Shortage of distilled water

[Art]

IMHO... some items regarding distilled water in this thread have gotten fairly silly.

I believe the following to be true.

Pure distilled water is the best for "toping-off" wet cell LA batts.

Distilling technique for creating distilled water [in what ever size distillery] creates pure, unadulterated distilled water.

Drinking water from good sources is more conducive to human health than drinking pure distilled water.

Easiest way to get pure distilled water is at retail store in a sealed plastic container,

 

[rwidman]

I have AGM batteries on my boat now and no need for distilled water, but I was surprised the last time I bought it to find an expiration date on the jug. Water has an expiration date? How does water "expire"?

We are using the same water today that was being used by the cavemen. It runs downhill to the ocean, evaporates and rains down on us again. How does it expire?

 

[Porgy]

A simple search turns up: There is no federal requirement for an expiration date, bottlers add dates because the taste can change over time, chemicals from packaging can leach into the water, bottlers use it for inventory control. But, conspiracy theories work too.

 

[localboy]

FYI, I went to my local Wallyworld yesterday in Marysville. They always have distilled water. Nope. Not one gallon available.

 

[kthoennes]

Peggy Hall may have been a little off in the mechanics if it, but distilled water is such an easy thing to produce I'm really surprised this is yet another "supply chain issue." And it can't be a plastic bottle shortage either - there are zillions of them around, including piles of empties at every bigger supermarket at the do-it-yourself water filling stations. I don't get it. Tap water, a heat source and one trip to the hardware store and I could produce a huge supply in my garage.

I feel like I'm suddenly living in a third world country or some alternative dystopian reality.

 

[localboy]

I feel like I'm suddenly living in a third world country or some alternative dystopian reality.

in some ways, you are. Not to worry. They’re “on it”.

 

[Simi 60]

Whilst I know how distilled water is made what's the chemical difference between it and RO water?

 

[OldDan1943]

Whilst I know how distilled water is made what's the chemical difference between it and RO water?

People pay big bucks for distilled water and now it is unhealthy to drink?

 

[HeadMistress]

Distilling your own water IS inefficient, but there's nothing resourceful about doing without it if you need it and have no other way to get it.

--Peggie

 

[OldDan1943]

I am old enough to remember the first steam irons.... They insisted on distilled water.

 

[kthoennes]

Yep, I remember my mother had this little squirt water bottle thing on her ironing board when I was a kid, you squeezed the water through a plastic tube filled with filter granules, like a little camping filter -- let me see if they still exist... Yep, gravity fed now, not a squirt bottle, but same idea.

https://www.amazon.com/filter-Demineralizer-Gravity-Bottle-Ironing/dp/B078SJKV3L

Boy mom went to a lot of trouble with clothes.

 

[localboy]

People pay big bucks for distilled water and now it is unhealthy to drink?

As I understand it, it’s not unhealthy it just tastes “bad” as the minerals that make water taste like water are removed. https://www.healthline.com/health/can-you-drink-distilled-water

I have about 20 gallons in the garage as I need to flush/fill my pickup’s coolant.

If people, Americans, aren’t noticing empty shelves and exorbitant prices for items that are in stock, they are utterly in denial. Distilled water appears to be just another innocuous product that we took for granted, until it’s no longer available. A symptom of a bigger disease.

 

[localboy]

Yep, I remember my mother had this little squirt water bottle thing on her ironing board when I was a kid, you squeezed the water through a plastic tube filled with filter granules, like a little camping filter...

Boy mom went to a lot of trouble with clothes.

Ditto. I remember it vividly. You just made me remember that!

And the water in Honolulu is of very good quality as it’s filtered through volcanic rock which makes up the islands. Crystal clear and good tasting.

 

[BandB]

Supply chain issues aren't new, but really first came to the forefront about 5 years ago when Zika hit. There are a number of underlying issues at play. Here are some.

This first group is general and without special circumstances.

