Update on Water Distiller

I finally bought my home countertop water distiller. I bought the H2O Labs 300SS.
Totally stainless steel with glass carafe.
The hardest part was assembling the glass carafe. You have to put the stainless steel bands around the carafe, attach handle, and screw it in securely.
Easier to operate than a coffee maker. Just fill stainless steel chamber with gallon of tap water. Use hot water from faucet to save time.
Put on the top which contains the cooling fan. Put glass carafe under drip spout. Plug in electricity and press RESET button.






Distilled my first gallon of water during the night. I was shocked to see what was at the bottom of the distiller. Bright orange fluid.
Who knows what chemicals are in the orange fluid? But I'll never drink tap water in my city again. And I'll never put tap water in my ResMed H5i Humidifier either. Just think of the chemical vapor I'd be breathing. I'd run my xPAP without humidifier if distilled water is unavailable.



The distiller takes about 4-5 hours to distill a gallon of water. Just setup and run while you sleep at night. The unit turns itself off automatically when finished. In the morning, you have fresh, pure distilled water in the carafe. Easy cleaning if you do it after every run. Just put 2 drops of dish soap and a little tap water. Through wipe with a Scotch-Brite. Rinse with clean tap water. Dry with soft cloth. Do the same for carafe. Add a gallon of tap water to start next batch.

Next I'm going to distill a gallon of "Purified bottled water" like Aquafina or Dasani (bottled by Pepsi and Coca Cola) to see what it contains.
The source of these brands are Municipal tap water which has been "purified" by reverse osmosis.
Any chemicals with molecules smaller than the pores in the membrane on the RO unit will end up in the "purified water." I have not been able to find any information about the membranes used by Pepsico or Coca Cola to purify their water.

BTW. My dog and cat LOVE drinking distilled water. No nasty chlorine or chemical taste/smell. My cat is drinking about 3 times as much water as she used to. My dog is drinking twice as much as he used to. Drinking distilled water is a natural chelating agent. Instead of "leeching minerals from bones", it can dissolve calcified plaque in your arteries preventing hardening of the arteries. What could be more natural than providing you body with the purest H2O available? It flushes out toxic elements from your system. I'm a total believer in drinking only distilled water.

That orange stuff is likely carbonates and some other minerals left behind by the distillation process.
Those won't evaporate out of your humidifier tank. That's the good news.
They will support microbial and fungal growth in your humidifier tank. That's the bad news.

Similar stuff will be in any "purified" water source since they all add minerals for taste reasons.

Using distilled water eliminates all those problems.

So, congratulations on your choice of water prep method.

Nice distiller. My guess would be iron in the water. Common, and iron oxidizes into iron oxide...or "rust" by another name. Rather orangish...
CN

Interesting post. I wonder what other brands of purified water would produce i.e. Ozarka etc.. they claim to be from a natural spring. Thanks for posting and keep us updated on the results.

The leftovers from our tap water look pretty disgusting too.
We also get a fair amount of lime. This stuff is awesome to clean the lime.
It is rated safe to use in food prep vessels and lines.
http://www.apexengineeringproducts.com/ ... dlymehome/
I wish I could get it in a quart--right now we are nursing some 4 ounce samples.
--a little can go a long ways; it just gets slower to work.

Humans actually need some of those "impurities". You city water is safe to drink.

Aquafina is just Montreal tap water filtered a bit. Probably if you did real spring water there would be a lot more minerals and stuff.

The orange color is dissolved iron that came from minor rusting of the piping somewhere between the source and your tap. The other stuff is usually calcium carbonate, similar to limestone, that was dissolved until you boiled all the water away. At the concentrations in your tap water, the iron, calcium and other dissolved minerals are harmless and actually are required for the taste of the water to be "right". The concentrated stuff after the distillation is probably also harmless, but would not taste very good.

On the other hand, if you try tasting the distilled water, you will find that it tastes flat and is not as refreshing.

As Blackspinner says, there are even a few dissolved ions in the tap water, like very small concentrations of fluoride, that are beneficial.

BlackSpinner wrote:You city water is safe to drink.

Please read this short article about the pollution of tap water, where the contaminants come from, the percentage population affected by it, and the fact that most pollutants have no legal mandate to test and regulate under current law. http://www.ewg.org/tap-water/sourcesofw ... lution.php Here's a snapshot of the what is really going on with tap water across the US.



The government would like us to believe that all tap water is safe. That's because they only regulate a very few of major contaminants and the municipal supply does their own testing and reporting to the government. Virtually every city tap water has aresenic and nitrates. (If my aquarium water has high nitrate levels, fish begin to die.)

