CPAPtalk.com

This treehugger cringes every time she has to buy another plastic bottle. I had wondered about reusing
the bottles in those "purified water" kiosks in the water aisle, but i have a sneaking suspicion that that
water is definitely not distilled. Any ideas on how to refill and save the planet?

Why isn't distalled water an option? I buy mine at Wal-Mart which costs 72 cents a gallon.

save a plastic tree wrote:This treehugger cringes every time she has to buy another plastic bottle. I had wondered about reusing
the bottles in those "purified water" kiosks in the water aisle, but i have a sneaking suspicion that that
water is definitely not distilled. Any ideas on how to refill and save the planet?

I like the idea of "SAVING A RUBBER/PLASTIC TREE" .... The Kiosks in all the stores I have around here use reverse-Osmosis ?? and filters to remove STUFF that would screwup your humidifier -- It's taped into the city water supply making it bacteria free / Killed with CHEMICALS -but- the process removes the chemicals....
I personally have well water and use it strait from the tap and use vinegar every couple weeks.. The water is turned into vapor before you breath it and the air is filtered?? UNLESS you leave the water in the tank for a couple days the bacteria will NOT grow over night in the tank to the point it would hurt you. If it did we would all have to live in a BUBBLE or be without any immune systems!!! SO DON'T make this medical problem worse than it is by worrying about the small stuff.

BERT
I'm sure a zillion people will jump in to say "This oldfart is FULL of It!" But I'm enjoying life one day @ a time!
LOVE the Idea of distilling but my suggestion is to put mash in and DRINK the output.....

What if you just have a good water filter and then you boil what you need in the microwave each night.
Wont that be good enough?

http://www.thefoodguys.com/solarstill.htm

http://books.google.com/books?id=PDIKAA ... &ct=result

What if you just have a good water filter and then you boil what you need in the microwave each night.

Unless it is reverse osmosis machine (which is a large and quite complex unit), a water filter is not going to remove the minerals that are what cause the problem. Unless you are boiling it to remove the chlorine (which the water filter should have already removed), boiling the water doesn't make any difference. Neither a water filter nor boiling will remove chloramine, which is what many municipalities are using instead of chlorine -- chloramine is VERY stable and difficult to remove.

Bearded_One wrote: Unless it is reverse osmosis machine (which is a large and quite complex unit), a water filter is not going to remove the minerals that are what cause the problem.

Ok, I understand that. I guess what I don't understand then what the problem really is.
If this water is safe to drink all day long , is there something that makes it un-safe in the humidifier?
My DME just told me to use either filtered or boiled water in my humidifier.
I guess I never thought anything of it until I started reading here.
I've been taking my water from my filtered drinking water and boiling it to be sure it was free of any bacteria.
My humidifier is rinsed daily and washed every 2-3 days. It looks sparkling clean. I started treatment 2 months ago.
I hope I'm doing whats right.

Dennis

Dennisla wrote: I don't understand then what the problem really is.
If this water is safe to drink all day long , is there something that makes it un-safe in the humidifier?
My humidifier...looks sparkling clean. I started treatment 2 months ago.
Dennis

Hi Dennis:

the issue is not that tap water is necessarily "unsafe"; it's that dissolved minerals in tap water crystallize and coat the inside of the unit, reducing efficiency over time.

Look in your teakettle.

Maybe you don't have a lot of minerals in your tap water to start.

Distillation makes steam, which is pure H2O vapor, and then condenses it, leaving the minerals behind in the still's boiler. When distilled water evaporates in your humidifier, it leaves behind - nothing.

If your humidifier has no scale, I don't see a problem. Anybody else?

Dennisla wrote:What if you just have a good water filter and then you boil what you need in the microwave each night.
Wont that be good enough?

[and later...]
...If this water is safe to drink all day long , is there something that makes it un-safe in the humidifier?
My DME just told me to use either filtered or boiled water in my humidifier...

It's not that it's entirely unsafe - it's just difficult to remove the residue build-up from a plastic tank with a steel plate on a regular basis without compromising the integrity of the tank. If the residue remains long enough, stuff could start growing in the residue that you won't be able to get rid of with a quick rinse. It might start to smell. Why deal with that?

