So will this... (water purification)

Always interesting to rediscover what was already known for hundreds or even thousands of years.

How 19 Beavers Turned Utah’s Dying Desert River Into a Thriving Oasis

8/22/26:

Beavers in Arizona??? I'm not talking about Flagstaff, but down near Mexico. Yes, and even INTO Mexico.

How about dem apples?

6/3/26:



Beavers and buffalo---two critters that could help transform that area into productive land. Or so I think.

Trouble is, getting them there.

Mar 23, 2026:

There are plenty of these beaver videos. A glance of the comments shows some negativity about this particular video. Nevertheless, it will be embedded here as an example of what may be possible out in West Texas. The video mentioned some studies of how to use beavers in other areas. Which opens up the question of whether or not any such study for West Texas.

There are a lot of stock tanks out there. What if a small colony were to be set up around these stock tanks? Would they survive? Would it improve the area?

Mixed reviews for this video

A short survey of the comments reveals a dislike of this video.

Personally, I didn't like the use of gasoline for the eventual use of it for gardening.

Also, there may be a problem with heavy rains overloading the system.

Anyway, if you have a lots of time to waste, why not watch it?

Heh. I mean, I DID.

Making activated carbon

2/18/26:

This is a great blog. It really is. It is very un-appreciated, I can tell you that.

If I put all these ideas, and condensed them into a a single plan, then that would really be something.

But would people actually do any of that?

It doesn't matter. I could make money, but it wouldn't work because people wouldn't do any of it.

People want their free lunches.

That's the problem.

Life has gotten so easy that these people think that that's the only way for everything to be, and when it isn't, they get upset.

If it's worthwhile, it probably isn't going to be easy.

People need to be motivated.

They're not. But evil never needs motivation. That's another problem.



3/27/19:

From charcoal.

This could be useful in water purification.

Crazy idea has a certain charm to it

7/17/25:

 

My hometown is Houston, and there's an inland port that goes all the way into downtown. Or it once did. Back around the time the Panama Canal opened, the Houston Ship Channel was dredged out to within a few miles of downtown.

I recall seeing an old picture of a ship at dock in downtown Houston, with visible landmarks like the Harris County Courthouse in evidence. The pic I recall was about the time the Canal opened. If you go down to Allen's Landing, you can see where the ships tied up. It looks really different down there.

 

The Ship Channel is one of those interesting ideas that is somewhat like the outback sea idea. How so? You could use tides and such to keep it filled, and to replenish the water a bit so that it won't get so alkaline.

The idea is to dredge a very large pool, in which the tides can overflow, but can only channel back out through a narrow opening. In this way, large amounts of water can be impounded behind a type of dam that can be overflowed during high tide, and re-emerge during low tides, with the water rushing out through the channel.

 

Fresh water can be captured in dams as well in order to provide additional flushing. This is kind of the way the Houston Ship Channel Works. Houston is 50 feet above sea level. How do you get ships up stream, except some way to impound a lot of water to keep them afloat?

The outback sea will require a lot more water than the Houston Ship Channel. You would definitely need a LOT.

 

There are flood control dams in Houston. It rains a lot in Houston, and so I am to understand, does the Australian northern shores. Rainfall will help provide water, but there may need to be much, much more to make a really large lake so far inland.

 

7/15/25:

There's at least a couple videos like this one on the subject of the inland sea down under. Now they've got me thinking about it!

 

What if you could use the natural tidal action and siphoning effect to move massive amounts of water for long distances?

Here's the other video:

Would this work in high humidity, without a fog?

Then you'd have a universal water production device. Having to wait for a fog may cause it to have limited usefulness.

Took down the water filtration

It's pretty rainy lately. There's not much sun to power the dehumidifier.

So, I took it down the water filtration. Some of the set up for the solar power to the dehumidifier was taken down too. In other words, there's no power connection to run the dehumidifier, except from the grid.

The solar power station is still there. But there's not much reason to use it. It doesn't put out that much power. The dehumidifier was the only thing worth running, but it has no real job to do now.

I'll have to think up something else.

