Happy New Year all.
We all know that deionised water is best for use in the coolant mixture of our engines.
However, how about using water collected from a dehumidifier? Presumably this water is at least soft (it won't contain any of those hard salts like tap water) and so should be suitable for use in the coolant.
What is the collective backroom opinion on this? Any chemists out there care to comment on the purity of this water?
On a more basic level, why buy deionised when I've got a continuous supply of dehumidified for free?
Cyd
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Cyd,
I posed the same question some months ago re the sensitive cooling systems of Citroens. The responses must be in the archive somewhere. But fresh insights are always welcome.
rg
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You are absolutely correct, water from a de-hunidifier will be about as pure as you will find domestically, just be careful what you store it in. Melted ice from the fridge etc will be the same. It's madness to buy it from Halfords!
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I'd be a bit cautious about using water from fridges. As it is a condensate it shouldn't be 'hard' in the tapwater sense, but there are all kinds of other impurities in fridges, not least common salt!
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Water from fridges can contain a few things you don't want, dehumified water is better. But much better to go to motor factors and but a couple of gallons to £1.30/£1.50 a gallon. Tap water in Pugs and Cits is a No No. Regards Peter
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Common salt? Can you explain that one ? Water condensing on cold fridge surfaces cannot possibly contain anything other than pure water,surely?
Baz
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Well, you could try drying out a sample of any water to see if there is a residue, but I could see how they could contain dust, and a humidifyer could contain aerosols etc.. I use water from a Brita/Kenwood type filter jug. The jug was £7 and holds 2 litres, the filter cartridge is good for 60 litres, and costs about £2,75 - £3.50 depending on the shop.
I use it promarily for the kettle, but also for washer fluid too. Save an empty antifreeze or washer fluid 5 litre bottle, and just fill it up from the water filter.
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bazza - you must put salty things in your fridge sometimes, surely? - bits of ham, cheese, .. And now and then something falls to the bottom? You would need to be meticulously careful to collect uncontaminated ice from the inside of any kitchen fridge.
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Ok I'm with you now!! But this is not the place to discuss the contents of my fridge!
Baz
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Water from de-humidifiers and water from melted ice from refrigerator evaporators are both derived from moisture in the air, and will therefore contain any air-bourne impurities.
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I do not purport to be an expert, but do know that distilled water is not the same as deionised. I seem to remember reading somewhere that deionised can actually be corrosive on prolonged contact with metal, and I noticed that the instructions for an iron we bought a while back specifically said not to use it for this reason. I would therefore use whatever is specified for a particular application.
I have also considered using dehumidifier water but decided it probably had any amount of dust in it, as the machine works by drawing the surrounding air over a cold surface.
Please do your own research - I am not prepared to discuss my A level chemistry result!
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I've always used dehumidifier water in batteries, and they never seem to suffer. My current two batteries are 8 and 5 years old.
Dehumidifiers do get incredibly dusty. It is worth cleaning them out regularly just to keep them working efficiently, apart from not contaminating the water.
I use private spring water in the cooling systems. I think as long as it is not hard water, it is the quantity and quality of the antifreeze/anti-corrosion additive that really matters.
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>>why buy deionised when I've got a continuous supply of dehumidified for free?
It really isn't worth the bother of worrying about the merits of tap-spring-deionised-distilled-soft or whatever.
The correct water sold by auto outlets works out at £1.60 for an average cooling system refill...so that's only 80p a year for the guaranteed correct fluid!!
M.M
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