A Double Whammy

Hello…Piper’s,
 
My apologies, first. This In The Pipe, in large part, is the result of the recent wildfires in Southern California and to a lesser degree: a inherent interest in distilling water and a ‘shout-out’ for a fantastic opportunity. As a former municipal fireman and a youth victim of home fire, what has recently transpired in Los Angeles and Ventura Counties is hard for me to ‘envision’. I refrain from observing the ‘visual media’ covering these events. Too uncomfortable. Like once breathing the smoke from a house fire—it drills it’s way into your brain and never leaves. It’s always waiting to disrupt your senses. Remembrances and/or reoccurring visual media accounts can bring it on, that sudden fright, the attack on your olfactory ‘peace’. There may be a reader who feels something similar. If it be, the author tips his hat.  
  
Now/But
 
What got Pete ‘off the couch’, (this time) to steal your time is: he feels duty-bound to tell his readers (especially anyone who lost a home in the recent Southern California wildfires) about an especially important, mobile source of super clean drinking water. It is an ‘appliance’ meant for the moment!  It seems in these modern times that the public is constantly learning there are what seems to be an ever growing number of health damaging compounds being discovered in our “tap” water. (You will read below about the newly published warnings of the damaging effects of wildfires on drinking water infrastructure.) The public has also been learning (for some time) that some offerings of “bottled water” (especially in plastic) are no better or even inferior to tap water.
 
*In upstream Pipe’s Pete the Plumber made some recommendations for a couple of “tabletop” water distillers (in his opinion the choicest method of cleaning water). The author was pleased recently to see his distiller choices championed by a rating agency. ‘Our’ choices operate on 110/120 volts, A/C. If a person/family had about a thousand bucks to spend Pete would still say: “Buy them.”  But what about the rest of us?  Well, Pete the Plumber believes there is an equitable answer. And that answer is Kitchen Crop’s ‘stovetop’ water distiller. (Photo 1)  

Photo 1: Kitchen Crop’s Water Distiller: This stovetop distiller uses no moving parts or expensive replacement filters. Photo Credit: Kitchen Crop

It operates on gas and electric powered cooktops (and Grandma’s old wood burner and your Coleman camp stove). That is important: you have several choices for energizing this still. This lends a hand when there’s a need but no electric service, maybe due to a calamity outage?  The most important aspect of the Kitchen Crop (yours truly considers) is the affordability and performance. You get abundant supply and it ‘doesn’t break the bank’.
  
Besides That
 
This drinking water still is an efficient one, operates with ease, and provides its owner with life’s most basic need: safe drinking water. The unfortunate fire victims of Southern California (as most all of us are) were already poisoned with micro-plastics and “forever chemicals” via our drinking water. (Which distillation but not necessarily filtration removes). That was the 1st Whammy, the plastics industry. Now, the 2nd Whammy: Post wild fires (and because of), we learn other terribly harmful ‘agents’ have been released and threaten the safety of area fresh water supplies. Some ‘for-the-layperson’ explanations of this threat are:
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1. O circle of blue where water speaks “What’s Up With Water” 12/21/2020 (www.circleofblue.org/2020/world/plastic-pipes-a-water-contamination-risk-after-fire-data-shows/ ) also
2. theconversation.com’s “Wildfires are contaminating drinking water systems, and it’s more widespread than people realize” is another good one (theconversation.com/wildfires-are-contaminating-drinking-water-systems-and-its-more-widespread-than-people-realize-159527) and
3. the Google answer to the author’s question: “Was underground plastic potable water pipe damaged in the L. A. Fires?” Their “AI Overview”: “Yes, underground plastic piping in Los Angeles can be damaged during wildfires…”  

​Can?  Plastic water lines 5 feet deep in the ground burned and melted during the Camp Fire in Paradise, CA. (And many a foot of the stuff also failed in the SoCal fires which in time will need to be replaced, causing a high number of pipe industry ‘advisors’ paying visits to California Building Departments.)  And whether communities re-pipe with plastic or copper (water quality the wildcard) will have far reaching health effects. 

These horrendous wildfires however represent a never more appropriate matching of one particular need and its solution. The simple, Kitchen Crop three-piece, all-stainless steel water distiller (Photo’s 2, 3 & 4)  from Amazon.com could, one: make life safer for those living in these fire areas as the re-build phase gets underway and two: it can provide all of us with the safest, ample amounts of the purest drinking water easily available, now and every day with no filter required!  

Photo 2: Simple/ portable/ nesting/ all-stainless construction. Photo Credit: Amazon.com

Photo 3: Only 3 basic components Photo Credit: Amazon.com

Photo 4: The secret “workings” is the condenser pan’s ‘funnel’. Photo Credit: Amazon.com

As we learn by ‘Googling’ the topic, distillation removes more impurity’s (including) PFAS’s, and, even the best filtration system (R/O) (reverse osmosis) can leave behind some PFAS’s and other bad guys. The low cost of Kitchen Crop’s distiller, the simple design, using no expensive filters and usable on any cooktop—gas or electric (or Grandma’s wood stove) can get almost anyone interested in producing distilled waters, into the game of better health. Pete says: “Get one. Enjoy one. And, have ‘exact space’ for, in your “family preparedness trunk” (which yours truly does).
 
 
Until Next Time
​PtP