Water filters like Brita and Pur are better designed for removing chlorine and some organic components found in tap water, but because the activated charcoal is generally granular and not attractive to salts, it doesn't do quite as good a job of removing them (salts). We're not talking about table salt. It's basically whatever lime or calcium salts that natively exist in your tap water. Yes boiling the water will destroy possible bacteria and evaporate chlorine too, but you're actually concentrating the salts with this method. That's worse. Take a cup of your filtered water and boil it off in a pan, carefully of course. You'll still see that white residue. That residue will be in your humidifier tank if you just let Brita-filtered water evaporate. Continually adding additional tap water will just build up more residue.

De-ionized ('reverse osmosis' or 'RO') water has no salts. Neither does distilled water. As a part of the hidden cost of purifying water, reverse osmosis and distillation both generally end up wasting considerably more water than that which is purified. At seventy four cents a gallon from Wally-Mart, water by either method probably has hidden costs that are being paid for somewhere else in the energy stream. It might be interesting to discover which is more wasteful: the energy and waste water used to create the distilled or de-ionized water, or the energy and materials used to create the plastic bottle that contains it. The cost of the plastic bottle certainly compounds to cost of the water wasted in purification methods.

Most food co-ops will have a de-ionized water tap. Most whole-foods have them too. Publix groceries often have de-ionized water taps that dispense by the gallon for a quarter. We bought four 3-gallon reusable water jugs and a water tower for dispensing at our local co-op. It's about thirty-five cents a gallon that way. We use it for cooking and drinking water. It's tastier than what comes out of the city tap and perfectly suited for use in a humidifier tank.

A really good water filter will basically be an in-home under-the-sink reverse osmosis model. Consumer Reports recently rated the Kenmore (Sears) Elite 38556 as the best with an overall score of 75 and a cost of $300, but the Whirlpool Gold WHER25 (from Lowe's) was rated 74 as a "CR best buy" with a cost of $160. You won't need to boil it then. Just remember to replace the filters when the indicator light says so. (Of course these also waste water and the dead filters as part of the process of purifying it.)


Building a hobby distillery in the US using classic 'Snuffy Smith vs. the Revenooer' methods of metal or glass containers with glass and rubber tubing over a sink with a Bunsen burner means making sure it's a gallon or less in size and only used for water. Otherwise it's illegal to use one. Of course any size sheet- or panel-style solar water condensate units are perfectly legal, but you'll need plenty of sunlight. And a bus-load of time. Prefab solar stills are available on the web, but consider researching about out-gassing of plastics. It might be good to make sure you're using BPA-free plastics. Better yet, glass.

Of the three considered purification methods (RO, classic 'Snuffy', or Solar) the solar method probably wastes the least water and has the fewest breakable or wasteful parts. If you want to go completely green, this would be the way to go. There are solar stills available on line. Your initial outlay may be more, but you won't have to buy filters every three to six months or waste nearly as much water as the classic method. It's also a lot slower.

In the end, building a cheap, safe, functional still may be a challenge. Apparently you can buy 1 gallon water stills on-line that don't waste as much water, but instead use electricity to cool the coils. It also apparently uses filters. They all look generally like this the image below, but are rebranded from the original maker in Taiwan and range from under $100 with plastic parts to almost $200 with all stainless steel parts where they count. If you go this way, buy the stainless.

Bearded_One wrote:

What if you just have a good water filter and then you boil what you need in the microwave each night.

Unless it is reverse osmosis machine (which is a large and quite complex unit), a water filter is not going to remove the minerals that are what cause the problem. Unless you are boiling it to remove the chlorine (which the water filter should have already removed), boiling the water doesn't make any difference. Neither a water filter nor boiling will remove chloramine, which is what many municipalities are using instead of chlorine -- chloramine is VERY stable and difficult to remove.

An ACTIVATED Charcoal filter will remove the CHLORINE put in by the municipalities............ The BRITA Water filter will get the CHLORINE OUT and the BIG % of the minerals <Read the label on one of their units>.................
NO NEED for the "BOILING?????"
BERT

Bert_Mathews wrote: NO NEED for the "BOILING?????"
BERT

Brita filters don't actually remove that much in the way of salts.
Of course if you have to use Brita filtered water, you don't have to boil it.
Just be sure to remove the residue from your tank on a regular basis.
Filtered water is not in itself a hazard - just the buildup of residue it can cause.

