Your buddy Rick is a genius if he came up with the idea of getting water from a dehumidifier! This is the first time I've ever heard of that, and I'm really glad I watched this video. I might even try it out someday.good to know . And your nice system can run it no problem.👍I love people who think outside the box !
Super excited to see the whole process go forward. Always great to have alternatives esp leveraging solar. Love it and thanks for the kind words and everything. Aloha.
We have a septic system and only send our pee and gray water into it. we use a urine diverting toilet and compost the solids. we do this and have unlimited water. Our toilet is DIY very inexpensive to make, but looks great.
I may go back to composting toilet. Used one for my entire time in the mountains where water was like gold...rare. It worked well, and if things don't change here, I'll be back on one of those. Aloha!🤙
Great idea. I would have never thought of using a dehumidifier for that. Interesting to see how well it works. You live in paradise. Looks beautiful there
I'm fired up about getting this going now! I can for sure add water to the system this way. Hopefully be up and running in a week or so. Yes, I am always grateful for living in such a beautiful place. Aloha! 🤙
I think the Midea Cube is a good dehumidifier it even has a water hose to drain into any container - from what I've heard about dehumidifiers is the more watts is uses the more water it generates. its pretty much a mini air conditioner, you might even be able to look up their a/c units to cool your house and collect the condensation water from the a/c unit - the U-Shape a/c cools my room and always seems to drain lots water outside.
with the DE-humidifiers mount them high to gravity feed into a holding tank. them you can use a 12V Shure flow pump to feed toilet . I have a RV fresh water tank with 12V pump as my back up water supply. I use on demand pump. comes on when main pump pressor drops . also have one way check valve so not to back feed main system. never has to use it yet. but ready . testing was easy. just shut main pump off. I use PEX pipe hear so was easy to add it in. most of my fittings are shark-bite so easy on and off . love them. home depot has them. no leaks eater. no crimp no glue. just works.
I love all those ideas Robert! Gonna grab a larger containment system for the de-humidifier water. Let the excess solar work on it everyday feasible. I will just run a shur flo 12v from there to bathroom. Easy to do. Great advice as always! Mahalo!🤙
The dehumidifier idea is freaking genius!!! I had a small one So my clothing wouldn't get dank in the winter. Mainly towels, nobody wants to gat dat Howlly rot😂.. I couldn't keep up with emptying it.🤣🤙 Necessity is the mother of Invention.
Brother... 96% humidity right now and zero rain. I'm going to at the very least harvest utility water straight form the solar excess and a humidifier. I'm super excited! Driest I've personally seen here in nearly 20 years. Aloha!🤙
Another benefit of using a air conditioner type dehumidifier is you're running I believe butane through a compressor and that does if vented correctly provide a little bit of air conditioning
De-humidifier is a great idea. I've heard of new technology coming along that can pull water out of the air in desert regions of the world. Amazing. Perhaps increasing your solar production to run multiple de-humidifiers would do the trick. Desperate times, desperate measures!
That's it my friend! Trying to stay flexible to whatever may be. I've heard of that in the desert to. Should work great out here in the humidity! Aloha!🤙
If this weather trend continues Hawaii may need to run solar on a VERY large scale and begin desalinating that unlimited supply of the salty water ya'll have on hand!@@ProjectsinParadise808
So cheapest way to get extra water would be a tarp hung up and down to catch rain dew in morning i was able to collect 7 gallons a day for a 10ft wide by 4ft special tarp with a gutter underneath it i wish you the best in this dry time for you if it helps i could send out a material i use to collect dew from works amazing. I emailed you a little bit ago write back and ill send a couple out there a new concept ive been designing and would prefer you dont film them is all i ask in return until we release it.
Untill I bought a pump-up dehumidifier I used to hate going to the basement “everyday” to dump the water out of the dehumidifier 😢. You look it up “not cheap I’m sure” They make outdoor units just for that. I have not read it takes any a/c?
My midea brand draws around 350 but there is no surge . I have a larger ge model that draws 2000 watts on start up. Midea products are proving to be very solar friendly.
I think I've settled on the Midea 50 pint...says it draws 450watts. I can work with that, and program to my conditions. I'm getting excited for this new way of harvesting utility water. Aloha!🤙
Have you considered a heat pump water heater? I'm on grid in hpp, and my heat pump water heater condenses a lot of water out of the atmosphere, keeping my downstairs dry and cool.
