What about Boiler Water?

[jack.39]

Right post, wrong place? If covered before, delete.

I mulled over the water question pretty thoroughly before deciding distilled water was the way to go (for me, anyway). $ 0.88 a gallon at Wally-World, though. So how about making your own? But first, why distilled? Crud dissolved in water gets "plated" out in your boiler. that's why. Crud is called "dissolved solids", and the type and amount depends a lot on the water source. The other consideration is "Ph", which measures how "acidy" or not the water is. Acidy means the water will "eat" away your boiler, meaning acidic water corrodes metals. My chemistry books say "pure" water has a Ph number of 7.0, contains no dissolved solids, and is considered neutral, or neither acidic nor basic. Further, they say distillation produces pure water, so, I built a water distiller, since our well water is quite "hard", containing lots of dissolved limestone, an Ozarks typical material.

Happened that Wally-World had a sale going on with a set of 4 stainless cookpots, each of different size, that "nested" within one-another, so they came in one box large enough for the biggest one, the set being $17.00. Very good price. Made in China.

I squirreled away the biggest one to use for brewing beer (!), and did a little drill-twising, to remove the handles from the smallest one, reverse them on the middle one, and used the cover made for the big one, with a few small holes drilled in it, to support the small one, the middle-sized being turned upside-down to cover the small one, resting on the big cover sitting on the large pot. Maybe a pic will clarify:

I used an electric water heater element designed for 120-volts for heat, punched a hole through the side, at the bottom of the middle-sized pot, used a kitchen-sink drain pipe sealing washer to seal the element in the side of the pot, using a nut inside. The line cord can be seen protruding out from under the top pot's rim (upside down) in the first pic. Here's the mess all separated and sitting there waiting to work:

The dings on the cover are not really there, some kind of reflection, it's actually nice and flat, shiny, smooth. The boiling pot with element visible, can be seen to have quite a layer of white lime built-up in it. I scrape it out every 5 or 6 fills. As a footnote, the thing has made distilled water now for several years, and the element finally burned out. I found Wally sells a nice GE hotplate which fits perfectly in this system on top of the cover plate, eliminating the need for the hole and element. I pitched out the old boiling pot, and comandeered one of my wife's copper cookpots the right size; it now boils the water, sitting on top of the hotplate, which sits on top the cover plate, which.,...blah, blah, blah. Seriously, this thing works pretty nice! Be aware all, that distilled water is always exposed to surrounding air when not stoppered in a jug, and becomes slightly acidic by picking up CO2 from the air. This is compensated for by adding a high-Ph dissolvable chemical like sodium carbonate, lye (too dangerous), or even baking soda (not quite enough "oomph", but works).

Don't make one if you live in UK; it's against the law! Thanks fer lookin'!! jack

 

[Deanofid]

That's a neat idea, Jack.

I've seen mention that you heat with wood. Maybe set one of these pots on your wood stove in the shop and let it do double duty during the winter, heating and making steam for distillate. I guess you would have to put the lid on it and run a tube into a water receptacle. You could make your wood work for you twice.

How many gallons of water does your loco use on a circuit around your track?

Dean

 

[black85vette]

You don't happen to run corn mash, sugar and yeast in that thing when you aren't making water do you??? :big:

 

[tmuir]

I'm lazy I just collect the condensate from my AC.
One days running of the AC in summer will produce about 10 litres of water for me.

 

[rake60]

I'm lazy I just collect the condensate from my AC.
One days running of the AC in summer will produce about 10 litres of water for me.

Enough of the AC talk tmuir!
I think melting down the top 3 inches of fresh snow fall in my driveway
would be much cleaner water than your old AC condensation.

Damn but I much rather be changing AC filters than shoveling this snow
three times a day.
:wall:

Rick

 

[Artie]

Mmmmm... got my ac running hard right now..almost 40deg C here at 5pm.... its cooler now than it was.. my beans have all curled up... I dont think water is gonna save them... (40 x 1.8 = 72 + 32 = 104 deg F)... there ya go, still remember that stuff.... ;D

 

[tmuir]

Enough of the AC talk tmuir!
much cleaner water than your old AC condensation.

Rick

You mean new.
I only installed it last year and I do filter the water before I use it and let it stand for some time.
Main reason the only 'distilled' water sold around here isn't distilled its deionised.

 

[spuddevans]

Another source of pure water might be your local window-cleaner.

A lot of window cleaners now have moved over, at least partially, to Reach and wash systems that use filtered water ( you can recognise it as a brush on a long stick with a hose coming away from it leaving your windows totally soaking wet :big

Now, the water that they squrt onto your windows will be de-ionised and therefore unsuitible for boilers, but they will most likely filter their own water from tap water, and that usually means that they have a Reverse Osmosis filter setup that will produce near pure water ( a good R.O. will reduce the PPM (desolved solids in Parts Per Million, ie crud) down to between 1 and 10 PPM ) before they put it through a tank of de-ionising crystals to, umm, de-ionise it.

Speaking as a so-equiped window cleaner, if one of my customers wanted to have some water from my R.O. I would be very happy to give them a gallon or 2, depending on how much work I had left to do.

Another source might be a tropical fish shop, they often have R.O. filters for filling their tanks.


Tim

 

[jack.39]

I've seen mention that you heat with wood. Maybe set one of these pots on your wood stove in the shop and let it do double duty during the winter, heating and making steam for distillate. I guess you would have to put the lid on it and run a tube into a water receptacle. You could make your wood work for you twice.

How many gallons of water does your loco use on a circuit around your track?

Dean

Good suggestion about the stove. Dean! Cannot answer, as of yet, how much water the loco uses, but I can tell you it takes about 13 gallons to fill the tender tank, and another 8 in the boiler! jack

 

[jack.39]

You don't happen to run corn mash, sugar and yeast in that thing when you aren't making water do you??? :big:

Alas, no, that would not be a good idea! I AM sure you ask in jest, anyway! jack