Distilled Water shortage?

With 4 gallons of distilled water in the basement, I'm not in panic mode - yet. But my better half reports that in the last week or two, the crazies have wiped the distilled water shelves clean. Are you guys seeing the same thing? I've used this for making most of my chems... so now I'm thinking it's Brita Time. Not sure about this. What are you folks doing?

I use the water right out of the tap in the kitchen sink. Sometimes I’ll boil it for a few minutes to drive off any dissolved oxygen but that’s it.

Where I live (northern Michigan), distilled water is the one type of water that is widely available. People have bought every bottle/container of drinking water they can find, but leave the distilled water. I bought a gallon a few days ago.

Jim B.

I use it for my developing chems and making beer, both of which I’ve been doing a lot of lately. I noticed some stores are completely out while others have a diminished supply so I grab a few bottles when I can. Do people use it in their coffee makers? I bet people are making a lot more coffee at home instead of going to Starbucks. I brew beer in a Pico Brew machine that the manufacturer recommends using distilled water. This prevents buildup of scale in the machine plus the recipes are based on distilled water for consistency.

I use a small deionising cartridge in a jug, we need to soften water before boiling in a kettle. I use this to mix developers etc, but not the final dilution tap water here is fine.

Ian

Distilled water has been MIA for weeks now in my area. For fact, EVERY bottle of EVERY kind of water is gone! Anyway, I already had a pretty good stock of it and my local water store is still open for RO water. I generally use distilled water for mixing developers (especially when mixing stocks such as Pyrocat-HD), RO water for stop baths, fixing baths, etc., and tap water for all washes. Final rinse for film is done with distilled water.

The reservoir tank in a de-humidifier will be as good as distilled water and free of impurities. It should still be boiled because it can harbour the legionella virus if left for any length of time.

The stores here had been sold out of distilled water the last month around the same time many started hoarding enough T.P. to make a formidable fort.
**my neighbor had posted a picture on social media of her supplies, with her adult son sitting in front of what looked to be a pallet of toilet paper & many cases of bottled water **
It finally has made it back on the shelves this last week. I use quite a bit mixing up fixer, home brew paper developer, toners, etc.
Hopefully it will make it back on the shelves in other area's soon.

BMbikerider said:

The reservoir tank in a de-humidifier will be as good as distilled water and free of impurities.

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That's what I use these days. Before we got the dehumidifier, I just used tap water for everything except silver nitrate solutions. Currently I use distilled for final film wash. Since it's a 'free' byproduct of the dehumidifier anyway.

BMbikerider said:

The reservoir tank in a de-humidifier will be as good as distilled water and free of impurities. It should still be boiled because it can harbour the legionella virus if left for any length of time.

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I'd suggest filtering the dehumidifier water, since the room air passing over the cold coils will carry dust, etc., not to mention the legionella mentioned above.

Y'know I brought this up as a warning mostly. Seems I'm a guy who laughed at the toilet paper shortage. Now look? Last I did, there are several nations tying their currencies - not to the almighty dollar, not to gold, but to toilet paper. Fortunately, I still have a few gallons to go before I'm in trouble... but this is a c-r-a-z-y world these days. Maybe it always was and I just didn't notice? Sure... and boy did I love those days!

I often wonder is distilled water in the US what we call de-ionised water in Europe. I know that in Ireland where I live distilled water is around the equivalent of $10 a litre. I only use distiller water for wet plate chemistry mixing, tap water for everything else

eunified61 said:

I often wonder is distilled water in the US what we call de-ionised water in Europe. I know that in Ireland where I live distilled water is around the equivalent of $10 a litre. I only use distiller water for wet plate chemistry mixing, tap water for everything else

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It's a different process for purifying water. Distillation evaporates the water then condenses it back to a liquid. De-ionization uses an electrically charged resin filter and, depending on the original source of the water, can be more pure than distilled water. They both should work for film chemistry.

Retired chemist speaking here... wants to clear up some misconceptions about water.

The difference between distilled and reverse osmosis (RO) water is functionally ZERO. Both processes remove both organic and inorganic contaminants from water. They mechanism by which they work is different, the result is the same.

I would be very suprised to find that bottled distilled water is actually made by distillation... the energy costs are very high compared to the RO process. Thus, I would not be surprised at all to find that commercial labeling regulations allow water purified via RO to be labeled as distilled as they are functionally the same.

Deionized water, is likely different than distilled or RO, in that the deionization process does not deal with organic contaminants (nor with residual chlorine in some tap water) it deals only with the charged inorganic components. Or maybe to but it another way distilled water and RO water are deionized plus.

As far as Brita filters go, from looking at their website, these are meant to remove chlorine, many trace organic compounds and some metallic ions, but not sodium from water. The key to using these is to follow the instructions carefully and to keep track of how much water you put through a filter cartridge. The filters have a limited capacity for holding contaminants and there is no easy way to see that a filter has exceeded its capacity.

Regarding the use of any sort of purified water vs. tap water for photographic processes, if you are using have municipal water coming from your taps, it is unlikely that you will see a benefit to using purified water. The contaminants most likely to cause trouble in photo processing are redox active metals, most commonly iron and manganese. Since these elements also cause staining of plumbing fixtures, they are generally well controlled in municipal water systems. If you have a private well, you are probably also OK, unless you know that your water is high in iron or manganese.

My best advise, before routinely going to the expense of using purified water, is to test out your tap water and see if it works in your darkroom. If it works, but you want to be extra cautious, you could use purified water for stock solutions that will be stored for longish intervals and tap water for everything else. Problems with small amounts of contaminants are more likely to show up upon storage.

