Distilled water question...

[Vertigo]

I was sitting around thinking today, being that i happen to have a mini-distiller here now...if i decide to bottle and store some of the water, what would you say the shelf life would be before something setup shop and tainted the water?

I know if everything's clean to begin with it should be a while but still, anything to worry about with longer term storage? (more than just a few days...)

 

[Amateur_Expert]

Like you said, it should be fine if everything is perfectly sterile from the beginning. I think bottled water has a shelf life of about 5 years. Remember, for bacteria to be able to live in there, there must be something organic in there to begin with. My point being that if the water is just pure water, and is perfectly sealed, you could store it for a really long time without worrying about a bacterial population boom. If i were you i'd make sure i sterilize all bottles and seal them up right. If you do that, i wouldn't worry about shelf life.

 

[JanW]

Hi Vertigo,

do you want to use the water for your plants? If yes I would buy a reverse osmosis unit because it consumes less energy and saves a lot of money. If you have another specific use for destilled water, perhaps buying at a gas station is cheaper than destillating it by yourself...

Good growing,

Jan

 

[jimscott]

You're from Long Island! I just noticed this! I grew up in  Huntington.

You can probably get distilled water in gallons at a grocery store or Walmart or put out large plastic totes in advance of a storm.

 

[Vertigo]

Jim,

Haha, small world. Not too far from me at all.



I was going with distilled from walmart for some time (52 cents a gal. is pretty good), but it just happens that we have a small model distiller at the house i'm residing in at the moment. We usually have a few gallons just sitting about for various reasons, so i figured save the 52 cents per gallon and get some decent lights. I can always fall back and go to walmart, but for some reason they don't always stock distilled. Sometimes all they have is hundreds of gallons of fluorinated nursery water.

and that wouldn't be a good substitute.

 

[pond boy]

Especialy with the diesal in it....(long story)