-Just in time. Theoretical concept which justifies not stocking inventories and depending on your supplier to replenish you when you need it. Just in time came to the forefront years ago and gradually stocks of inventory decreased and the term "safety stock" disappeared.
-Manufacturing is a slow process and what you'll have available today was decided months, if not years ago. I once heard it compared to trying to turn a cruise ship around on a train track. I have no idea what that means, but I do know changing manufacturing capacity is difficult. If production is lost for some reason, it will not be made up. Capacity is limited.
-Consolidation. There are fewer companies manufacturing many products. There are fewer major truck lines. There are fewer raw material suppliers. There are fewer ocean shipping companies.
-Failure to replace and upgrade. Cargo containers are lost or removed from service, not replaced. Manufacturers go out of business, not replaced.
-More import and export worldwide leading to more pressure on shipping and more demand without more capacity.

Then you have more specific circumstances.

-Zika led to issues. One example was China refusing to accept ships that had not been certified as Mosquito free.
-Covid 19 shut down factories. That led to decrease of ocean and over the road shipping. When things resumed the capacity wasn't there. On ocean shipping, the containers weren't there to take more and the ones that were there, weren't where needed. Ports had lost workers and capacity. The West Coast US ports and the Chinese Ports are far behind. Now Savannah has more containers waiting to clear than ever before. Truck drivers didn't have work and when it returned, they didn't return. The number of Over the Road drivers is still down significantly.
-Events like the Suez canal blockage cost a couple of weeks and that is never recovered.
-Events like the freeze in Texas last winter caused the loss of huge amounts of production and hit some industries very hard.
-Most of these events create delayed demand but don't eliminate demand. I read all the "Death of Apparel" articles. No. When things opened back up people were anxious to buy. Some stores didn't have product though. Look at the US Auto Industry. Yes, had shut downs. Didn't order materials for that time. However, as conditions changed, all those who had delayed purchases were ready to buy but a huge shortage of vehicles continues. A lot is due to chips, but why didn't the auto manufacturers have more in stock? You look at a longer picture and demand doesn't change as much as people sometimes believe. People just postpone buying.

How do all these impact distilled water?
-The vast majority comes from two companies, Niagara and Nestle (and subsidiaries). They were hit by rushes for bottled water at a time their production was limited. Niagara is spending $156 million on a new facility in Kansas City but that doesn't fix the problem today. Look in your groceries at all the store brand bottled water and distilled water. It will probably be Niagara.
-Texas is home to a large percentage of plastics manufacturing and recycling. That industry lost about a month of production last winter and has no way to make it up.
-Trucking is backed up and deliveries slower than they have been. The plastic must be trucked to the plants and then the water delivered to the stores.

Our supply chain for many products will continue to be a problem. As manufacturers and retailers, we minimized the impact on us by accepting goods we didn't need for stores that weren't open and building inventories. No public company today would do that. We got some special discounts and we leased short term warehouses. We also produced ahead of customers starting to take goods again. The decisions that provide available goods for this holiday season were made in the summer of 2000.

We aren't in any part of the toy business but it's a great example. There will be shortages on shelves this holiday. There may be two possible exceptions as Walmart and Costco have chartered ships and containers. Toys for holiday season are ordered nearly a year in advance, but no one will accept delivery early. So you compress delivery to a very short time period while you must produce it evenly year round. Is anyone then surprised when a bottleneck develops?

Another challenge faced today is raw materials of all types and shipping costs of all types are increasing substantially. Now, the question is will manufacturers and retailers panic and cut back and create more shortages which will lead to even higher prices or just accept inflation and pass the costs on and continue normal business.

 

[denverd0n]

As I understand it, it’s not unhealthy...

It is not harmful to your health, in and of itself. The issue is that to be healthy our bodies need a variety of minerals, many of which we get from the water that we drink. If you ONLY drink distilled water, then you need to replace those minerals in other ways.


Oh, and by the way... Plenty of distilled water on the shelves here in the Tampa area. We bought some just yesterday at Publix, and I noticed that they had a full shelf at the local Walmart. So, I don't know what is going on for some of you, but no problem here.

