tsa and carry on water

[DreamDiver]

Why would Distilled white vinegar, be called distilled. If you distilled it it would distilled water (H2O), the other things would be removed by the process. Any minerals would be dissolved by the acid in the vinegar., to have Distilled white vinegar you would need Distilled Water and have to add the Vinegar into it, when you do that it wouldn't be distilled. All Rain water is contaminated after it forms by air falling to ground and run off. Jim

A liquid with a lower boiling point (Ethanol 78.5 degrees C) can easily be distilled out of a liquid with a higher boiling point (Water 100 degrees C). Vinegar is only about half a degree higher in boiling point than water, so when water is distilled, the vinegar pretty much comes across the threshold with it. The dregs (any vegetal matter, vinegar mother, etc.) remain behind. The water and vinegar are distilled and purified together, leaving them at about the same percentage as what they started with from the original undistilled vinegar, usually about 5% acetic acid in water. Hence, distilled white vinegar.

@chunkyfrog,
I entirely understand about smells and reactions. To this day, if I'm exposed to strong patchouli for a long-enough period, I'll projectile vomit and get a really bad migraine. I don't know why. I've never understood how anyone can wear the stuff. I suggested the lemon/lime juice alternative for that reason. The vodka suggestion sounds good for disinfection and odor removal, but I'm not sure how useful it would be for scale removal. Vodka has a pH of about 6 to 7, whereas lemonade (or lemon squeezed into a glass of water approaches a pH of 3, sometimes lower. That low pH is what helps remove scale.

[palerider]

Again, if one is repelled by the scent of vinegar,
a bit of vodka removes odors, and most microbes that cause them.
A tiny bit does the trick. Use the rest as desired.

Citric acid does a good job removing minerals without the vinegar smell... but that doesn't give you an excuse to break out the vodka...

I know, who needs an excuse

[mastahowie]

If you must have it as a carry-on, try freezing it first:

Source:
https://www.tsa.gov/travel/security-scr ... /items/ice

[mbushroe]

You can put bottled water in your checked baggage, at risk of leaking in your luggage and of getting a more invasive search of your checked baggage.

I believe that Nalgene still guarantees there water bottles to be leak proof and the largest they sell is 48oz. I don't have any stock in the company but I have always liked their stuff and been impressed by the guarantee. I don't do a lot of flying but so far my little travel bottles have never disappointed.

As for mineral buildup, any impurity in the water, unless it is another liquid that evaporates easily like alcohol, is left behind in the water tank when the water evaporates to increase the humidity of the air. If you never run it dry and dump it to wash the chamber once a week then it is highly unlikely that anything will stick. If you fill it with tap water and run it dry then there will be a thin layer of salts and minerals deposited on the inside of the humidifier. The layer may be extremely thin and most of it may dissolve back into the water when you next refill it, but there will be some scale left that is hard to remove without an acid wash (vinegar), some kind of descaler (CLR), or lots of scrubbing. The good news is that if it is too small to see then it most likely doesn't matter. Even if it is big enough to see it doesn't really matter unless it covers the hot plate at the bottom of the humidifier chamber. If it covers the hot plate it insulates the water from the plate so the plate has to get hotter to gt the same amount of heat added to water to help make it evaporate. And scale build up elsewhere may make it harder to clean and free of growing things.

Las Vegas does have very hard water, or even very, very hard water. But even without a water softener if you use tap water but toss it out every morning and put fresh water in each night you should should be able to go for much longer than a week with no noticeable problem. However I am not a chemist nor have I been very good at keeping the pool from turning green each summer, so take my suggestions with a grain of salt .

[Stom]

I believe that Nalgene still guarantees there water bottles to be leak proof and the largest they sell is 48oz. I don't have any stock in the company but I have always liked their stuff and been impressed by the guarantee. I don't do a lot of flying but so far my little travel bottles have never disappointed

I'm going to take a wild guess that that guarantee doesn't apply when you seal your bottles at sea level, then rapidly take them to the 6,000-8000' equivalent that passenger aircraft are pressurized to. I can tell you from personal experience that I've had the small Nalgene bottles I store soap and shampoo in leak many times while traveling by air, which is why they always are stored in a ziplock in my toiletries bag.