A slice of lime or lemon in a tank during the whole day-time should remove the worst of it
if you have to use brita-filtered water regularly. I'd avoid chemical lime removal products.

But why deal with the fuss when you can use distilled or RO water?

Ok... I didn't read every word of every prior post on this thread, but I'm posting anyway.

With the cost of utilities (LP gas, natural gas, heating oil, electricity etc) up more than 50-percent on average across the country, and set to rise even higher in coming years, it seems foolish to distill water in small batches for home use. That is, unless you have no way to get to a store that sells it in bulk - meaning cases of 3-gallons or more. And, you're desperate to avoid using tap water.

My last purchase of distilled water was from Wal-Mart, and I bought several more backup 3-gallon cases that cost me $3.14 per case, tax included. The trip was a combined shopping trip and not a special run-out to get distilled water trip. I consider that the travel to and from the store for distilled water was half of the $3.00 for gasoline for that combined trip.

So, without getting picky and factoring in costs of oil changes, tire wear, car insurance, costs of bathing, shaving and wearing clean clothing etc... the cost per gallon to me for those 6-gallons of distilled water was about $1.30 per gallon. And they were obtained on a two-stop shopping trip for groceries.

At $1.30 per gallon, and considering the cost of a nice, durable and long-lasting distiller, along with the costs of operating it, I'll buy gallons of distilled water until I can not obtain it for less than $2.00 per gallon.

I should add - I rarely set my humidifier beyond number 2, and usually run it on a setting of 1, or as a passover unit. So, I don't use much water per night from the small tank in the Respironics BIPAP. For someone who uses 10 to 16-ounces of distilled water per night.... a distiller might pay itself off reasonably fast and actually save them some money at todays' costs.

Of course, I'm prejudiced on this matter.... a small distiller unit doesn't have enough buttons and controls to make it fun and challenging to use.

Nodzy

Twwo whole pages of replies, many reflecting a lack of knowledge of the issue.

Still the best answer:

Use distilled water only.

It is not a matter of sterility, simply a matter of salts being precipitated out and formiong on tank.
No problem at all with bacter is aor bugs. They CANNOT be spread from tank.
Distilled water contains NO dissolved minerals. RO and filtered can though.
This brings out a lot of ignorance though.

But then, in an age when so many people insist on bottled water instead of tap water, who can be surprised.

Tap water better than bottled water except in a very small pct of places with bad tasting water.

But so many feel so safer with bottled water.

No law against being stupid.

tomjax wrote:Tap water better than bottled water except in a very small pct of places with bad tasting water.

But so many feel so safer with bottled water.

No law against being stupid.

Point taken that distilled water is the least likely to contain contaminants - but even distilled water can contain organics that have the same boiling point as water or lower, so there's no absolutely perfect solution. For all intents and purposes, RO and distilled give about the same results: 99.99% pure water.

The only places I've lived or visited where the tap water actually tasted good was New York City and Freehold, New Jersey a very long time ago. (Well water doesn't count.)

Down with plastic-bottled water. Water shouldn't cost more than gas. Bottling it makes that happen. It also fills roadsides and landfills with waste plastic. But I am a fan of distilled or RO water in bulk or created at home.

As to the safety of tap water: it is certainly free of bacteria. Short-term you can get away with drinking it. However, chlorine bonds with the now-inert substances it killed, forming chemicals that are known carcinogens. Bladder, colon cancer, heart disease and birth defects have all been linked to continued use of chlorinated tap water. Now you want to get started on chloramine? It's freakin toxic. Think about it - you're told never to mix chlorine and ammonia at home. Never use them together because the resultant gas can kill you while you clean, especially in a closed, unvented bathroom. Water treated with chloramine or chlorine can't be put into fish tanks without prior dechlorination because it kills fish. Now you want to put that in your body? No thanks.

My 2 cents.

I used to keep home aquariums; chloramine is extremely difficult to remove from water and as was said, chloramine is toxic to fish. Even reverse osmosis (RO) does not remove chloramine.