Ramping up production

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Another post in the water sub series in the main off the grid series of posts.

The water I am getting is fairly close to what I want.  Now, I need quantity.  Samples have been taken for another distillation run with water used yesterday for laundry.  That would be about three gallons.  It seems that I have already lost a gallon or so.  My goal is to collect fifty percent of what I use, which should be about two and a half gallons daily.  The deficit is to be made up from water collection from other sources.

In getting the wash sample, I note that water is rather low quality.  I ran it through the sand filter, and will run it again through the process discussed yesterday.  Even with double filtration and club soda treatment, the water is still rather dirty.  It is not expected that I will be able to produce two and a half gallons of water with this device.  A full pint will do.   I got eleven ounces yesterday.

At this point, I am still looking at getting quality, and sufficient quantity in order to do some stuff.  Full production will require a more serious device than what this is.

There's still a lot of room for improvement.

Update:

Results:  Twenty one ounces, one lost, eight remaining out of thirty total.  Five hours run time.  Water quality is almost perfect at less than twenty ppm.  Still has rubber smell and slight discoloring.  Can cut off a little more, but this may be nearly as good as it will get.

The heating element is a thousand watts, which was never employed.  It was set at fifty percent most of the time, and at three eights power at the beginning and end.  Extrapolation yields somewhere between two and two and half kwh.

Of course, a solar still would use no generated power at all.

The siphoning technique produced sixty three ounces while running, and requires no power.

Update ( the next morning ) :

Added more power, increased yield, lost some quality.  At half power throughout, collected twenty six ounces, with twenty six ppm.  Ran five hours for comparison purposes, which is the same amount of time.  Actually, I was more careful about cleaning, so the lower quality is significant.  To confirm this, and to compare yields and quality, I can ramp up power to three fourths.