diy solar

diy solar

Drinking water from thin air

If you still think this is a good idea, try collecting the water condensate that comes out of your refrigerator or air conditioner and see how clean it is....

Dust and fluff, pollution, airborne bacteria, dead insects, you get it all, as well as some water.
Great for watering plants, or flushing the toilet, and maybe scrubbing floors. But its definitely not drinkable.

Exactly the same problem as recovered rainwater runoff from a roof.
And you can add dead leaves, bird crap, and feathers to all of the above as well for roof water.
 
If you still think this is a good idea, try collecting the water condensate that comes out of your refrigerator or air conditioner and see how clean it is....

Dust and fluff, pollution, airborne bacteria, dead insects, you get it all, as well as some water.
Great for watering plants, or flushing the toilet, and maybe scrubbing floors. But its definitely not drinkable.

Exactly the same problem as recovered rainwater runoff from a roof.
And you can add dead leaves, bird crap, and feathers to all of the above as well for roof water.
I cannot agree with you here, what you say just sounds like hearsay or dirty habits! ;)

Drinking rain water from rooves is perfectly acceptable if you follow some basic hygiene and common sense.

As an experiment I just tested the collected condensation runoff from the fridge and the water has an exceptionally clean 12ppm TDS value.

More importantly, The rainwater collected from our clay tile roof, which is mesh filtered en-route from the roof for larger particles, and stored in an ancient 12,000 litre underground cistern, gives a value of 52ppm TDS. After a short settling period after rainfall, we fill glass gallon demijohns with this water as required and leave them in full sunshine (it is very sunny here) for some UV treatment. This is our daily drinking and cooking water and we are a very healthy family of five, no friends have ever complained about our crystal clear water.
So rain water is MOST DEFINITELY DRINKABLE, with no worms, no infection, no diarrhoea, no mineral deficiencies, no feathers (!)

These are values that can also be expected of a reverse osmosis drinking water treatment. Compare that to many brands of plastic-bottled supermarket 'drinking water' which actually more resembles 'tap water' having considerably higher TDS values.


Thanks!
 
It must be great to live in an area where your clay tile roof collects zero dust or pollen, and there are no birds or flying insects or other pests like squirrels or possums to pee and crap on your roof. Its pretty open around here, its teeming with bird life, any low spot in the guttering breeds mosquitoes in certain months.

Definitely agree though, something like a carbon filter, or reverse osmosis, or even distillation can solve a lot of the worst problems.
For long term storage of water, its usually recommended that a cool underground light proof location is best.
Ultraviolet is good, but raised temperature tends to multiply any pathogens, and drives out the dissolved gasses.

Even rainwater that has fallen through a few thousand feet of industrial smog is polluted even before it hits the ground.
I guess it all depends on your location. A direct steady ocean breeze would be about as clean as it gets.
 
I agree that 'raw water' has risks, but there are perfectly OK solutions to purify water.

- Berkeys are one - low-tech and work very well to make safe drinking water out of condenser water or rainharvest water or other water.
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- Our rain harvest system uses - roof -> first-flush -> 400micron sock -> 20micron -> 5micron -> Class A UV is perfectly safe for house level 3000g-per-month water!
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set up berkey filter for first time on kitchen counter this week. filled from tap. improves the subjective character/taste of the water.

i've got a modded dorm fridge with additional insulation (not on the parts that dissipate heat)

berkey seems good enough to include as at least one stage of filtering condensed water.

filtering the AIR before condensing is very important to me. IQair filter is what i plan to use to remove particles from the air.

atmospheric water generation is cool, but not the most efficient, but does absolutely work.

cheers for all the info!
 
Hello
I am quite new here, but we have been succesfully relying on our family's small solar electric system for over a decade now, which I installed.

I bought a waeco solar fridge kit, constructed an insulated chest around it but never really perfected it, so presently it sits redundant...

My interest here is repurposing this 12V refrigerator's working parts to generate drinking water.
As one knows, when a refrigerator's door is accidentally left ajar, the humidity in the atmosphere covers the cold produce with water through condensation.
I wish to employ this side effect to generate clean drinking water.

