Deionized or Distilled water in nife cells?

[tandrews]

My New Dissolved PPM meter tells me that:
1) basement dehumidifier #1 results in 15ppm dissolved solids ($5 score on side of road 10 yrs back)
2) basement dehumidifier #2 results in 8ppm dissolved solids (collection bucket underneath and kinda covered)
3) Storing water in a collapsible plastic (20l camping version) containers adds at LEAST 10ppm in a month from either source
4) My well is upwards of 105ppm dissolved solids (Not surprising since the casing was well washed with a burst pressure line recently - a year old stored water (food grade container) was similar to well reading, so leeched plastics or sourced dissolved - dunno. I do know whatever is leeched from those collapsibles in makes it impossible to "get the soap off" one's hands.

So, my theory that dehumidifier water is pretty much distilled did have some merit after all provided one can police the insect ingress...

I have no standards to compare this to, just posting as followup and because I found it interesting.
Carry on.

[russ]

Interesting! Point of interest - my well water runs about 550 to 600 ppm total hardness - the entire area is limestone

[servant74]

Distilled Water

It is pretty easy to make a small water still at home, but if you have a dehumidifier you are close to as good. An inexpensive home-water-distiller from ebay or WMT will probably do wall you need.

I have been tempted to make a home solar distillation unit, but just haven't gotten around to it yet.

...

My Dad used to work at Bell Helicopter, and they used de-minralized water in their plating department. They measured water purity by ohms. Coming out of the deminralizer it was like 10M Ohm, but after traveling 100' in glass pipe it was down to under 1M Ohm, so they had to run it through another (smaller) demenralizer to get it up to the needs of the plating dept.

So 'sufficiently demenralized' water would be fine, but unless you know, using distilled is probably better for use.

At my local WMT (Wal-Mart) I can get deminralized, or distilled, or 'drinking' water (drinking being distilled or deminralized but had some salts added back in for taste). I get distilled for my needs, it is the same price as the other by the gallon.

Hope thi shelps some.