 

[kthoennes]

There's always some excuse lately for poor performance, failed deliveries, empty shelves, out of stock, blah blah. I don't buy it (literally and figuratively). At the height of the pandemic-panic around late spring/summer 2020, we found webcams, we made our own hand sanitizer (we live in ag country, what do you know, apparently dairy farmers use lots of isopropyl alcohol, Tractor Supply was well stocked). We never closed (state gov't office). Yes, employee recruitment is a bear lately, but you stinkin' make it work. I can't get anybody to do my boat canvas so I will stinkin' buy my own Sailrite machine and turn into Suzy Seamstress myself (yes, I know, that's sexist). I can't get anybody to weld a broken aluminum bow rail. Fine, I'll buy a mig welder and teach myself to weld aluminum, I'm not building the space shuttle, doesn't have to be pretty. For crying out loud, this is nonsense.

I read a book last weekend about the Donner Party, yeah that disastrous trek through the Sierra Nevada mountains, cannibalism, etc. Yes, they made literally fatal wrong decisions, but the grit -- of some of them at least -- was incredible. They'd break a wagon axle and tromp into the woods, whack a tree and make a new one. There was a guy named John Stark, one of the rescuers, not an original party member, who was incredible. My Uncle Theodore got a piece of his leg blown off at Guadalcanal and laid in a ditch for a couple days until the medics arrived. Joshua Chamberlain, one of my heroes, got shot in the foot (and later in the groin) but when the Maine 20th ran out of ammo at Little Round Top they fixed bayonets and bluffed like they had bullets and charged anyway. Then there's Edwin Shuman, another one of my heroes, an incredible guy in the Hanoi Hilton and then years later he led his teenage sailing crew through the Fastnet disaster in '79. Ancestry.com just uploaded a new pile of records and I discovered my grandfather from Russia probably lied about his age around 16 and got off the boat with $38 in his pocket, when Immigration required you to have $50. They let him in anyway. New country, didn't speak English, left his entire family behind, with $38 to his name -- and now we can't get a roll of bathroom tissue on a store shelf for 9,000 reasons. Pansies.

There I go, another rant and thread drift. I'll shut up now.

 

[Bigsalmonfish]

Started out using distilled water for batteries. Was told 25 years ago that the water in the PNW is clean enough to use from the tap. I have a large amount of desalinated water in the tanks along with municipal and have used that for my batteries. I am getting 10-12 years out of the batteries.

 

[dhays]

Duh, I didn't think of AC distillate, or in my case, the distillate from my dehumidifier on the boat . . . just dumped out a gallon this AM, and didn't even connect the two!

When I had FLA batteries, this is how I watered them. I have a dehumidifer on the galley counter that drains into the sink. For the batteries, I would just put the drain hose into an empty water bottle in the sink. The dehumidifier would fill the bottle which would then over flow into the sink. Evey time we went to the boat, we would move the dehumidifier and I would take that water bottle and top off the batteries.


There are some that will whinge about the distillate from a dehumidifier not being the same as the distilled water you buy at the store. They are correct. The store stuff is more expensive and less convenient.


A lot of folks also conflate the distillate we get off our dehumidifers this way with the truly nasty stuff they see from their AC units in the SE. If you keep the hose and water bottle clean, the distillate from the dehumidifier is perfectly acceptable.

 

[SteveK]

One thing we have in abundance in the PNW is rainwater. apparently it is considered same as distilled, once filtered it is used to make bottled water. Hmm

 

[slowgoesit]

I was going to service my batteries tomorrow, and was going to go ahead and used water from my dehumidifier, but yesterday, I went into Fred Meyers, and they had half a shelf of distilled water! Got it in the night before, full shelves early in AM, less than half a shelf at lunch time . . . I bought 4 gallons, two for my batteries, and two for my CPAP. I'm good for awhile. Thanks for all the suggestions/replies!

 

[Thud]

REVERSE OSMOSIS DRINKING WATER WITHOUT OUT ADDED SALTS WOULD BE VERY CLOSE TO DISTILLED. SOME Reverse Osmosis drinking water advertises added minerals, etc. and some does not...

 

[Deb Jon]

Had a similar problem up here in BC. Eventually went to the pharmacy chains and found it there. Maybe Walgreens or CVS may be able to help?

 

[TheBigWhit]

Just a general reference for those interested.

Pure water = 14 megohm resistive (not conductive but insulating) for semi conductor mfg.

