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Steve Campbell
05-22-2007, 9:20 AM
Hi guys;
Just a quick question about distilled water. Is the water that I get out of my dehumidifier what you would consider to be distilled. Just wanted to know if there are any uses for it. Thanks in advance.

Steve

David G Baker
05-22-2007, 9:46 AM
I doubt that it is distilled because distilled water is generally from steam that rises from boiling water and condenses out as distilled water with most of the impurities gone.
Water from a dehumidifier will have all of the products floating around in the air. A dehumidifier uses cold instead of heat to remove moisture from the air.
I could be wrong but it makes sense to me.

Glenn Clabo
05-22-2007, 10:26 AM
David is right...What you have is the air humidity (vapor) condensed to water. You can use it to water plants...cool hot metals...but wouldn't drink it.

Removed wrong statement...to be more exact...what Lee said...

Lee Schierer
05-22-2007, 12:47 PM
Water vapor contains no impurities. What comes out of your dehumidifier would be considered distilled water. However, since there is a fan to blow the air across the cooling coils, the cooling coils are wet, there is a high probability that airborne dust will also accumulate in the water, not to mention mold spores and other things you wouldn't find in commercially available distilled water and probably wouldn't want anywhere you would desire to use distilled water.

David Epperson
05-22-2007, 1:10 PM
In a closed clean room, well filtered clean air, put a pot of boiling water on one end of the room and your dehumidifier on the other and then yes what you end up with is distilled water. Under "normal" day to day collections of the dehumidifier the water will contain a fairly high percentage of mold spores, pet dander, and everything else that a HEPA filter would filter out but instead gets stuck to the wet coils and collected with the water.

Steve Campbell
05-22-2007, 5:19 PM
Thanks guys, That's kind of what I thought. My dehumidifier in in my basement shop so I would surely think there may be a little dust in it. I had not thought about mold spores but that makes sense. I really don't have any use for dist. water but was just wondering and knew this was a good place to find out.
Thanks again Steve

Joe Pelonio
05-22-2007, 5:33 PM
The biggest difference is that distilled water is boiled, so the steam that condenses is sterlized. With a humidifier it's condesnsed from the air which is not pure.