Durastill Home Distiller

[J.Howard]

Hi All,

I have been searching old threads on the subject of distilled water. This is because I have been given a distiller and figured in combo w/ my home RO unit, I couldn't miss. Found more pros than cons about using as cons didn't seem to have much supporting evidence other than copper concerns.

By the way...you can buy distillers for home use, and they aren't huge either. Go check this site for yourself. http://www.durastill.com
This is the same company that made the one I was given :lol:
Good info including some answers about myths and concerns re: distilled water use. What do you think?

 

[AnotherGoldenTeapot]

For my part it doesn't seem to make much sense using distilled water.

In NZ water is low cost (under 50 cents per 1000 litres), and mine is soft and reasonably clean as delivered to my house. Nitrate is usually undetectable - the only nuisance salt is silicate.

I can make several hundred litres per day of RO/DI water for virtually no cost.

I'm an actuary (and so enjoy reasonably high income), but I'd need a second job to pay for the power needed to make an equivalent amount of water using a distiller - assuming I needed that much on a regular basis

Economically it doesn't make sense - at least not in my situation.

 

[Money Pit]

They seem to use a lot of power, wouldn't be cost effective here in California.

 

[Anonymous]

i hope it is stainless inside too. i wouldn't trust using a copper lined one.

 

[tangir1]

Main problem with home distiller is the high cost of electricity. It is certainly a good option for Middle East when the other option is RO.

 

[J.Howard]

Power consumption seems to be the big factor here. The one I've got is rated at 1000 watts. That may seem like a lot, but consider this...
The design is like that of a RO/DI unit in that it is connected to a water supply and will only run on demand with internal float control according to holding tank size or manually (you can just fill and use as needed). So, it's not going to run constantly. Now also consider how much you are probably already spending on electricity even if you are running something 20 gal or smaller, and those of you with big systems...I won't make you think of the pain. If you live in a warm climate, you don't think twice about plunking down big $$$ to buy and run a chiller when fans won't do and livestock is at stake. Having had much smaller tanks in the past, and easily available natural filtered sea water out here in CA I would never have considered this. But with a 200 and evap. losses in the 5 gal every 2-4 day range, not to mention a working RO system already, it seems pretty cost effective for make-up water needs. BTW Podman, yes, it's stainless tank and condenser coil perfectly safe.

 

[tangir1]

If you already have RO, why you did not use it to top off instead of using the distiller?

It take a lot of energy to evaporate and condense the water back to liquid. Look at the max. amount of water it can produce per day, like what? 5 to 20 gal at the most? That is with the 1kW running for 24 hours. Keeping the distiller running for a moderate-sized tank like your 200 gal will be equivalent to running a chiller to cool a 400 gal tank constantly. You will see what I mean when your ele. bill come, but then LA's DWP is cheaper than what we pay down here.

 

[J.Howard]

RO is in need of a service (Culligan said they do complete service cheap) it came with the house and never really used it. Never really worried about tap water and never had any problems. Now that I've been getting into these forums, I see how freaked out people get when it comes to the need for RO/DI. 8O . Hell the thing was free and I'm still in process of test running to make sure it works well. Besides, I can always run the distiller at work. Don't think 1Kw will make much of a dent in a bill that includes almost 100Kw of TV transmitters and support equipment :lol: .

 

[tangir1]

Before asked to take down my tank in my office, it used to suck up lots of juice too. There is about 1kW of MH and a 1HP chiller.