My wife has a severe allergy to something in tap water. Distilled water is all she can drink. We have a pretty industrial filter setup on the house, and while she still gets hives from showering, it’s not a hospital trip like it used to be. This shows us though, that no amount of filtering works. But distilling sure does.
So… we go through a lot of bottled distilled water. I’ve been looking around at some countertop water distillers. They’re around $150-250, and say they take 4-6 hours to process a gallon.
What is something like this going to do to my electic bill, if I process 2 gallons a day 7 days a week? Should I opt for one of the more expensive multi-gallon capacity units? They’re hella expensive compared to the coffee-maker sized ones. What’s the lifespan of these things? I don’t want to drop a couple hundred on something that won’t survive the work load of daily use.
This really depends on the rating (in watts) of the distiller while it’s in use. Try to find that tidbit of info and then you can calculate what your bill will look like.
Yeah, I’m wondering if a 1 gallon unit actually processes a full gallon or not. I mean, it wouldn’t run until it was dead empty or it’d overstress the device wouldn’t you think?
And yeah, once I decide on a unit to really investigate, calculating KW hours and multiplying by my electric rate isn’t difficult.
WTF is the Peter Sellers image about? Precious bodily fluids being stolen by the commies?
I’d think any machine capable would only use its power for as long as there is water. “Stress” doesn’t seem like it’d be part of the equation. Distilled water is just boiled and then the steam is collected and you get pure mineral-free water.
Quick google search shows somewhere between 2-3 kwh/gallon. Amazingly, large ones do it for 0.02 kwh/gallon which is lower than the amount of energy to heat the water from 20C to 100C, IDK exactly how they do that. I guess they use the steam to heat the next bunch of water somewhat.
Looks like you could get a setup where all of your house water comes from distilling for not too much money.
Do you really need distilled? You can get a reverse osmosis deionization system for that kind of money that will give you 75 gallons a day of 99% pure water using only water pressure. They do waste alot of water though.
Now, I don’t want to denigrate or minimize the potential seriousness of this condition, but from what you’ve written, I have my skeptic antennae buzzing faster than a hummingbird’s wings. She’s allergic enough to get skin hives from something in a North American water supply, but you haven’t isolated what it is yet? That just doesn’t sound right, and I want to specifically state that I’m curious about what I’m not understanding, not being all “nuh-uh” internet dick about it. The general test for allergies goes from the skin inward, and “the entire water supply” would preclude her from eating any outside food or drink whatsoever, as well as suggesting that whatever it is that she’s allergic to is prevalenet enough to be in a vast majority of things. Have you eliminated skin conditions per se rather than external irritants?
I would like to second the RO and allergy testing sentiments.
The question about how long the distiller will last is greatly dependent on your water hardness. If you have hard water those dissolved mineral salts (scale) are going to foul the boiler tank and/or heating element relatively quickly. You can mitigate this by periodically using an acid (vinegar, CLR, Lime-a-way, etc…) to clean them, but its something to keep in mind.
I am confused about needing distilled instead of RO. The water purity difference between RO and distilled is very small, although distilled water will contain fewer dissolved gases (i.e., CO2 and O2). I am not sure how much you know about RO so I’ll put a mini-primer at the end of my post for you to read or skip. The cost of RO is substantially less than distallation.
I hope this helps you and I haven’t muddied the water further. qa.org and nsf.org may be of some help too.
Primer: Many people misunderstand RO as being straight size exclusion filtration. There are filters upstream from the actual RO membrane to reduce membrane fouling. But, the actual RO mechanism in the membrane is not filtration even though it is commonly (incorrectly) referred to as filtration. The exit stream you drink from, the permeate, actually dissolves in the selectively permeable membrane on its way to the tap. The other exit stream (retentate) goes down the drain.
She has been tested for everything the allergist can test for, which was foods, mold, human hair, dust, etc. and reacted within normal ranges to it all. They said they couldn’t test things like chlorine, chemicals, metals, etc. which is in the range of stuff I think it is.
We went to Duke university, to their rhumatology department, where she had extensive blood work and skin biopsy done of the lesions. They couldn’t turn up anything. Completely negative on all autoimmune diseases (It’s never Lupus.)
They cannot understand why if it’s hives it doesn’t respond to mass doses of steroids or antihistamines. But it doesn’t. Claratin once a day keeps her normal itchy sensations manageable though - but if she has a flare up of urticaria and angioadema it’s going to stay around for a week.