Association Press: Pharmaceuticals in tap water: http://usatoday30.usatoday.com/news/nat ... ater_N.htm "A vast array of pharmaceuticals — including antibiotics, anti-convulsants, mood stabilizers and sex hormones — have been found in the drinking water supplies of at least 41 million Americans, an Associated Press investigation shows." Read rest of article for an eye opener.

The water source for organisms in the beginning came from rain and melting of glaciers. Fresh pure water would support pristine lakes, rivers and streams. Wells supplied good water because the water tables were not polluted. Since the industrial revolution, humans have polluted the earth, water reserves, and air with all kinds of chemicals at an exponential rate.

Tap Water: Use at your own risk. The government doesn't regulate or even measure most pollutants in our water.

Rustsmith wrote: On the other hand, if you try tasting the distilled water, you will find that it tastes flat and is not as refreshing.

As Blackspinner says, there are even a few dissolved ions in the tap water, like very small concentrations of fluoride, that are beneficial.

On the contrary. Freshly distilled water has a wonderful "no taste". I find it very refreshing. Distilled water bought from shelves at grocery store has been in those plastic bottles a very long time. The typical "flat or even bad taste" is the result of being stored in plastic. It is best to store water in glass jars. For long term storage, store in BPA-free containers so plastic chemical don't leech into the water.

Fluoride has become very controversial the past 10 years. Both Canada and France have outlawed fluoridated water. The primary reason for fluoridating water was to prevent cavities in children. Recent research shows that it doesn't even do that. The water doesn't stay in the mouth long enough to affect the teeth. All kid's toothpaste are now fluoride-free and there are warnings on adult toothpaste that contains fluoride that it is toxic to children. "Call the nearest poison center if a kid ingests it." My friend's 3-year-old ingested half a tube of fluoride toothpaste about 10 years ago. They called the pediatrician and he told her to take the boy the the nearest emergency room where they gave him syrup of ipecac to induce vomiting then fed him activated charcoal to prevent absorption of the stuff.

So does fluoride in water really serve any purpose? Most scientists say NO. Distilling is the only way to removed fluoride. Reverse Osmosis doesn't, filtering doesn't.

Gnome, as my alias implies (it refers to my profession), I have more than just a passing knowledge of water chemistry, water purification and ground water issues.

The comments that I made had to do with the dissolved minerals. Your data deals mostly with organic impurities. Whether this is relevant to a local tap water depends upon the source of the water. Lake and river water has a much better chance of containing the organic compounds you cite. Municipal well water is much less likely to contain organics but is more likely to have more minerals. Private wells is another matter completely and could have problems both ways.

As for fluorides, the controversy goes much further back than the last 10 years. Some municipal well systems contain natural fluorides, whereas surface water from lakes and rivers usually will not. I am 60 and I remember my father discussing the debate about fluorides in his home town when he was a child. His town switched from well to surface water, so they "lost" the fluorides (and the calcium carbonate) and not everyone was please about it. FWIW, he had excellent teeth and mine were a problem.

As for distillation being the only way to remove fluorides and other dissolved minerals, that is simply not correct. Reverse osmosis removes the vast majority, but not 100% of the dissolved minerals. When RO is used to desalinate seawater, the water that is produced is so clean that it has to be passed through a limestone bed to add minerals so that it does not corrode any metallic pipe downstream. Deionization treatments remove all dissolved minerals, but do not reduce the dissolved organic compounds. Stores sell both deion and distilled water because they are not the same product. Distilled water can contain traces of minerals, depending upon how hard the distillation process is pushed. So distilled MAY not be as pure with respect to dissolved minerals but is free of organics. Deion water, as it comes out of the treatment system, is as free of dissolved minerals as it is possible to produce outside of a chemical laboratory setting (where we will triple distill starting with demin water). Distillation is more expensive because you have to pay to boil the water, but it removes most of the organics - Demin is less expensive and faster to produce and contains fewer minerals, but will contain any organic compounds that were in the feed water.

Evaporated tap water is disgusting almost anywhere you live.

However, the visible stuff is usually harmless. Sometimes, it's even beneficial like minerals, etc. I would suspect iron, which is probably somewhat beneficial. You might also find it's something leaching out of the boiler and won't happen after you used it a while.

The toxic stuff is usually colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Actually, a lot of the nasty stuff will evaporate when heated and won't be left behind in the boiler.