Have you considered rerunning the wastewater back through the filter system and getting some more out of it? Also have you considered switching to a composting toilet, that would have two benefits one no more water for the toilet and two it would biodegrade better than going into the cesspit
I lived on composting toilet the whole time in the mountains, and it made all the difference on water usage in that arid climate. I am considering now getting another one. It's only in past year or so that the rain here is more inconsistent enough to make me think of it. Always have had excess water. So ...maybe go back to composter, which will actually work way better here than in cold climate. Those microbes slow way down if they get cold. Aloha G!🤙
I didn't even consider the humidifier there was a company that was saying they could pull water out of are out in the desert by using dehumidifiers and a large solar array and that turned out to be snake oil. They never admitted that they were using a dehumidifier and that that water is not safe to drink... But if you're just getting a cheap $150 dehumidifier and you're going to use it for utility water and not consumption that is a very good idea as long as you know what you're getting yourself into
Yeah, right now my thinking is just making utility water with excess solar. Not a huge investment, and I could really stack that up pretty quick. Of course if we get back to normal rain, I'll be whining about that too! Haha! Aloha!🤙
Three, or four, or half-a-dozen of those de-humidifiers dedicated to replenishment of the catchment tank and started (or not) as needed during high solar hours of the day would likely give you the backup and redundancy needed for your essentials and a lot of peace-of-mind and maybe some emergency water for a neighbor who is in dire need, too, IMHO. Prayers for some rain. 🤙🐫🍍
So dry for here it's really got me thinking. I agree with you, once I have it all set up, everyday I have excess power I'll be adding water to the equation. We are typically the wettest place in the island chain here, but wow, so dry now. And what happened in Maui we can't forget. Even drier there buy quite a lot. Aloha!
The PH should be neutral so using it for toilet flushing should be fine. Hmm. Yes, definitely avoid drinking it. Mainly because dehumidifiers that are not designed for drinking water production will leech chemicals from the plastics and/or metals into the condensate, and possibly also harbor bacteria once the unit gets grungy. I have no idea what models are available but I'll bet other people can make good suggestions. If you can find something decent that runs on DC power you might be able to automate operation using the LOAD output from one of your Victrons so it only runs when excess solar is available. I've heard that low-power DC dehumidifiers are just thermal devices and not very efficient (i.e. they aren't heat pumps). But if it produces water, it produces water. If not, then powering from an inverter. But I dunno. I don't know much at all about dehumidifiers. -- There are lots of other cool ways to control the sucker. For example, if you want to run it from a 24V or 48V house system but the unit is 12V, then you can use a cheap DC-to-DC converter. However, those tend to be really inefficient so my preference is to actually use another Victron 75/15 as a DC-to-DC converter for 24-to-12. Or a victron 100/20 as a DC-to-DC converter that can do 24-to-12 or 48-to-12 or 48-to-24. Basically HOUSE 24V/48V goes into the SOLAR input, and BAT output is connected to the load. Though you might also need a little buffer battery (20Ah minimum) on the BAT output to make it robust. You can reduce unnecessary cycling that way too by using the LOAD output to only turn it on when the buffer battery is full, then let it deplete the buffer battery all the way to empty. And you can give it an energy budget by limiting the Victron's charge rate. Of course, that's me going a bit hog-wild. I managed to spend $170 of your money just on the additional Victron and buffer battery, never mind anything else! -Matt
Haha! I love all those ideas! I have an extra 75/15 so may give that a whirl as you described. I would not have thought of that. I got extra batteries to play with so that shouldn't be any problem. I am going to get a de-humidifier see if that can make up the shortfall lately. If gets worse, I'll go back to composting toilet. That made all the difference in Colorado, where water was harder to come by. Hoping for one good rain. I can be flush again in no time...but mercy it's dry out here. Aloha! Appreciate the feedback!🤙
@@ProjectsinParadise808 I did some quick research. There seem to be three types of dehumidifers: * Ultra cheap ones use a Peltier cooler to directly condense water from air. However, these only produce milli-liters of water a day. They extremely inefficient. * Heat pump systems (compressor, condensor, evaporation) designed for dehumidification. However, these are less common now, apparently. * Desiccant-based dehumidification. Basically uses a material that soaks water up out of the air and then passes heated air over it to make it condense the water and drip it out. Or something like that. The good ones appear to be desiccant based and can produce 2-5 gallons of water a day in decent humidity. You will probably want to find a desiccant based dehumidifier. -- Yah, I love playing with those Victron charge controllers. They can really do a lot of things beyond just solar. There are two limitations to the LOAD port. For 12V/24V systems the load port can handle up to 20A. But on 48V systems the load port can only handle 1A and is supposed to be used to drive a relay or external switch instead of passing the power directly. (The reason for this is that the little dinky FET in the Victron charge controllers will overheat trying to switch 48V on and off). The second limitation is that big surges, such as turning on an inverter (which surges due to the inverter's large input capacitors)... that will cause the Victron to shut the port down for a minute or two then try again. So it doesn't work with certain kinds of loads.