[mbushroe]

I believe that Nalgene still guarantees there water bottles to be leak proof and the largest they sell is 48oz. I don't have any stock in the company but I have always liked their stuff and been impressed by the guarantee. I don't do a lot of flying but so far my little travel bottles have never disappointed

I'm going to take a wild guess that that guarantee doesn't apply when you seal your bottles at sea level, then rapidly take them to the 6,000-8000' equivalent that passenger aircraft are pressurized to. I can tell you from personal experience that I've had the small Nalgene bottles I store soap and shampoo in leak many times while traveling by air, which is why they always are stored in a ziplock in my toiletries bag.

Then you should be asking them for refund or damages, because I believe that they specifically include airline travel, especially the little travel bottles. Mine have never leaked, and being in the ziplock bag for me too, it should show in the bag as clearly as soaking into your underwear would. I do make an extra firm turn just before packing up to board a plane, but nothing that requires power tools to open after the flight.

I don't know if the giant bottles would be as pressure tight.

After calm reconsideration, I take back all I said about the need to use distilled water. None of our machines have big HEPA filters on the air intake, so dust will still get sucked in and blown over the water, where some will go into the water, and some of the minerals in the dust will dissolve into the water. So no matter how pure, even filtered, RO purified, distilled, de-ionized water will quickly pick up minerals and then deposit them on the heating plate and rest of the tank. It is only a matter of how frequently you have to descale it, not whether or not it will even need to be descaled. And go ahead and use whatever tap water is convenient, even if it is very hard. Just understand it will require more frequent descaling. Unless you don't mind scale buildup looking like something from Yellow Stone National Park and the pale threads waving in the water underneath the scale just add character. Or if a single night's use when you still had a quarter of the water left in the morning leaves a ring around the water tank you might want to consider switching to bottled water after all.

[chartle]

Why would Distilled white vinegar, be called distilled. If you distilled it it would distilled water (H2O), the other things would be removed by the process. Any minerals would be dissolved by the acid in the vinegar., to have Distilled white vinegar you would need Distilled Water and have to add the Vinegar into it, when you do that it wouldn't be distilled. All Rain water is contaminated after it forms by air falling to ground and run off. Jim

Its how it made from fermentation versus some sort of chemical means. But its not really distilled. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vinegar#Grains

The term "distilled vinegar" as used in the United States (called "spirit vinegar" in the UK, "white vinegar" in Canada[21]) is something of a misnomer because it is not produced by distillation but by fermentation of distilled alcohol. The fermentate is diluted to produce a colorless solution of 5% to 8% acetic acid in water, with a pH of about 2.6.

[BrandonB]

At home I used distilled water religiously. When I travel, I use drinkable water at my location - however, I also take a travel sports bottle with me with a built-in Brita-type filter. I run the water through that and then into my tank.

As others have said, a cleaning by whatever effective means you normally would be your biggest concern and the tank is replaceable on many units, so worst case scenario you can swap out the tank.

[Stom]

Then you should be asking them for refund or damages, because I believe that they specifically include airline travel, especially the little travel bottles.

The Nalgene travel kit of "leakproof" bottles includes a leak resistant bag to contain leaks from their leakproof bottles:

"So we developed this one quart bag to fit the TSA regs. We added a leakproof zipper as a secondary containment in case that travel sized shampoo bottle leaks."

https://store.nalgene.com/product-p/9941-0002.htm

Aircraft travel exceeds the conditions of the Nalgene leak testing.

Nalgene "leakproof" testing for 85mm and smaller opening bottles is at 2 PSIG for a whopping two minutes. During flight, aircraft cabins have a delta of around 3 PSIG from sea level, and you fly for way more than 2 minutes at a time.

So, a good product, but tested at standards that are less than the conditions that will be found in your suitcase when you fly.

[chunkyfrog]

For the record, I never suggested that vodka would have any effect on mineral scale;
however, if you ingest enough, it may not seem to matter.