Recycling water from a dehumifier?

[Jojoman]

I have a dehumidifier in my basement, and every night or so it turns itself when it's full. There's atleast a good gallon of water in there and I was wondering if there would be any way to make it drinking water.

I know from a previous dehumidifier I had, they suckup anything in the air, even smoke. One of my buckets was a dark grey on the inside from smoke. I know there must be some mold spores in the air too (It's in my furnished basement where I sleep) so it wouldn't be too healthy to drink them.

If I can make some good clean water easily, I'll have some good water to drink. I live in the country with extrememly bad well water, and the only other water my dad gets is from a less shitty sprin gon some road.

I just think if I'm using electricity to harvest water from the air to keep my basement dry, it's totally be something green to do by using the by-product of my dry basement for drinking water.

Ideas? Criticizms?

[Slice]

I'm sure if you used a high-quality water filter (Katadyn is a great brand) with a charcoal system for taste and purifying tablets to be extra-sure, you could drink it.
Keep in mind that these systems are for bacteria and the like, and not chemicals (not sure if you add any to a dehumidifier.)

[Jojoman]

Wow I was incredibly high when I wrote this. I revisited this thread a few minutes ago and did some googlin'.

http://www.thekrib.com/Filters/dehumidifier.html

According to that, some guy was breeding fish and when there was dehumidifier water present, many were still borns, some were siamese twins, and the rest died days later.

He put the same fish in normal soft water and it had a much more successful batch of kids, all survived.

Basically they are attributing this to the possible metal content in the water. Dehumidifiers condense water on cooled copper coils and it drips down in to a bucket. I'm pretty sure filters get out the metal in water. I have hard water at my house (mentioned above) and we have a reverse osmosis water filtration system. I have to put water softening pellots in it (salt rocks I think) to get out all the impurities.

It'd probably be a lot more practical to put it through a small water filter like the kind that go in your fridge ontop of water pitchers. But as I said, they may not be as effective as a full on reverse osmosis system.



I found a machine that's a hybrid dehumidifier and office water cooler.

http://www.engadget.com/2005/03/12/dehumidifier-water-purifier-air2water-potable-water-device/

Maybe a special dehumidifier with say plastic coated copper coils could effectively remove metal traces in the water.




I think if I ever move to a place more isolated than I do now where a trip to the store to get some drinking water is out of the way and a big complicated water system would be more of a burden than what I would gain from it; a machine like that could be used to keep my house dry AND give me drinking water.

This would be a good technology/idea that can be implemented in more people's everyday lives. seeing as how drinking water is getting scarcer by the year.

[Chimro]

Whatever you use to purify the water is going to end up doing more harm to the environment and costing you more than pumping the extra gallon from the local reservoir to your house.