USP Water For Injection = 1-5 ppm TDS conductive

Distilled process water = 5-8 ppm TDS conductive (high pressure boiler feed, etc)

Distilled bottle water = 10-30 ppm TDS conductive (considered low grade process water)

SWRO = 250 ppm TDS conductive (excellent potable but inadequate for above uses w/out additional treatment)

Bottled Water = 100-1000 ppm TDS (huge variation by brand and source - some is terrible)

USPH Limits = 500 ppm TDS for potable use (specific ions are also limited)

WHO Limits = 1,000 ppm TDS for potable use

 

[Rick Hudson]

On that topic, I've often wondered if 'De-mineralized Water", available at most supermarkets, is good enough? Is it filtered, versus condensed?

A mechanic once told me that any clean water is better for a dry battery, than running partially empty, if you don't have distilled. Comments?

 

[OldDan1943]

On that topic, I've often wondered if 'De-mineralized Water", available at most supermarkets, is good enough? Is it filtered, versus condensed?

A mechanic once told me that any clean water is better for a dry battery, than running partially empty, if you don't have distilled. Comments?

I have heard of people breathing new life into their batteries by "spending a penny" into the battery.
Isn't it wonderful that urine has so many uses?

 

[Al Parker]

shortage-distilled-water

We get it from the local grocery store.

 

[catalinajack]

As I understand it, it’s not unhealthy it just tastes “bad” as the minerals that make water taste like water are removed. https://www.healthline.com/health/can-you-drink-distilled-water

I have about 20 gallons in the garage as I need to flush/fill my pickup’s coolant.

If people, Americans, aren’t noticing empty shelves and exorbitant prices for items that are in stock, they are utterly in denial. Distilled water appears to be just another innocuous product that we took for granted, until it’s no longer available. A symptom of a bigger disease.

And what disease would that be? Just curious. I may want to get a vaccination.

 

[catalinajack]

Supply chain issues aren't new, but really first came to the forefront about 5 years ago when Zika hit. There are a number of underlying issues at play. Here are some.



This first group is general and without special circumstances.



-Just in time. Theoretical concept which justifies not stocking inventories and depending on your supplier to replenish you when you need it. Just in time came to the forefront years ago and gradually stocks of inventory decreased and the term "safety stock" disappeared.

-Manufacturing is a slow process and what you'll have available today was decided months, if not years ago. I once heard it compared to trying to turn a cruise ship around on a train track. I have no idea what that means, but I do know changing manufacturing capacity is difficult. If production is lost for some reason, it will not be made up. Capacity is limited.

-Consolidation. There are fewer companies manufacturing many products. There are fewer major truck lines. There are fewer raw material suppliers. There are fewer ocean shipping companies.

-Failure to replace and upgrade. Cargo containers are lost or removed from service, not replaced. Manufacturers go out of business, not replaced.

-More import and export worldwide leading to more pressure on shipping and more demand without more capacity.



Then you have more specific circumstances.



-Zika led to issues. One example was China refusing to accept ships that had not been certified as Mosquito free.

-Covid 19 shut down factories. That led to decrease of ocean and over the road shipping. When things resumed the capacity wasn't there. On ocean shipping, the containers weren't there to take more and the ones that were there, weren't where needed. Ports had lost workers and capacity. The West Coast US ports and the Chinese Ports are far behind. Now Savannah has more containers waiting to clear than ever before. Truck drivers didn't have work and when it returned, they didn't return. The number of Over the Road drivers is still down significantly.

-Events like the Suez canal blockage cost a couple of weeks and that is never recovered.

-Events like the freeze in Texas last winter caused the loss of huge amounts of production and hit some industries very hard.

-Most of these events create delayed demand but don't eliminate demand. I read all the "Death of Apparel" articles. No. When things opened back up people were anxious to buy. Some stores didn't have product though. Look at the US Auto Industry. Yes, had shut downs. Didn't order materials for that time. However, as conditions changed, all those who had delayed purchases were ready to buy but a huge shortage of vehicles continues. A lot is due to chips, but why didn't the auto manufacturers have more in stock? You look at a longer picture and demand doesn't change as much as people sometimes believe. People just postpone buying.



How do all these impact distilled water?