Trying the new schedule

9/1/24; 3:45 PM

It didn't last for the full three hours. The battery wasn't fully charged, and it was too discharged to continue for the last half hour.

There was plenty of water in the bucket, and it is still being consumed by the evaporative cooler as I type this. It was about as much as I had predicted.

Today was mostly cloudy, so the battery may not get fully charged. Tomorrow, I've got other things to do. So nothing tomorrow on schedule. That didn't last long.





7:13 AM

Gonna run it from 6:30 AM to 9:30 AM. Didn't get started early enough to do the 6 AM time schedule.

There were nearly 2 gallons in the bucket this morning. Happens every time I run the evaporative cooler. That proves it is mostly coming from inside. Add that to the half gallon I collected yesterday while making the run. Nearly three gallons total. By the way, I saw another way to treat water with reverse osmosis. It looks like a good deal, but it costs a lot. There's always a catch.

Anyway, with this schedule, the solar panels will get nearly an entire day's worth of light to recharge. It doesn't get enough light earlier because the sun isn't high enough to stop casting shadows over the panels. It gets light earlier, but not very much.

Integrated the system

Another 3 hour run. This time with the new inverter, which didn't make a difference.

By integration, I mean that the water goes into a closed loop. It is collected and reused, over and over. At least that is the goal.

Problems along the way have interfered with the system being implemented on an operational basis. It is still experimental. It may always be that way because this really isn't worth much, as we'll see.

There are only a few hours each day to gather the solar power that will run the system. It may be best to start before daylight so that the amount of water collected is maximized. Perhaps 6 AM to 9 AM would be best. The ending time is about the beginning time when the solar power can be collected in order to recharge the battery.

The condensing part will continue with the mini-split after the dehumifier run in the morning. The mini-split can collect more water than the dehumifier because it is more powerful. The evaporative cooler will run with the water that will come from the previous day's collection from the mini-split, plus any water that was collected from the dehumidifier run early in the morning.

All together, I may collect close to three gallons of water per day. That will run the evaporative cooler for several hours. The late afternoon will probably not have any assistance from the evaporative cooler. It will dry out the inside, and it will go into the collection can outside where the mini-split works, to be used the next day.

So there's the system, for what it is worth. What's it worth? Probably not much. It may not save but a few pennies worth of electricity each day. It's not at all economical. But it's "green". How lovely. The water gets used over and over. How admirable.

The water would be worth more with some other use, but this is sufficient for now. Water on the desert is priceless. Or the same if the water service is disrupted in the city. So there's that going for it.

Experiments are hitting a snag

8/26/24, 7:01 AM



There haven't been updates for the last few days. Writing a blog has to be a habit, otherwise, the outcome is like before. The blog gets neglected.

Let's not make that mistake again.

Work continues, despite the lack of blogging. It seems that my mosquito control needed a part, so I got it. However, I noticed when I put it in, which is a screen, that my plastic water receptacle broke. The trouble is that it was leaking all over the place, as opposed to leaking into the bucket like I wanted it to.

I tried repairing the old Frisbee. The Frisbee is turned upside down, which allows it to collect water. I cut a notch into the side of the Frisbee, so it would leak out and into the bucket. Alas, the Frisbee cracked. That's what happens with plastic. It gets old, and it cracks easily.

I used some Flexiseal to repair the crack, but it didn't work. This morning, there was water all over the place again, as the Frisbee is leaking where I don't want it to.

I may have to engineer a new receptacle that is like a Frisbee if this thing isn't repairable.

Thing is, I need it to rest on two by fours that the weight of the sand and pebble mixture that makes up the bulk of the home-made water-filtration device. It sits on top of the 5 gallon bucket which collects the filtered water. This is one heavy mother with all that wet sand and pebbles inside of the other 5 gallon bucket being used to house the filter.

In short, this isn't going smoothly.

As for the solar power aspect, I am running another experiment. That's not going like I'd like either. It seems that I gather plenty of power, but there's not enough ways to get use out of it. Dehumidifying and collecting the water will use up the battery for sure, so that leaves out climate control. Now I'm just gathering water with the excess power. And not much water at that. Power is only "excess", because there's not enough power to run the mini-split.