How interesting. What is your average humidity? We are around 13-30% at any given time. And can no way use a reverse osmosis because of not enough water from the well. Finding great interesting info from the comments.
This evening at bedtime it's 96%. Very comfortable. Not sticky humid at all. But with 96% , I am going to start sucking water out of the air immediately! The lightbulb just went on.🤙
Your buddy Rick is a genius if he came up with the idea of getting water from a dehumidifier! This is the first time I've ever heard of that, and I'm really glad I watched this video. I might even try it out someday.good to know . And your nice system can run it no problem.👍I love people who think outside the box !
If you can get water from the ocean a solar still will make you clean drinking water free.
Another great idea for me to research, and consider! Mahalo!
Genius idea 👍
Super excited to see the whole process go forward. Always great to have alternatives esp leveraging solar. Love it and thanks for the kind words and everything. Aloha.
Aloha my brother!🤙
We have a septic system and only send our pee and gray water into it. we use a urine diverting toilet and compost the solids. we do this and have unlimited water. Our toilet is DIY very inexpensive to make, but looks great.
Something like this would save a great amount of water
I may go back to composting toilet. Used one for my entire time in the mountains where water was like gold...rare. It worked well, and if things don't change here, I'll be back on one of those. Aloha!🤙
🤙
Great idea. I would have never thought of using a dehumidifier for that. Interesting to see how well it works. You live in paradise.
Looks beautiful there
I'm fired up about getting this going now! I can for sure add water to the system this way. Hopefully be up and running in a week or so. Yes, I am always grateful for living in such a beautiful place. Aloha! 🤙
I think the Midea Cube is a good dehumidifier it even has a water hose to drain into any container - from what I've heard about dehumidifiers is the more watts is uses the more water it generates. its pretty much a mini air conditioner, you might even be able to look up their a/c units to cool your house and collect the condensation water from the a/c unit - the U-Shape a/c cools my room and always seems to drain lots water outside.
Dehumidifier
Would work great in the tropics I would imagine. I will be waiting to see how it works for u mate 👍
Sitting here at 96% humidity at the moment and no rain. Time to suck that out of the air that surrounds me. It's going to happen. Aloha!🤙
Thanks for the update
You bet! Aloha🤙
with the DE-humidifiers mount them high to gravity feed into a holding tank. them you can use a 12V Shure flow pump to feed toilet . I have a RV fresh water tank with 12V pump as my back up water supply. I use on demand pump. comes on when main pump pressor drops . also have one way check valve so not to back feed main system. never has to use it yet. but ready . testing was easy. just shut main pump off. I use PEX pipe hear so was easy to add it in. most of my fittings are shark-bite so easy on and off . love them. home depot has them. no leaks eater. no crimp no glue. just works.
I love all those ideas Robert! Gonna grab a larger containment system for the de-humidifier water. Let the excess solar work on it everyday feasible. I will just run a shur flo 12v from there to bathroom. Easy to do. Great advice as always! Mahalo!🤙
The dehumidifier idea is freaking genius!!! I had a small one So my clothing wouldn't get dank in the winter. Mainly towels, nobody wants to gat dat Howlly rot😂.. I couldn't keep up with emptying it.🤣🤙 Necessity is the mother of Invention.
Brother... 96% humidity right now and zero rain. I'm going to at the very least harvest utility water straight form the solar excess and a humidifier. I'm super excited! Driest I've personally seen here in nearly 20 years. Aloha!🤙
@@ProjectsinParadise808Do you research.Don't pull the trigger to early.. You know how the game works don't get took😂🤙
Good Evening ! Sounds like great ideas. TAKE CARE..
