conpewter

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Ok so I've been muddling with water profiles, brewing salts, ideal profiles etc for a little while, and realizing that I will need to dilute my tap water with some distilled/RO water (Or start off with distilled/RO water and build the water I want with salts)

I also just installed a vent-free heater in my detatched garage/shop that makes it a bit too humid in there. I have an extra dehumidifier that I'm going to put out there (as soon as I get the electric hooked up...) and came to the thought of using that water for brewing.

I figure that it is basically distilled water, but may have some VOCs and dust in it. So I'd set up a activated carbon filter, with a pretty small micron rating (Could do this for $20-30 unlike the $100 RO system) and I'm not too worried about bacteria since I'll be boiling all of it anyway.

There is some precident to this in commercial machines now available that you can put in your home or office and have distilled water without any water hookups or water bottles.

Air2Water - pure water, water machine, water from air, quality water, drinking water, water system

Thoughts?

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Yuri_Rage

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I've seen a lot of dehumidifier water that I definitely would not want to drink! However, with a little filtration, I suppose there is some merit to the idea. Give it a taste after filtration. If it tastes like flat nothing, then you've probably achieved your goal.

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Clayton

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i would think it would be really dirty , full of spores, pollen, dust, and human dander ewww ,, i know here at walmart i can distilled or spring water at walmart for 60cent a gal

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Bigsnake

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Distilled water at the store is like $1 a gallon. There's actually potential for big savings in a couple years of brewing with a setup like that one. I'd just want to make sure the filtration was good to get anything out of the air. Some dehumidifier water is pretty gross.

That system would also probably work pretty good here. There's plenty enough water in the air.

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conpewter

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I agree that there is a lot of water I've seen in my dehumidifier that I would not drink, on the other hand if I cleaned the coil before I started, put a good furnace filter on the dehumidifier (To keep any air particulate even getting to the coils) then ran it through a sediment filter and carbon block I think it would be pretty pure.

Filtration is always the key, currently they are installing a filtration system on the space station to recycle urine and other fluids into drinkable water (I hope that is an RO system...). I'm not concerned with particulate because I'll have a couple filters for those, and carbon block takes out a lot of other harmful things (lead, VOCs etc) and then boiling will kill any bacteria.

I'm not sure if I'll try this or not, at the moment it is just an interesting concept

__________________
"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." - V

Primary: Nothin
Secondary: Shady Lord RIS, Water to Barleywine, Pumpkin wine, burnt mead
Kegged: Crappy infected mild
Bottles: Apfelwein, 999 Barleywine, Oatmeal Stout, Robust Porter, Robust smoked porter, Simcoe Smash

Gonefishing

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For the cost of it, why not try it?

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Grinder12000

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It's just tile the water that comes from your furnace - it is pure until it touches something. So in theory - it is pure water but you have to get it before it touchs anything.

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conpewter

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My plan is to do this out in my garage that has a vent-free gas heater just installed (and now I have moisture issues out there). I'll put the dehumidifier right next to the heater and as mentioned put a filter on it to catch dust etc. That would all be caught by the filters later but better safe than sorry.

I'm going to do taste tests after running it through the whole system, but not sure of how to get really good data on how pure the water is. If I come up with some extra cash I'll send it in to Ward Lab for the full household water test.

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"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." - V

Primary: Nothin
Secondary: Shady Lord RIS, Water to Barleywine, Pumpkin wine, burnt mead
Kegged: Crappy infected mild
Bottles: Apfelwein, 999 Barleywine, Oatmeal Stout, Robust Porter, Robust smoked porter, Simcoe Smash

giligson

Recipes 

It really does seem like a lot of work for a very little result - have you considered the volume collected and the time that this would take? How would you keep your storage water clean while you collected over time?

Why not just distill your own water.
Waterwise 9000 Distiller at LivingRight.com

or for the do it yourselfer:
Building a World Class Home Distillation Apparatus - Home Page

just use it for water rather than booze

conpewter

Recipes 

I guess I want to build my own from a dehumidifier because of several reasons.

#1 I love building contraptions
#2 I'm cheap, I don't want to spend $300 on a 1 gallon water distiller, and I don't want the hassle of stopping by the store to get distilled water (though the hassle is not a big factor.)
#3 Dehumidifying fixes and issue I'm having anyway.

I've thought about the water storage and my current plan is to pipe directly from the dehumidifier to a 5 gallon water bottle (#1 if I can find it). The dehumidifier will be sitting up on a workbench anyway.

I'm thinking of putting some chlorine in the water to keep any microbes at bay (though there shouldn't be anything in there to eat anyway..) and when I filter it from the bottle through a sediment and carbon block filter it will filter out the chlorine. That or Ill just keep a UV light next to the carboy all the time.

BTW #1 is the biggest reason, I always have some weird project going on

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"People should not be afraid of their governments. Governments should be afraid of their people." - V

Primary: Nothin
Secondary: Shady Lord RIS, Water to Barleywine, Pumpkin wine, burnt mead
Kegged: Crappy infected mild
Bottles: Apfelwein, 999 Barleywine, Oatmeal Stout, Robust Porter, Robust smoked porter, Simcoe Smash