10:43 AM

The fix using flexiseal is working after an adjustment in its position. A four hour run with the dehumidifier on and the swamper off produced NO WATER. It doesn't seem worth it to use it in the summer. Maybe the winter.

Another run with solar powered dehumifier

8/20/24:

Running this again, but it looks like the same thing. So, I need to make a change.

It needs a ventilation tube custom built to attach to the dehumidifier. Then, the window needs to be fixed up so that the ventilation tube connects directly with it. Otherwise, partially opening the window in order to let the hot air out isn't going to work very well. This is very inefficient, I suspect.

The battery is holding up well. At 4 hours, it was still going strong. I'm going to go for 5 hours this time. The test is still ongoing as I write this. About 9 minutes to go. Incidentally, this easily could be the hottest day of the year so far. I saw a forecast for a high of 106. Don't know if we're there right now, though. Quick update: Nope. It's 104.

8/18/24: This time I ran it over 4 hours. The dehumidifier didn't pull out that much water inside, so that may explain the long lasting run.

I monitored the battery, expecting it to run out of juice after about 3 hrs, like it has been doing. Since it lasted a lot longer, and seemed far away from being fully discharged, I have to scratch my head and wonder what was the difference this time?

If it didn't pull out much water, then maybe it was because it wasn't running the compressor. If it wasn't running the compressor that much, then the battery would last longer.

Not too sure why it wasn't pulling the water out. I collected but a small amount during the 4 hour run.

The read out on the dehumifier said low humidity. But the evaporative cooler, aka swamp cooler, was running. The fans should have recirculated it back to the device, so it should have pulled out more.

Mainly, I'm just happy that the thing didn't run the battery down fast like the last time. The solar panels have been charging that battery for several days with no load on the battery. Maybe it hasn't been fully charged until now.

If it isn't fully charged now, then it will never be. Perhaps that explains the long longetivity. Like I said, I don't know why it lasted 4 hours plus, and could have lasted longer.

Water filtration

Up until now, I haven't used any activated charcoal or carbon or whatever this stuff is. The idea here is to remove anything that might have gotten in that the dehumification may have put into the water. Perhaps it is some sort of volatile stuff that may have gotten into the water. Hopefully, the activated carbon will take that stuff out.

There is no plan against the mosquito larvae except to look out for them once I get the filtered water out. The filtered water goes into a 5 gallon bucket, and is pumped out by an electric pump placed inside of it. Stuff is stacked above it, so it is a pain in the butt to take all that down and clean out the bucket. Eventually, I will need a screen to place over it so that it will keep the mosquitoes out, so they won't be able to lay their eggs there.

The screen will go on the shopping list, along with the materials I will need for my lean-to shack outside.

One hazard to look out for

Mosquitoes. They are attracted to standing water, and will lay their eggs in it. I found some mosquito larvae in the filtered water, which is not good. I wonder now if I have imported any of these into the swamp cooler inside. After today, I will drain the cooler, and then there will be no doubt. Too bad I didn't think of this first this morning. The cooler is filled to the brim with water collected and filtered outside. Woof.

Perhaps a screen will keep them out. It is hard to see how they could get in, but they are small and resourceful little critters.

Yesterday, the experiment resulted in over 3 gallons of water collected. That's amazing.

However, no solar power was used. In order to gather this much, the batteries and the number of panels must be increased. Not interested in spending more money on this. That leaves me with a problem. There's enough power to do this much, but it isn't enough to make the whole thing solar powered.

It would cost hundreds of dollars to get it to that point, and I'm just not that interested.

Can MIT Breakthrough Save Us?

Unlimited Fresh Water: Can MIT's Breakthrough Save Us? https://t.co/MDYWYmoHs8 via @YouTube Comment: Another youtuber describes this as a type of photoelectric effect.

— BootsandOil (@BootsandO6892) July 25, 2024

The post order is back assward. I saw the following video first, then clicked on the link that brought me to the link above within the tweet.

