Hawk's Babble-Log

So, it’s been about a week now, and I’ve made a total of 5 gallons. I seem to be drinking a little less than a half-gallon per day, so I can easily keep up with both my needs, and my roommates needs (if he were to go near the stuff). The total loss of water (steam loss) in the receiving tank is about four ounces / gallon. That’s pretty darn good efficiency! I’m very pleased.

The water tastes great! I’m very pleased with the results. However, sometims I can pick up a slight plastic taste. I’m not sure if it is from the little plastic bottles I use, or the receiving jug. I’ll let ya know as I use it more and more.

Here’s what the tank looks like after distilling five gallons of L.A. water. Can you say YUCK?! It smells really bad, too. There is a strong amonia smell mixed in as well. I took more pics, but they’re all about the same. The interesting thing about a distiller is that I _could_ continue to use it like this and it would still make perfectly pure water! I love it.

Okay, time to clean it out. These are two animations of the cleaning process. The directions say to put in two tablespoons of the cleaning stuff in a full tank (actually, over fill it a little). Now leave the top off and plug it in until it starts to boil. Leave it like that for 15-20 mins and then dump out the water and wash it clean. By the way, the second animation is what it looks like inside when the unit is in normal operation–but you sure don’t wanna pull the top off and take a look! You’ll burn yourself from the steam.

Here’s what it looked like after I was done scrubbing it out with dish soap and a rough green sponge.

BTW, in the instructions, this procedure is recommended once a month. HA! I’ll probably have to do this once a week. After all, this is L. A. water we’re dealing with here. L. A. water is… how can I put this gently… BAD. As in NOT GOOD. But, on the other hand, it probably won’t kill ya. I’ve been showering in the stuff for years.

It took about 30-35 mins to get it boiling from hot water straight out of the tap. Then I let it go 20 more mins, so that’s about 50 mins total. That ran up 0.45 KiloWatt Hours of power. No problemo. Do the math on how much this cost–if you want; I’m not going to bother with it.