Tumble Dryer Water?

Hi all, We have a condenser tumble dryer, which has a tank that fills with the water from the clothes its dryed. Am I right in thinking this is good water to use in my model steam engines boilers? AFAIKT it must be effectivly distilled water?

if not what shoul I use?

cheers

Dave

Reply to
david.sanderson
Loading thread data ...

I suspect that using this a distilled water substitute is a slightly dodgy proposition.

If the water collected was there purely from evaporation then it would be reasonably good but would probably contain a number of aromatics etc. I suspect that in reality a proportion of the water collected will have been blown/drained directly off the clothes and therefore is likely to be full of detergents and other undesirables.

Other sources of reasonably contaminant free water are (in no particular order of purity):

Rain water Water collected from dehumidifiers/air conditioners Cheap reverse osmosis units available from eBay. Halfords/Tesco etc.

Your application dictates the most effective solution.

Mark

Reply to
Mark Howard

I suspect that there will be significant contamination from detergents that have dripped out of the washing, but maybe not...

If you want to check, a quick and dirty way would be to use a multimeter with a resistance range (probably 100kOhm or 1MOhm) hold the probes about half an inch apart and dip them in the condensate about half an inch. Note the reading and then repeat with tap water and distilled water. If the condensate shows a very high reading (like the distilled water will) then its probably good stuff. If it shows a reading lower than the tap water, draw your own conclusions.

Another, longer, check is to boil 100ml of the condensate dry and see what's left. Again, you can compare with tap water.

Mark Rand RTFM

Reply to
Mark Rand

The instruction manual for our Zanussi condensing dryer says that "the water may be used in a steam iron or to top up a battery etc. In this case it must be filtered (e.g. through a coffee filter)".

Given that a washing machine typically does at leaset four rinse cycles, I'd be surprised if there's much detergent still around.

Reply to
Norman Billingham

Presumeably the point is to filter out bits of limescale etc that might be lurking, rather than anything disolved in the water ?

Reply to
Boo

de-humidifier water would be a better choice there are a number of guys here that probably collect gallons of the stuff thru the winter months ask them to save it up for you in a five gallon drum that you can provide them with.

All the best..mark

Reply to
mark

Filter out the fluff from the clothes too...cotton/nylon/wool fragments etc.

In particular, nylon dissolves very nicely in sulphuric acid so you wouldn't really want to add much of that to your battery!

Regards, Tony

Reply to
Tony Jeffree

I suspect filtering is necessary because of the small amount of fluffy looking stuff that is observable in the collected water from my dryer. I decided not to use it for a steam iron or battery top ups. YMMV.

--=20 brightside S9=20

Reply to
brightside

The water from my dehumidifier condenses onto a tray that is plumbed to an outside drain. It is not uncommon for enough dust to have settled on the tray for it to block the 1/2" exit so I wouldn't use the water myself for much other than putting out fires!

AWEM

Reply to
Andrew Mawson

Ill do some tests on it then. seems a shame if its not useable, as there is lots of it, and I know our tap water scales kettles really badly.

Dave

Reply to
david.sanderson

"Mark Rand" wrote >

I've been using water from my condenser drier for some months, just filtered, so I wondered, Conductivity:- Tap 7.7 Mohm, drier water 32 Mohm for comparison - my wet fingers 5 Mohm

Evaporitave (25ml):- Tap 0.014g residue, drier 0.005g (yes I can weigh that accurately, sad isn't it?)

All averages of 3 readings.

Mind you mine collects in a big tank at the top of the drier that is safe from airborne contamination.

YMMV

Reply to
Andy Parker

Ive not had a chance to try any tests, but from an "inspection" (dont tell SWMBO) the water cannot get directly to the tank, it has to evaporate, pass through 2 or 3 fluff filter units, and then enters the condenser box, which is multibaffelled ally, with 2 seperated airflows, one for the moist air, and the other for the cooling air. thence from the condenser it drains into a tank at the bottom, possibly through another wet filter (its only 9 months old, didnt want to poke to much...) The end tank is sealed, with a hozelock type connector. no fluff in the tank, and I can see there being much if any detergant carry over.

Dave

Reply to
david.sanderson

PolyTech Forum website is not affiliated with any of the manufacturers or service providers discussed here. All logos and trade names are the property of their respective owners.