Stupid question: Snow for distilled water?

demented_2

Hi, As there is a lot of it about today Snow i mean. I made some HM gel Air freshner last week and it turned out really good. You have to use distilled water or boiled water. As distilled water is really only water that has been frozen and then defrosted, (i think ) I was wondering could you use melted snow instead of distilled water? I would use that instead of buying some distilled water from Halfords. Then the Old style HM gel airfreshner would be a lot cheaper to make. Hope you understand what i mean. lol.

Agutka

Distilled water is stuff that drips down from steam condensing... All under sterile conditions of course.

newleaf

Agutka is correct. Defrosted ice is not distilled water. Distilled water is water which has reformed from steam.

beemuzed

What a shame they're right - it sounded a really good idea!

kittiwoz

But if you could set up something to condense steam from your kettle or a pan boiled on the hob then you would have distilled water. Out of interest why does it have to be distilled water anyway? Just boiling water and letting it cool gets rid of most of the stuff disolved in it, would that not do?

martindow

Snow and rain is formed from evaporated water which gathers in clouds and then condenses which is exactly the same process as distillation. The evaporation leaves a lot of impurities behind. You can go one stage further and get demineralised water which has nearly everything taken out. You can be blinded with science here!
http://www.lenntech.com/deionised-demineralised-water.htm

Penelope_Penguin

demented wrote:

Hi, As there is a lot of it about today Snow i mean. I made some HM gel Air freshner last week and it turned out really good. You have to use distilled water or boiled water. As distilled water is really only water that has been frozen and then defrosted, (i think ) I was wondering could you use melted snow instead of distilled water? I would use that instead of buying some distilled water from Halfords. Then the Old style HM gel airfreshner would be a lot cheaper to make. Hope you understand what i mean. lol.

The answers you've been given re distilled vs snow are correct. However, they miss the main point of the question.

If you can use *boiled water*, I'd give snow a try. Boiled water still has all the impurities left in it, so if that's OK, can't see a reason that snow won't be.

Just remember rule 1 - don't use the yellow snow

Penny. x

hollydays

I have been told the water that comes out of a tumble drier condensor is ok.

[Deleted User]

distilled water is condensed steam and is pure

rain/snow is impure and can be acidic and is not the same as distillation. Distillation is formed from steam and rain/snow is formed from water vapour

beachbeth

I have a dehumidifier and the water collected in it is distilled. It says in the instructions that this is the case and I keep meaning to collect it for ironing but I don't know how clean it is for this sort of purpose.