A solar water distiller for CPs

[sarracenialover]

I know that plants such as Cephs or Helis require water that is fairly mineral-free and it can be costly to obtain pure water. Here is a link to a video where you can make your own homemade water distiller. It can make a lot in just a few hours. Plus, Helis and cephs don't require that much.

Enjoy!

[Clint]

It's really not costly. RO/distilled water is cheap but a hassle to buy at the store. RO filters are a little expensive upfront, but they pay for themselves both in cost and convenience over time (and don't use plastic jugs, so it's good for the environment!) They do waste water, but you can collect the waste water instead of wasting it and water your normal plants with it. Adding a DI unit will make it more efficient but costs go up.

After three or four hours, he got about one or two ounces (enough to water one or two three inch pots) and the water was still impure as shown by his food coloring demonstration (that surprised me!). My cheap, bare-bones RO filter gives me five gallons of water in four hours and the last time I had it checked, it was 3 ppm. I think I only paid like $120 for it on Ebay.


It's a neat idea, but not practical. It's possible if you want to use a large distiller and wait like forever and hope it's a warm day (You can use RO filters on a cool night if you want!), but it's like using a horse and buggy when you could use a car. The horse is old and has a bad back, and the buggy has a broken wheel

[rhillier]

The food colouring thing shocked me too.

I used to use distilled water for everything, including all of my indoor and outdoor CP and a very large reef aquarium. I would run the distiller's output into a plastic 40-gallon drum and then use a motorhome pump to dispense the water to either the auto top off for the aquarium or to the hoses for the plant room or the outdoor bog.

That poor thing ran 24-7 and my hydro meter spun like a hard drive.

The RO system definitely cut the costs, but over time, I noticed that my corals were declining. After lots of tests, grief and replacements, I found that the RO system was not getting all of the phosphates out and the concentration was building up in the aquarium, interfering with the corals ability to make their skeletons out of the dissolved calciums.

I added a DI unit and the problem went away.

I don't know if phosphates make a big difference to CP, but I thought I'd mention this here for anyone who might be interested.

>>> Rick <<<

[Clint]

Anything that can dissolve in water affects them if the concentration is high enough. You're supposed to keep tabs on your RO filter to know when to replace it so things like that don't happen lol. I should test mine.. but leaving soon so there's no point in it even if it needs it.

[polywer2345]

So can it work for cp's or not?

[williamg]

With the right design it should work, i have built and used a small one, but now being winter, it doesn't work (duh!). But it really depends on the design.

[gardenofeden]

I have used one before but unless you are in a warm climate you will not get much volume of water, you are talking only about a litre max from a small still even on the hottest of summer days. For that small volume it is probably not cost effective and you would be better off buying your water. On a larger scale, harvesting rainwater gives you huge volumes of free water, otherwise an RO unit is the way to go....

[williamg]

Yeh, it worked for me because i only have about 4 plants in a tank so I only need to really water them maybe every4 or 5 days.

[David Ahrens]

This is quite interesting. I have known about solar water distillers for a number of years, there used to be someone who advertised to sell the plans in Exchange and Mart. The main problem seems to be the quantity of water that it will produce.
I get my rainwater from a friend when he has enough, but in the middle of the summer, I use an Ecowater distiller. This produces a gallon on each cycle, more than enough for my collection of CP's and orchids. They do use a bit of electricity though.

[rhillier]

To say that distillers use a bit of electricity is a bit of an understatement

I used to use distilled water for my indoor and outdoor CP, orchids, and two large marine tanks, as well as for drinking water. That, combined with lots of metal halide lighting made my hydro meter spin faster than my hard drive!

I have since switched to RODI water and am saving quite a bit.