Mahalo!🤙
Thanks, never thought about that. Don't need water here. 👍🏻
My pleasure! Yeah, in past 16 years I could always say the same thing. But now is different. So, adapt I must. Aloha!🤙
Another benefit of using a air conditioner type dehumidifier is you're running I believe butane through a compressor and that does if vented correctly provide a little bit of air conditioning
🤙
De-humidifier is a great idea. I've heard of new technology coming along that can pull water out of the air in desert regions of the world. Amazing. Perhaps increasing your solar production to run multiple de-humidifiers would do the trick. Desperate times, desperate measures!
That's it my friend! Trying to stay flexible to whatever may be. I've heard of that in the desert to. Should work great out here in the humidity! Aloha!🤙
If this weather trend continues Hawaii may need to run solar on a VERY large scale and begin desalinating that unlimited supply of the salty water ya'll have on hand!@@ProjectsinParadise808
So cheapest way to get extra water would be a tarp hung up and down to catch rain dew in morning i was able to collect 7 gallons a day for a 10ft wide by 4ft special tarp with a gutter underneath it i wish you the best in this dry time for you if it helps i could send out a material i use to collect dew from works amazing. I emailed you a little bit ago write back and ill send a couple out there a new concept ive been designing and would prefer you dont film them is all i ask in return until we release it.
Untill I bought a pump-up dehumidifier I used to hate going to the basement “everyday” to dump the water out of the dehumidifier 😢. You look it up “not cheap I’m sure” They make outdoor units just for that. I have not read it takes any a/c?
My midea brand draws around 350 but there is no surge . I have a larger ge model that draws 2000 watts on start up. Midea products are proving to be very solar friendly.
I think I've settled on the Midea 50 pint...says it draws 450watts. I can work with that, and program to my conditions. I'm getting excited for this new way of harvesting utility water. Aloha!🤙
Have you considered a heat pump water heater? I'm on grid in hpp, and my heat pump water heater condenses a lot of water out of the atmosphere, keeping my downstairs dry and cool.
Have you considered rerunning the wastewater back through the filter system and getting some more out of it?
Also have you considered switching to a composting toilet, that would have two benefits one no more water for the toilet and two it would biodegrade better than going into the cesspit
I lived on composting toilet the whole time in the mountains, and it made all the difference on water usage in that arid climate. I am considering now getting another one. It's only in past year or so that the rain here is more inconsistent enough to make me think of it. Always have had excess water. So ...maybe go back to composter, which will actually work way better here than in cold climate. Those microbes slow way down if they get cold. Aloha G!🤙
Bob evwr thaught going into town and buying some water and putting in the tank for everything you need
In tough times , I would do that sistah! Going to try to suck that water out of the air first. Can't wait to show you! Aloha!🤙
I didn't even consider the humidifier there was a company that was saying they could pull water out of are out in the desert by using dehumidifiers and a large solar array and that turned out to be snake oil. They never admitted that they were using a dehumidifier and that that water is not safe to drink...
But if you're just getting a cheap $150 dehumidifier and you're going to use it for utility water and not consumption that is a very good idea as long as you know what you're getting yourself into
Yeah, right now my thinking is just making utility water with excess solar. Not a huge investment, and I could really stack that up pretty quick. Of course if we get back to normal rain, I'll be whining about that too! Haha! Aloha!🤙
Three, or four, or half-a-dozen of those de-humidifiers dedicated to replenishment of the catchment tank and started (or not) as needed during high solar hours of the day would likely give you the backup and redundancy needed for your essentials and a lot of peace-of-mind and maybe some emergency water for a neighbor who is in dire need, too, IMHO. Prayers for some rain. 🤙🐫🍍
So dry for here it's really got me thinking. I agree with you, once I have it all set up, everyday I have excess power I'll be adding water to the equation. We are typically the wettest place in the island chain here, but wow, so dry now. And what happened in Maui we can't forget. Even drier there buy quite a lot. Aloha!
Wow!
How do you have a drought in a tropical climate 🤔?
