What would be the best system to handle water needs?

There are a number of things I'd like to try, but shortage of money is going to limit them.  Maybe that is not such a bad thing.  I wrote that before, by the way.  A shortage of money causes one to be more creative in solving problems.

One thing I'd like to try out west is to capture water through condensation of the humidity that's already in the atmosphere.  You'd think that it was too dry out there, but it actually can get fairly humid at times.  It is during these times that I think an opportunity exists to capture some of that water.

An idea that I have is to convert my freezer into such a device.  What it would do is send a column of air, which would be in a metal tube that enters and exits the freezer.  By the time the air got through the entire circuit I put it through, the water would freeze out of the atmosphere and be deposited on the inside of the tube.  Once the tube plugged up, it would be ready for harvest.  I'd pull it out, and put another in its place.  While the next batch froze up, I'd melt the one just collected and obtain the water.

In order to make this idea work, I'd have to make the freezer work out there.  This requires a lot of equipment that isn't cheap.   Let's see:

1. It would need a special inverter that could convert 12 volt direct current into 115 volt alternating current.  This might cost up to a thousand bucks.
2. It would need batteries to store electrical power from solar panels and windpower. Let's say 2k$
3. It would need said solar panels and the windpower module.  Let's say 3k$
4. Possibly you could run an electrical generator that runs on propane or gasoline.  About 1k$
5. But the said electrical generator couldn't run the thing directly, so you would still need batteries.

Looks like the cheap alternative would be to use a propane generator that recharged the batteries.  About 4k$ in total.  That's a lot of bucks for somebody who cannot afford to spend that kind of money on a mere experiment.

What would be accomplished?  Well, if you could pull out 4 gallons of water a night, that would take care of all personal needs for one person.  If you could pull out more, then that might be something special depending on how much you could get.

A commercial dehumidifier could do the job under normal circumstances, but this requires something a bit more powerful.  There's some advertised that claim up to 70 pints per day.  If you could get that kind of performance, which I don't know is even possible, it might be possible to run it about 8 hours per day, or about 1/3 the time.  That would be about 70/3 pints per day.  That's about 3 gallons of water.

The said dehumidifier would use 750 watts/hrs for that 8 hours, or for the maximum of 6 kilowatt hours of electricity.  That's a lot to generate out there.  That might even leave out the solar and wind possibility even though it is the most expensive.

You could easily reach the amount needed provided that the batteries could take the charge that fast.  If not, you will need more batteries.  Figure about another 2k$ for the batteries.  Up to 6k$. 

Well, it's an interesting idea, but it looks to be way too expensive just to try to save effort on the water issue.

Rainwater catchment just requires that you make the buildings capable of draining the water into a tank.  The cost is whatever it costs to make the tank.  The downside is that you have to wait for it to rain.

Perhaps the cheapest way is the most straightforward way:  going to town and buy the water.  It costs for the gas to drive the vehicle, and the containers to carry the water.  One dude out there scoffed at my idea to capture rainwater.  Maybe he is on to something.  Experience is the best teacher.

Since I need to go into town anyway, I can always just bring along a container and fill it with water when I'm in town.  Recycling could be helpful in stretching the supply.  Rainwater catchment can supplement it, but cannot be the primary means.  Building that other stuff is too expensive.

I may have done this analysis before.  Anyway, I may include it in my off-the-grid series in the subseries devoted to water.

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