Helping Yourself: How to Set Up a Fresh-water Still

How to set up a simple fresh-water still

Start with some sort of wooden (metal, whatever's convenient) frame. An overturned table would do. Then take some plastic; cut-up garbage bags will work fine there. Duct-tape the plastic around the legs of the frame and horizontally across its top. You've just set up a little greenhouse environment.

Under the frame set a large container full of dirty water with a smaller container within it. It would also work to simply set the whole frame in the midst of an expanse of dirty water. On top of the horizontal sheet of plastic, right above the smaller container, set a good-sized rock (brick, hunk of concrete, whatever's handy). The rock needs to be big enough to make a distinct low point in the plastic right over the small container, but obviously not heavy enough to tear the plastic.

That's it. He was envisioning it set in the sun, but with the heat in New Orleans, indoors would work too. The dirty water will evaporate, land on the inside of the plastic, run down the indentation formed by the rock, and drip off into the smaller container.

According to this man (who did seem to have some actual knowledge, not just the ability to BS), such a still, in New Orleans heat, would produce two or three litres of water a day from an area of plastic the size of a small dining table.

I told the man that I was going to post the description of his still on at least one New Orleans blog. In fact, I have posted it in the comments on interdictor's latest entry and on http://wiki.nola-intel.org/index.php?title=Main_Page. Anyone who wishes to post it anywhere else they think would be useful has my permission to do so.

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