Dehumidifier as a water source?

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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?
 
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.
 
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
 
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.
 
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 :)
 
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.
 
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.
 
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 :)
 
well go for it ,, but know full well its just for fun
there is no money to be saved here and the water will not be pure in anyway
it will be full of stuff and taste like a cross between how your bathroom and kitchen smells.
any chem in the air that will condence at the temp of the dehumidifier will be in there and that just about every cooking smell that come out of your kitchen
 
Please keep us updated on this project as it continues. I'd be interested in it. I've seen the water distillers we have in the labs and I was thinking about how I really wanted one of those for distilled water for brewing.
 
I'll probably do this when I have some time. I looked into some fish tank UV sterilizers and may use that, first of all is a proof of concept with simply running the system, filtering, boiling and tasting. Maybe sending off for analysis.

I know it would be simpler to pick up 5-10 gallons of RO water on my way home from work in a couple carboys (still need to buy those...) but hey, its fun.

Tonight... I get the electrical working in the shop :) Thanks for everyone's thoughts!
 
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?

actually depending on where you live, you could get several gallons a day pulled out of the air. I have to dump the 1.5 gallon reservoir twice per day on my de-hum.

Collect it, treat it, and then keep it sealed in a big jug...like a better bottle that's been sanitized first. it'll be fine as long as its filtered properly.
 
STOP NO DONT BAD!!!!!!!!

store bought humidifiers will dissolve a lot of copper from the system into the water. i don't know how this is any different than using a copper IC or even a copper boil kettle, but i used some humidifier water to water some house plants; oooops! the copper built up over time and caused an irreversible copper toxicity in the plants. i don't know if the same could happen in a human, but this was my experience and i just wanted to share that before you go plowing ahead. i'd say do some more research first.
 
Wow I've read all over the place that it is fine to water plants with it. I don't even know how any of the water on mine would come into contact with copper (due to the coils all being aluminum). I'll keep looking into it, but I have researched quite a bit so far.
 
you better hope its not lead solder on the joints ,, the coils should be copper ,the fins are aluminum
it very well could be as it was not sold for drinking water
 
The one concern I would have is that legionella bacteria has been known to grow on the chiller coils of large HVAC units esp if they are constantly wet. There have been news reports of several outbreaks of legionnaires disease here in Canada due to this effect. Just be careful and boil well before tasting.
 
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