Has anybody had experience with such a system?
I hope to start to experiment soon and post my results.
Cheers, did you ever get a system built? I too am looking to build an AWG to augment our showering and dish washing capability. Like you, consider it a fun project to undertake. We do a lot of off grid boondocking and I have excess solar power to spare.
 

It's not practical in most situations but it's possible with enough excess solar. Helps if you're a youtuber and you get the unit for free too.
Agree about practicality. The specs for Tsunami 500 say 15-25a @ 240v for 2.5g / hour. That's ~100kwh for 24hrs for 50gal kind of thing. My 14kwh PV array maxes out at 90kwh/day in spring/summer and we use 50-75gal per day in our household.

But another big thing that jumped out at me is that they have the filter/UV upstream of the tank on the Tsunami unit itself instead of downstream of the tank. This means you can't just add water to the tank to supplement - a missed opportunity in my view.

I run an 18,000g/year Rainharvest system and part of the idea is I could dump water into the tanks directly if I don't have enough rain and the filters/UV would take care of it. Also, in general, rain capture -> tanks is pretty straight-forward (cheap compared to Tsunami) if you have any rain at all + surface area to catch it.
 
I have been using some of these for quite some time:

I'm using it as a dehumidifier in a windowless shower, and in a small outdoor shed.

They are peltier based, and draw about 30w.
The one in the shower makes a full tank (half a liter) in about a week.
The one in the shed makes less, but it's not permanently on (connected to a solar panel, so it runs only a few hours a day).

I don't drink the water they make (needs a filtration system to get rid of bacteria) but I do store the water for some household use (washing floors/car/etc...).
 
I watch that Youtube channel and believe they got a discount on the unit. Clearly they only need to harvest water in summer. I seem to recall that they had a rain catchment system also.
 
I cannot agree with you here, what you say just sounds like hearsay or dirty habits! ;)

Then you haven't done much research on the hazards of collecting condensation.

Condensation is not equivalent to rainwater harvesting. With rainwater harvesting, the vast majority of the contaminants are washed away in the initial rain and can be isolated with first flush diverter. The rest of the rainwater is as clean as the rain itself.

The rate of formation of condensation is much closer to the rate of formation of contamination and bacterial growth. Yes, you can filter and disinfect downstream, but it's much more of a necessity than with rainwater collection.

Your TDS tester does not measure bacteria or anything present that's not conductive. Low TDS does not equal safe.
 
Then you haven't done much research on the hazards of collecting condensation.

Condensation is not equivalent to rainwater harvesting. With rainwater harvesting, the vast majority of the contaminants are washed away in the initial rain and can be isolated with first flush diverter. The rest of the rainwater is as clean as the rain itself.
Yes sir, we use a 300gal 1st flush and after that, the rain water is fine to go thru a 20micron -> 5micron -> Class A UV. When we reach the stagnant (no rain for 3-4 months) part of the year we use a touch of chlorine in the tanks after a couple months of stagnation - it's easy/safe. We're near the end of our 4th year (~70,000gal of use) and its been a really pleasant surprise at the quality and ease of using rain water once it's setup. As a bonus it tastes just a little different than city water - and we like it.

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For emergency drinking water in the event of a SHTF scenario, I have a small distiller and a pool with 33k gallons as a last resort. For most people, a well with backup power should be enough. If you're in the mountains, rainwater collection should be doable with proper filtration. That Tsunami unit is like $30k to purchase and uses a lot of power.
 
For emergency drinking water in the event of a SHTF scenario, I have a small distiller and a pool with 33k gallons as a last resort. For most people, a well with backup power should be enough. If you're in the mountains, rainwater collection should be doable with proper filtration. That Tsunami unit is like $30k to purchase and uses a lot of power.
And as 'dire emergency' we have 2 x de-humidifiers. One is traditional and the other is absorption based because it works in lower temps. Both do about the same amount of water extraction for the same power.

We also picked up one of these water purifiers - https://itehil.com/products/itehil-self-pumping-outdoor-water-filter as demoed in youtube Gonagain....

AND we have a couple of Berkeys to go with all the above as a last line of purification if we are concerned during the big WTF :)
 
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