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Old 03-18-21, 01:08 PM   #57
jeff5may
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I don't know why I didn't check on this thread over the years. I actually tried out a couple of experimental rigs using this principle, and they both worked.

The first setup was built in one day at grandma's house and was gravity fed. Indoor dehumidifier section was an old storm window pane in a rubbermaid tote. I put a little submersible fountain pump in the bottom, feeding some drip irrigation plastic plumbing. Pump sent liquid up to the top of the window pane, and the drip hose distributed the liquid along the top horizontally. Liquid ran down the window pane into the tote. Maybe 10 gallons per hour flow rate.

I put an overflow hole in the tote, and a rubber grommet and garden hose fitting into the grommet. A garden hose ran along the floor outdoors. At the other end, I built a solar still like the "water honcho" pictured before. The evaporation vessel was a plastic kiddie pool spray painted black. I made a tepee out of some bamboo sticks and covered it with some old clear greenhouse film. The film was simply anchored to the ground with bricks.

To get the thing primed, I heated up a stock pot worth of water and added road runner ice melting salt to get a saturated solution. Put it in the tote, made more salt water solution, until the tote started to overflow. I hung a wad of salt in a sock and attached it to the tote so the salt was was suspended in the solution. Done.

The thing worked great all summer and into the fall. Grandma's basement became not musty, and her windows quit fogging up at night. Eventually, mother nature had her way with the greenhouse film and it got destroyed by hail.
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