-The vast majority comes from two companies, Niagara and Nestle (and subsidiaries). They were hit by rushes for bottled water at a time their production was limited. Niagara is spending $156 million on a new facility in Kansas City but that doesn't fix the problem today. Look in your groceries at all the store brand bottled water and distilled water. It will probably be Niagara.

-Texas is home to a large percentage of plastics manufacturing and recycling. That industry lost about a month of production last winter and has no way to make it up.

-Trucking is backed up and deliveries slower than they have been. The plastic must be trucked to the plants and then the water delivered to the stores.



Our supply chain for many products will continue to be a problem. As manufacturers and retailers, we minimized the impact on us by accepting goods we didn't need for stores that weren't open and building inventories. No public company today would do that. We got some special discounts and we leased short term warehouses. We also produced ahead of customers starting to take goods again. The decisions that provide available goods for this holiday season were made in the summer of 2000.



We aren't in any part of the toy business but it's a great example. There will be shortages on shelves this holiday. There may be two possible exceptions as Walmart and Costco have chartered ships and containers. Toys for holiday season are ordered nearly a year in advance, but no one will accept delivery early. So you compress delivery to a very short time period while you must produce it evenly year round. Is anyone then surprised when a bottleneck develops?



Another challenge faced today is raw materials of all types and shipping costs of all types are increasing substantially. Now, the question is will manufacturers and retailers panic and cut back and create more shortages which will lead to even higher prices or just accept inflation and pass the costs on and continue normal business.

As usual, BandB brings the business reality from the sublimely ridiculous, ignorant supposition to the cold, hard facts.

 

[catalinajack]

There's always some excuse lately for poor performance, failed deliveries, empty shelves, out of stock, blah blah. I don't buy it (literally and figuratively). At the height of the pandemic-panic around late spring/summer 2020, we found webcams, we made our own hand sanitizer (we live in ag country, what do you know, apparently dairy farmers use lots of isopropyl alcohol, Tractor Supply was well stocked). We never closed (state gov't office). Yes, employee recruitment is a bear lately, but you stinkin' make it work. I can't get anybody to do my boat canvas so I will stinkin' buy my own Sailrite machine and turn into Suzy Seamstress myself (yes, I know, that's sexist). I can't get anybody to weld a broken aluminum bow rail. Fine, I'll buy a mig welder and teach myself to weld aluminum, I'm not building the space shuttle, doesn't have to be pretty. For crying out loud, this is nonsense.

I read a book last weekend about the Donner Party, yeah that disastrous trek through the Sierra Nevada mountains, cannibalism, etc. Yes, they made literally fatal wrong decisions, but the grit -- of some of them at least -- was incredible. They'd break a wagon axle and tromp into the woods, whack a tree and make a new one. There was a guy named John Stark, one of the rescuers, not an original party member, who was incredible. My Uncle Theodore got a piece of his leg blown off at Guadalcanal and laid in a ditch for a couple days until the medics arrived. Joshua Chamberlain, one of my heroes, got shot in the foot (and later in the groin) but when the Maine 20th ran out of ammo at Little Round Top they fixed bayonets and bluffed like they had bullets and charged anyway. Then there's Edwin Shuman, another one of my heroes, an incredible guy in the Hanoi Hilton and then years later he led his teenage sailing crew through the Fastnet disaster in '79. Ancestry.com just uploaded a new pile of records and I discovered my grandfather from Russia probably lied about his age around 16 and got off the boat with $38 in his pocket, when Immigration required you to have $50. They let him in anyway. New country, didn't speak English, left his entire family behind, with $38 to his name -- and now we can't get a roll of bathroom tissue on a store shelf for 9,000 reasons. Pansies.

There I go, another rant and thread drift. I'll shut up now.

Go back and read BandB's post. Yes, you are ranting, with no basis in fact.

 

[TheBigWhit]

On that topic, I've often wondered if 'De-mineralized Water", available at most supermarkets, is good enough? Is it filtered, versus condensed?

A mechanic once told me that any clean water is better for a dry battery, than running partially empty, if you don't have distilled. Comments?

Demin bottled water is typically tap water run through ion exchange resin beds. Many process water facilities will run either some form of still followed by demin for boiler feed. A newer and less expensive trend is using two pass RO followed by demin.

For batteries I would only use distilled but lots of folks do otherwise with success.