Water is very important to my project. So this got my attention.

off-grid post 1.29.20

It has rained a lot this winter.  Actually, this isn't much of a winter.  Very mild, but
rainy.  It has given me a lot of practice with my water capture techniques.  Water filtration
has been practiced on other occasions.  As a matter of fact, the best system would be to
capture the water and then use a powered filtration system to clean the rainwater.  The
water that you can capture is still going to have dirt and whatnot in it.  It may also
have bad stuff in it, so it needs to be cleaner yet before it can be said to be potable.

A Berkey filtration system can take some water like that and finish the job.  For an extra
measure of safety, you can add some chemical treatment to it.  No need to get sick from
the water.

Therefore, if there's rain, I can capture "enough".

Trouble is, out there it can be very, very dry.  I need to check and see what kind of winter
they have had out there.  In the first three years, I watched this stuff like a hawk,
but in the last two or three winters, I have not watched it much at all.

Back to the weather:  it has rained so much out here this winter, I haven't any place to
put this water.  I don't have the filtration system in place, so mostly, I just dump
the water.  It seems like a terrible waste.  You learn to appreciate something you have
to work hard to obtain.

Hour shower

Comment:

This is a nifty little set up.  It will recirculate shower water over and over giving you a good shower with only a small amount of water.  At least, that is what the claim is.

Actually, this set up may be useful for cleaning up rainwater that you may have collected.  The water I collect doesn't look all that good.  It has to be filtered in order to be useful.  Well, this system has a filter that supposedly works pretty good.  Certainly it should be good enough to clean up some rainwater.

Interesting idea.

Rainwater Harvesting

When I mentioned this idea to a guy out near my property, he just laughed.  Evidently, the neighbor didn't think much of the idea.

The guy here in this video is in Arizona.  It may be drier there than in West Texas.  This dude has thousands and thousands of gallons of capacity.  He has that much because he may have to go for months at a time without rain.  The climate out there may be similar to West Texas, so that may be what I'll have to do.

Purify sea water with primitive tech

A setup similar to this can be employed with a rocket stove, seen in the previous video.

He uses a clay in order to make his stove.




Update:

Another water distillation idea using two bottles.

Old dog learning new tricks

One of the goals of living out in the desert is to use the least amount of water possible.

Today, I tried an experiment in cooking.  This method of cooking isn't new to me, but what is new is how I did it.  I adapted it to something that I have done before.  The result wasn't that bad, and may be adaptable to more dishes.

Anyway, here's what I did.  I took some meat and put it into some aluminum foil.  In addition to that, I took some frozen french fries, and also put it into some aluminum foil.  However, they are separate from each other.  I put both of these pieces of aluminum wrapped around some frozen food into a pot with a lid.  The pot was put on a stove at the lowest or nearly the lowest setting.  I let it cook for thirty minutes, and voila--- a meal.

The advantage to this is that it doesn't make a mess that requires a lot of water to clean up.  No dishes to wash, in other words.  The aluminum foil might be reusable for something else, or it can be thrown out.

So, at the cost of NO water, I was able to cook a meal.  Instead of water, it cost some aluminum foil, which might be usable for some other purpose.

These kinds of methods have allowed me to cut my water usage down to nearly nothing besides drinking water. 

However, in the summer, I will need plenty of water for the "swamp" cooler.  What I am saying is that I think I can reach the goal of five gallons of water per day or less.  Even in the summer.  At peak usage, I can get about an hour for a gallon of water.  If I stretch it, I may get a bit more.  That should be close to enough.

But I am always thinking up new ideas like this.  It may be possible to recapture some of this water using the dehumidifier.  However, that takes a lot of energy.  This could be a topic for another post.

 

Boots and Oil Blog: Plenty wet around here due to rain

Boots and Oil Blog: Plenty wet around here due to rain: There was a shortage of water, now there is more water than I know what to do with. I found another thing I could do with all this rainwat…

comment:

This is cross posted from the other blog.

It has a place here because it is related to what I am attempting to do with my off-grid project.  I need to become expert at the use of water, and this is good practice.

Out west, there is a lot less water.  But if I play my cards right, I might well have all the water I need even out there.