She owned a hair salon, and suddenly her fingers would turn bright red, swell to double size, and then the palms of her hands, then it progressed up her arms. Had to give up the salon completely, because she couldn’t get her hands wet at work. Then it left her hands, went to her feet and she couldn’t walk. This lasted 3-4 days at first, would be gone 4-6 months, and repeat. After 2 years of that, it became every 6 months, full body swelling and very pronounced rash. Each time, we’d be in the emergency room, do a trip to the allergist and dermatologist the next day, call the rhumatologist to biopsy it, etc.
Nobody could figure out what the hell this was. I found out from quizzing the water board here exactly what chemicals they add to the water supply. Not only chlorine but also ammonia and some other goodies. I put a cannister filter system on the house and instead of angry raised welts she just gets a little pink on her shoulders and back now, and the hospital trip massive flare-ups are gone.
We thought it could be chlorination, flouride, ammonia, or god knows what. But, she found out when she tried to shower at her aunt’s house back in Ohio that well water also does it. Her water has a sulfery smell about it, so maybe that’s something. The only way she can bathe when we are away from home on a trip is with bottled water - which you can guess is inconvenient as shit.
She can drink canned soda. Can’t drink anything made with water at restaurants, like coffee, tea, etc. The last time she had a massive flareup, she was at the doctors, and after she gave a sample she had a brain fart and washed her hands in their sink. Realized immediately what she was doing, and stopped. But, she had “sausage fingers” before she made it out their door and had to call me to come get her because she couldn’t hold the steering wheel of her car.
I’m tens of thousands of dollars of medical tests into this bullshit, so if you have any ideas what it is, enlighten me.
She says the it feels like a combo of sunburn ache and mosquito bite itch everywhere there’s a red patch - which is about everywhere. This can last up to 2 weeks. So, you go through that a couple times and believe me, you DO NOT risk water contact with unknown supplies. She’s quite paranoid about it, with good reason.
You say you have a canister filtration system and that improves things somewhat. Most canister house filtration system only remove particulates. Is one of those canisters packed with activated carbon/charcoal? The carbon packed bed would absorb the chemical contaminants, but if you are using it for your whole house I would imagine you go through filter media like mad.
Get the water analyzed, the tap water, filtered water, and the well water. See what’s common between them.
You’ll find dissolved metals and minerals in all but the concentrations might tell you something. Then buy some of those metals and minerals and do your own allergy test.
Ammonia and chlorine shouldn’t be in the well water unless it’s contaminated or they use it in their filtration system, which is possible.
I bought a high end home one (PSI-020B-DI-GM) from Peter at psi filters. 4 stage 600l/d with selectable deionized water filter. Disolves marine salt (which can be picky about the amount of phosphates, silicates, chloramine, etc, in the water) like nothing else.
If you want to go for something like this just be aware the replacement cartridges aren’t cheap (80-90% of the unit cost) and you’re going to need them every 12-18 months.
Also, generally you’re not going to be using this on demand, it’s better and less hassle to make a whole bunch up and store it. It’s not like it really goes off.
I’ve asked at the university, and asked the water department if there was a means to do this. I want to take a filtered sample, and an unfiltered sample, and have a lab tell me what got filtered out. Everybody tells me that I have to name a particular item and say “how much X is in this?” I can’t just say “tell me what’s in here in what ppm for sample A and B” it seems. If that’s doable, tell me who can do it.
For some reason that just seems wrong. Sure there is no one blanket test that well tell you whats in it but I’m sure that there are certain things you expect to see in water. It might be 13 or more separate tests for each sample but I’m sure there are common levels that they expect to see.
Does she get a reaction in river water? Ocean water? Rain? How about half a country away? There’s got to be expected variations and the severity of her reaction in each case would tell you something I’d think.
Thats just seems to me to be an academic over complicating things. Run a test for every common mineral and metal. If those don’t work research and find out what chemicals might be present. Systematically go through everything. Test her with water they’ve purified and added that item to at the concentrations you find if you suspect something. Gods it may take forever if no one can think of a better methodology but you can at least brute force it.
Maybe I’m wrong, maybe it is an intractable problem.
As for testing, I know farmers can take their well water and get it analyzed and get told exactly whats in it at what concentrations. It’ll just be the common stuff, and maybe some chemicals that they’ll test for in case somethings leaked into their water table but they’ll tell you what they’ll test for. Use them as a starting point if no one else can help you.
Soap and stuff is ruled out. Hot/cold also makes no difference. Hot water makes your pores open up and absorb things more, but she still reacts to cold water too.
I’ve wanted to test various water sources and stuff, but it’s tough getting her to stick her hand in water just to see if it erupts or not… it’s like “pull this pin and see if the grenade works or not” to her.
I’m going to investigate the “test my well water” route for leads to labs.