Lastly, a word about hard water (high calcium and/or magnesium)... this should not be a problem with photographic chemistry as neither metal is redox active. However, hard water, including hard water softened by adding salt, can cause problems with spotting on negatives. The water evaporates leaving the salts behind. In this case, a final rinse with purified water is certainly warranted.

I hope that this is helpful,

--- Frank

I haven't been to the store in about 2 weeks, but each time I looked for distilled water in March all waters were gone.

I live in Conroe, TX now, just north of Houston.

Fortunately, I not only have a private well, but there's Reverse Osmosis/Deionized water available in the house (partner keeps a reef aquarium). I use that water for mixing chemicals and for final rinse, as our tap water is quite hard (coffee machine builds up visible scale in just a few weeks). This past weekend I mixed chemistry and processed one roll of C-41 with a total consumption of about two liters of the RODI water -- normal development will use less than half that for reusable chemistry.

One additional concern with high calcium in water is that it can affect the pH of developers, changing activity. Not a big issue if it's always the same, but for some folks,in some regions, the level of calcium changes with the seasons, which can make summer film higher contrast than winter film, or some such.

fgorga said:

Retired chemist speaking here... wants to clear up some misconceptions about water...I hope that this is helpful,

--- Frank

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Very helpful! Thank you for that mini lesson!

fgorga said:

I would be very suprised to find that bottled distilled water is actually made by distillation... the energy costs are very high compared to the RO process. Thus, I would not be surprised at all to find that commercial labeling regulations allow water purified via RO to be labeled as distilled as they are functionally the same.

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I don't know your location but in the US the FDA governs the labeling of bottled water. "Purified water" can be labeled as such and achieved by various means (RO, distilled, etc) because the term purified water describes the result rather than the process. But if the bottle says "distilled" it must be distilled. Process vs result.

The bottle I have is labeled "distilled", and in addition to identifying the source of the water also adds how it was processed: Steam distillation, micron filtration, ultraviolet light, and ozonation. And it costs less than a buck a gallon, about the same as RO water.

Donald Qualls said:

Fortunately, I not only have a private well, but there's Reverse Osmosis/Deionized water available in the house (partner keeps a reef aquarium). I use that water for mixing chemicals and for final rinse, as our tap water is quite hard (coffee machine builds up visible scale in just a few weeks). This past weekend I mixed chemistry and processed one roll of C-41 with a total consumption of about two liters of the RODI water -- normal development will use less than half that for reusable chemistry.

One additional concern with high calcium in water is that it can affect the pH of developers, changing activity. Not a big issue if it's always the same, but for some folks,in some regions, the level of calcium changes with the seasons, which can make summer film higher contrast than winter film, or some such.

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I seriously doubt that the minerals dissolved in tap water can affect developer pH to a significant level. I don't believe tap water has significant buffering capacity to affect anything other than ridiculously diluted developer, if at all.

Anyway, if using chemicals from any major manufacturer, then tap water is perfectly fine for everything, except final rinses, stabiliser, wetting agent baths etc. There's no point in mixing store bought D76 with distilled water. If you're scratch mixing your chemicals and don't have anything like sodium hexametaphosphate, then distilled/deionised water is probably a must. I live in a hard water area, my water boiler can prove it, and had to use deionised water before acquiring chemicals that took care of water hardness.

No shortage of any bottled water in the Dakotas. I think some people use it in their CPAP machine and didn't want to run out. I personally think hoarding bottled water is silly. No danger of tap water not being available.


Kent in SD

I’m running short of distilled water to make emulsion and it’s been cleared off the store shelves, so I’ve been looking at a deionizer / RO kit to install and eliminate that dependancy.
Iron has a significant impact on emulsion speed, which my well water has quite a bit of, along with fluorine. So yeah.

-Jason

Seems like there is a country-wide run on it - with the exception of the Dakotas which are thankfully too close to Marge Gunderson's territory for any panic to ensue . Does everyone expect COVID-19 to affect normal water supplies? Or does everyone in the U.S. still remember Gen Jack D Ripper in 1963 who claimed that the commies were poisoning the water Unfortunately his actions were more serious that raiding the supermarkets' stores for bottled water.

I thought a bit of levity mjght be in order

pentaxuser

I live in Europe and I simply use 'demineralized water', it's main use is for irons. It's way cheaper than distilled water and fulfills it's task very well, even for very delicate solutions such as silver nitrate baths for wet plate collodion, for example.

Sidney

Anon Ymous said:

I seriously doubt that the minerals dissolved in tap water can affect developer pH to a significant level. I don't believe tap water has significant buffering capacity to affect anything other than ridiculously diluted developer, if at all.

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My only basis for that concern is statements (on Photo.net, I think, and some years ago) that seasonal variations in water content had caused seasonal variations in negative density/contrast for a PC-TEA user who lived far from cities and had a well.

Water out of the tap here is fine for all my photographic applications except the final film rinse. I use just enough de-ionised water to cover the film for that. Last week on the weekly shop to Morrisons, they were getting rid of all of what were classed as 'non-essential' products in order to fill the shelves with mainly food-related things that we all need. There was a stack of tubs with greatly marked down items that included numerous 2.5 litre containers of de-ionised water reduced from somewhere upwards of a couple of quid to 38 pence. Naturally, I filled my boots (English expression, not to be taken literally!) Not a huge saving in the Grand Plan, but as my granny used to say "Look after the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves."
Steve