Back in the old days, distillation would be done in one of two ways. People would either boil water over a fire or they would simply catch rainwater and then drink that. The rainwater method was a method that required the least amount of work because it involved simply capturing and containing the falling rain. The reason rainwater is similar to distilled water is because it evaporates and condenses just like in other distillation methods. The only difference is that nature does all the work on its own. By today’s standards, this might sound like a bad thing to do because of all the acid rain and contaminants in the air. But before mankind was involved in heavy industry, the air was clean and the water that fell down from the sky was pure. People would simply take large clean containers and leave them outside for catching rainwater. Once a container filled up with water, it would be left outside for an additional two days in order for the minerals to completely dissipate. Then the water would be stored in jugs or whatever containers they had available during the time period.
Rainwater can still be a good source for distillated water, but you will need to do some extra filtering in order to make sure the dirt particles and debris is completely out of the water. The minerals will already be gone from the natural raining process, so all that is left is for you to run the water through a filter after it is contained. You can choose any filtration method you want for this. You could buy a filtered mug or a filtration machine to filter water that you pour into it. Of course, the better option would be the machine, a water distiller, because it will do a more thorough job of cleaning the contaminants out of the water. Then, you will have a new source of distilled water that you won’t even need tap water or bottled water to produce. This will save you lots of money because you won’t ever have to buy water again, depending on the amount of rainwater you end up storing. If you live in a rainy area of the world like Seattle, Washington, then you can expect to store lots of water in no time. Best of all, you will be environmentally responsible by using rainwater as your distillation source. If more people around the world could learn from this method then perhaps no one would suffer from thirst ever again.