Right!?! 🤙
Look up passive air water collection. No watts needed
You know I'm going to look that up!🤙
My advice is put a tarp out catch the dew at night litterly build it over your water tank and your water tank will always be over filling
Another great idea! Mahalo!🤙
The PH should be neutral so using it for toilet flushing should be fine. Hmm. Yes, definitely avoid drinking it. Mainly because dehumidifiers that are not designed for drinking water production will leech chemicals from the plastics and/or metals into the condensate, and possibly also harbor bacteria once the unit gets grungy.
I have no idea what models are available but I'll bet other people can make good suggestions. If you can find something decent that runs on DC power you might be able to automate operation using the LOAD output from one of your Victrons so it only runs when excess solar is available. I've heard that low-power DC dehumidifiers are just thermal devices and not very efficient (i.e. they aren't heat pumps). But if it produces water, it produces water.
If not, then powering from an inverter. But I dunno. I don't know much at all about dehumidifiers.
--
There are lots of other cool ways to control the sucker. For example, if you want to run it from a 24V or 48V house system but the unit is 12V, then you can use a cheap DC-to-DC converter. However, those tend to be really inefficient so my preference is to actually use another Victron 75/15 as a DC-to-DC converter for 24-to-12. Or a victron 100/20 as a DC-to-DC converter that can do 24-to-12 or 48-to-12 or 48-to-24. Basically HOUSE 24V/48V goes into the SOLAR input, and BAT output is connected to the load.
Though you might also need a little buffer battery (20Ah minimum) on the BAT output to make it robust. You can reduce unnecessary cycling that way too by using the LOAD output to only turn it on when the buffer battery is full, then let it deplete the buffer battery all the way to empty. And you can give it an energy budget by limiting the Victron's charge rate.
Of course, that's me going a bit hog-wild. I managed to spend $170 of your money just on the additional Victron and buffer battery, never mind anything else!
-Matt
Haha! I love all those ideas! I have an extra 75/15 so may give that a whirl as you described. I would not have thought of that. I got extra batteries to play with so that shouldn't be any problem. I am going to get a de-humidifier see if that can make up the shortfall lately. If gets worse, I'll go back to composting toilet. That made all the difference in Colorado, where water was harder to come by. Hoping for one good rain. I can be flush again in no time...but mercy it's dry out here. Aloha! Appreciate the feedback!🤙
@@ProjectsinParadise808 I did some quick research. There seem to be three types of dehumidifers:
* Ultra cheap ones use a Peltier cooler to directly condense water from air. However, these only produce milli-liters of water a day. They extremely inefficient.
* Heat pump systems (compressor, condensor, evaporation) designed for dehumidification. However, these are less common now, apparently.
* Desiccant-based dehumidification. Basically uses a material that soaks water up out of the air and then passes heated air over it to make it condense the water and drip it out. Or something like that.
The good ones appear to be desiccant based and can produce 2-5 gallons of water a day in decent humidity.
You will probably want to find a desiccant based dehumidifier.
--
Yah, I love playing with those Victron charge controllers. They can really do a lot of things beyond just solar.
There are two limitations to the LOAD port. For 12V/24V systems the load port can handle up to 20A. But on 48V systems the load port can only handle 1A and is supposed to be used to drive a relay or external switch instead of passing the power directly.
(The reason for this is that the little dinky FET in the Victron charge controllers will overheat trying to switch 48V on and off).
The second limitation is that big surges, such as turning on an inverter (which surges due to the inverter's large input capacitors)... that will cause the Victron to shut the port down for a minute or two then try again. So it doesn't work with certain kinds of loads.
How far from the coast are you? You don't need to "flush" with fresh water. Good luck.
About 8 miles as the crow flies. I'm adjusting to the conditions my friend. Got plenty of water in the air around me. I've seen the light. Aloha!🤙
they can make alot of noise
Think I found a quiet enough one...quiet is the most precious thing in nature IMO. Aloha! 🤙
excellent darlinks !!!!@@ProjectsinParadise808
How interesting. What is your average humidity? We are around 13-30% at any given time. And can no way use a reverse osmosis because of not enough water from the well. Finding great interesting info from the comments.
This evening at bedtime it's 96%. Very comfortable. Not sticky humid at all. But with 96% , I am going to start sucking water out of the air immediately! The lightbulb just went on.🤙
Düvkori Plastic Urinals For Men $36 no need for water goes to septic
Great idea!🤙