CVS Distilled Water Smelly?

I normally get whatever distilled water is on sale. A few times now, when getting down to the last quarter of the jug of CVS distilled water, it smells FUNKY!

This does not happen with other brands. Anyone have this experience?

Nope...usually get distilled water at CVS or Safeway. No smell, ever. If distilled water smelled, I wouldn't use it.

I think the stores have a certain funk; even the new ones.

Never happened to me; I buy my distilled water from either Walmart or my local Winn Dixie. I also check the expiration date on the bottle when I purchase it but both stores; especially Walmart sells so much of it; smell has never been an issue. I go through a gallon of the stuff every 10 days; sometimes less depending on what I have my humidifier set on. If that water from CVS keeps smelling I'd start buying my distilled water from another source.


Stevoreno_55
MS Gulf Coast
05/25/14

So that's what it is. I've been smelling something funny lately and I kept changing masks, then washed all the hoses and still the smell. Must be the new gallon of distilled water. I never would've guessed

http://mypurewater.com/blog/2011/02/14/ ... -the-same/


Edit: In reviewing this a second time, I realized it was a "commercial" of sorts. Still interesting tho...

Any idea what it smells like? Chemicals, plastic, fish, rot, etc.

It smells like mildewy funk.

That was it! I opened a new gallon of distilled water last night and woohoo, no smell. Thanks everyone.
FYI - my distilled water is from Costco - but this is the first time this has happened.

Sometimes commercial distilled water is not sterile, even though steam distillation does sterilize.
Simply boiling the water on top of the stove will kill most nasty things in it.

chunkyfrog wrote:Sometimes commercial distilled water is not sterile, even though steam distillation does sterilize.
Simply boiling the water on top of the stove will kill most nasty things in it.

It's not sterile once you put it in your water tank. Doubly so once you've turned on the CPAP and blown room air across it. The filters on CPAP aren't really high level bacterial filters, although they will probably remove some bacteria and lots of bacteria laden dust.

Of course, it would be bad if the distiled water came with a high concentration of bacteria, or with some nasty strain of bacteria not found in your room air.

Just for clarification, my post was referring to the smell of the water in the bottle itself, not once it's in the humidifier.

The water is distilled when the bottle is opened. However, it becomes contaminated by the ambient air once the cap has been removed.

All sorts of things are in the ambient air including micro-organisms. If you're using this in your bedroom with the windows opened, whatever is in the air outside comes into your bedroom.

It isn't that the distilled water has gone bad on its own or because something was wrong at the bottling plant.

It's that it is no longer in its pure state because it is not being protected from contamination. Pollen etc. has contaminated it from the bottle being repeatedly uncapped and recapped.

Some of these organisms will replicate on their own and some will be consumed so what is there can proliferate.

By the time a user gets the bottom of the bottle, the organisms have had time to replicate.

You might want to take a look at the alternative of installing a reverse osmosis filter system in you kitchen and stop paying for having to lug heavy bottles around, and not have a good place to store it....

Consider it because:

1) It's cheap (you can buy them at Home Depot and other places) about $150 to $250 http://www.homedepot.com/p/GE-Reverse-Osmosis-Filtration-System-GXRM10RBL/202073853
and you can install it yourself if you want.

2) it's very effective, and is actually slightly purer than distilled water (not by much, about 1 ppm less impurities).

3) It's convenient (no trekking to the store in the snow - or even in the heat! )

4) It's there when you need it, in the amount you need. No ongoing cost as it uses your house "TAP" water which it then purifies except to replace the filters every 6 months which are not very expensive.

5) No more heavy bottles of water to carry around or store.

6) No more worry about minerals, dissolved solids, chlorine, fluoride, etc.... (even though it's been shown all that can, in the proper amounts, be good for you - but let's don't get into that debate on this forum!).

7) If you worry about what's in your drinking/cooking water this mostly solves that problem.

and so on..... the down side is that it does take up space in you kitchen sink cabinet (although it could be installed in a basement below the kitchen if it were an heated area), and you do have to change the filters once or twice a year, depending on use.

The bottom line is that either Distilled, Tap or Purified water can work... each one has it's pluses and minuses. - "You pays your money and you takes your choice" as they say.

Paul (no, I don't work for Home Depot and I don't sell RO filter systems, though I used to sell them before I retired )

CPAPER Paul wrote:You might want to take a look at the alternative of installing a reverse osmosis filter system in you kitchen and stop paying for having to lug heavy bottles around, and not have a good place to store it....
...
2) it's very effective, and is actually slightly purer than distilled water (not by much, about 1 ppm less impurities).
....

No. Reverse osmosis only filters out certain contaminants. It won't necessarily filter out all volatile compounds.

It only claims 92.4% removal of total dissolved solids and that's with a new membrane.

It probably removes most of the minerals that are of concern in terms of gunking up the water tank. It probably removes a lot of the things that can be "germ food," but I'm not sure about the volatile contaminants.

CPAPER Paul wrote: 4) It's there when you need it, in the amount you need. No ongoing cost as it uses your house "TAP" water which it then purifies except to replace the filters every 6 months which are not very expensive.

You have to replace the prefilter and postfilter every 6 months. $88 or so per year for just those filters. It doesn't say how often you have to replace the $50 osmosis membrane. You have to replace the battery every 6 months.

You need "food grade silicone grease" when you replace the filters.

You need to add bleach and go through a sanitization process when you replace the filters, including running the water for 20 minutes.

You need to do a "water test" on a "periodic" basis to see if the osmosis membrane needs replacing. There is no indication of how often you need to test, and what the cost is. Apparently, if you don't test, you don't know how well the membrane is still working.

It wastes 10 gallons of water for every gallon of water delivered.

So, $150 initial cost. Install cost or your own labor. $88 a year for filters. $50 for osmosis membrane whenever you have to replace that. Let's be conservative and guess at once per year. That's $138 per year.

Now, if that cost and effort is worth it for you for general use drinking water, that's fine, but seems like an awful high cost and effort just for CPAP water.