distilled water for what I pay for one litre here. But the border is an hour and a half train ride away, and that would make that ten litre bottle suddenly cost 60 Swiss Francs.
As for the condensed water from the dryer, I'll pop a sample off to the testing lab at the hospital I used to work at and let you know what they come up with - got me curious myself. Could have sworn running it through a filter would have removed any impurities caught in the condensate, but well, you never know. What I do know is that the heat in a condenser dryer can easily get high enough to kill most any pathogen. Heck, if you are not really sure, just take the condensed water and boil it - the minerals are already out of it for the most part, so you don't really concentrate it much more, you only need to boil it for a minute to kill anything left over, so concentration is minimal anyway. To get rid of particulate matter, use a fine filter, and between the two, condense water from a dryer should be perfectly safe. I am not sure about American Air Conditioner condensates, same for dehumidifiers.
Of course, if you simply get a nice sized flask or a pressure cooker and run a spiralled copper or glass hose from it, you can make your own really nice still, which will also do the trick on the cheap ;-) And for a bit extra, you can add some rye and make a really tough rotgut too
BTW, the reason I use a cloths dryer at all is because the apartments are too small and too crowded together to use clothes lines, and I don't think the city air is really going to give them a nice smell, at least not this part of the city - now if I lived out in the countryside, in the summer there is no way I wouldn't dry all my clothes on the line. So much nicer - my mum did it that way, and it was always terrific. A lot of buildings have a drying room, essentially a large concrete room with an industrial strength dehumidifier in it - you hang your stuff up, turn the thing on and go away for few hours. Never liked them and I always thought they wasted more energy than modern dryers do.
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - mjbearit - 09-08-2012
(09-08-2012, 05:30 PM)wilorg Wrote: pressure cooker and run a spiralled copper or glass hose from it, you can make your own really nice still, which will also do the trick on the cheap
Okay, you just gave me an idea. I actually do some home canning of food and I own like one of the biggest home pressure canners you can get. Hmmm. Home Depot has copper spirals (okay it is coiled copper tubing for ice makers) and I bet I could make that work as a nice big worm, now I just need to jury rig a cold water bath...... Gotta call some of the redneck cousins. I think I might have a new career! LOL!
RE: Free distilled water for humidifiers. - Sleepster - 09-08-2012
Instead of the expensive and troublesome distilled water, have you tried tap water? In some places the tap water is good enough to use in humidifiers.