BTW, if you're boiling chemically contaminated water, don't breathe the fumes. I remember many years ago when there was a carbon tetrachloride spill into the Ohio river, some of the towns told people the water was safe to drink as long as they boiled it first. A few days later, they said, "oh, by the way, you need to boil it outside or you'll be breathing the carbon tetrachloride."

Let us know how you feel about the distiller after you've used it for a year or so. I've always worried the tank will corrode or become difficult to clean.

archangle wrote:Evaporated tap water is disgusting almost anywhere you live.

However, the visible stuff is usually harmless. Sometimes, it's even beneficial like minerals, etc. I would suspect iron, which is probably somewhat beneficial. You might also find it's something leaching out of the boiler and won't happen after you used it a while.

The toxic stuff is usually colorless, odorless, and tasteless. Actually, a lot of the nasty stuff will evaporate when heated and won't be left behind in the boiler.

BTW, if you're boiling chemically contaminated water, don't breathe the fumes. I remember many years ago when there was a carbon tetrachloride spill into the Ohio river, some of the towns told people the water was safe to drink as long as they boiled it first. A few days later, they said, "oh, by the way, you need to boil it outside or you'll be breathing the carbon tetrachloride."

Let us know how you feel about the distiller after you've used it for a year or so. I've always worried the tank will corrode or become difficult to clean.

There are two types of minerals: organic and inorganic. Inorganics are "dead" minerals: like iron ore cannot be used by the human body but iron in a steak can be used. The human body needs organic minerals from living things like plants/animals. So eating fruits, vegetables, grains, and meat/dairy provides the organic minerals our bodies can use and they are produced by living things. Inorganic minerals that occur naturally in water, rocks, soil, mines are "mineral salts." Inorganic minerals cannot be absorbed and used by the body so the body eliminates what it can. The rest gets stored in various organs of the body. They cause gallstones, kidney stones, calcified arteries leading to heart attacks and strokes, arthritis in joints, and stored in fat cells making weight loss more difficult. Usually the amount of inorganic minerals in water is in trace amounts so doesn't cause harm. But it offers NO BENEFITS to the body as it cannot be physiologically used by human cells. So no reason to think your body will miss out if it's not in the water you're drinking. Only 1% of minerals in water is organic and 99% inorganic.

See: http://www.freedrinkingwater.com/water- ... nerals.htm

Volatile Organic Compounds (VOC) are a serious concern for water purification methods, especially distillers. These are seriously toxic, causing cancer, neurological diseases, birth defects, miscarriages etc. VOCs vaporize at a lower temperature than water. So they will leave the boiler BEFORE water. That's why distillers use a postdistillation carbon filter to trap VOCs before they go into the distilled water carafe.

I have chatted with quite a few users of home countertop distillers. Many have been using theirs 8-10 years now without a problem. The boiler tank and ceiling is high grade stainless steel so it won't leach anything into the water. Cleaning the boiler after EVERY use prevents any corrosion or build up. I just put about a half cup of half white vinegar/half tap water into boiler to soak for 5-10 minutes. Then scrub with a No-Scratch Scotch-Brite and rinse thoroughly. If buildup gets hard to remove, you just use a descaler.

Gnome, although there is some truth to your comment about the body's use of organic vs. inorganic mineral sources, it is not that black and white. The first choice for the form of iron supplement provided to people with anemia and those being treated for RLS is iron sulfate tablets, an inorganic source of iron. Only when this is not sufficient is an organic form of iron given by IV.

The same can be said for calcium and magnesium supplements. These are often given either as carbonates or phosphates, all of which are inorganic.

However, when it comes to the toxic heavy metals, the body does handle these differently. As an example organic mercury from contaminated fish is adsorbed more readily and excreted less quickly than inorganic mercury. Both are toxic, it is just a question of how fast they come in and out.

For cleaning the scale from a stainless steel distiller, you should soak the system with vinegar and use a scotchbrite scrubber to help the vinegar work. If it seems to be taking too long for the vinegar to dissolve the scale, heating the solution a little bit will help speed things up.

Do NOT use steel wool as an alternative to a scotchbrite pad because the steel wool will remove the protective layer from the stainless and cause pitting corrosion the stainless.

Also, avoid the use of any descaling (lime removal) product that contains hydrocholoric acid, even for short times. This acid will also produce pitting corrosion of the stainless.

Viking Gnome,

Can you kindly provide some reference for distilled water being able to dissolve calcified plaque in your arteries preventing hardening of the arteries. If this is true, it would prevent heart attacks, strokes and peripheral vascular disease, and increase longevity considerably.

Thanks,
Jason