Still, for you

The water cycle in action.

Warm air will carry lots more water than cold air. Counterintuitively, warm, wet air, as heavy as it might feel, is lighter than cold, dry air and will rise like a hot air balloon.

As you rise through the stratosphere, you get colder and the atmosphere bears down on you less and less. The same thing happens to air. And as wet, warm air gets colder, it gets drier...by letting go of the water it carries. The water usually forms clouds, but if there's enough, it will condense into larger and larger drops and fall as precipitation.

The rain in the above photograph is falling on the Front Range of the Rocky Mountains. Much of it will run into the South Platte River. Some will sink into the ground, but granite and gneiss doesn't soak up water very well. Some of the water will immediately evaporate back into the air, but the air is obviously pretty loaded already. The South Platte dumps into the Platte River, which dumps into the Missouri, which dumps into the Mississippi, on to the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean. If it hasn't gone underground or evaporated by then, the water has a good chance to be airborne. It could even be part of a cold front or hurricane and rain out over where I used to live in Alabama.

Do you want to capture your own little rain shower? In your kitchen? That's where the still comes in. Actually, it's a steel still.

If you're following my adventures in chemistry, a source of distilled water is useful. In chemistry, you want to know what compounds you're including in a mixture and tap water isn't pure. Actually, no natural water is pure and you have to go to some extreme measures to have any pure water at all because the gases in the air are water soluble and as soon as water meets air, the water is no longer pure.

But distilled water is usually "good enough". You can actually buy distilled water in grocery stores around here, but you can also distill it yourself almost as easily as driving to the store and the tiny amount of plastic that leaches from the jug into the water won't bother you.

You need a stew pot with a steamer rack in the bottom.

Place a cross of tongue depressors across the steamer rack and set a heat resistant container (pyrex bowl or measuring cup, Mason jar...) on those. The tongue depressors protect the glass from direct contact with the hot metal. Most kitchen glassware (or ceramic) can take the heat of boiling water if it's consistently heated, but direct contact with hot metal can cause hot spots that can shatter the glass.

A stainless steel (or glass, or ceramic) mixing bowl (something with a rounded bottom) over the mouth of the stew pot will complete your still.

Pour tap water down the inner wall of the pot (don't splash it into the smaller container.)  Turn on the heat and let the water begin to boil before placing the mixing bowl on the pot. Dump ice in the mixing bowl and check to see how much water you've collected when the ice has melted. If you want more, replace the melted ice with more solid ice and continue.

When you have all the distilled water you want, use kitchen mitts to pour it off into a clean container. The pot is full of steam at 100° centigrade and it will burn you, and the container of distilled water will also be hot.

This method works if the impurities in the water have boiling points less than that of water. Fortunately, most of the impurities in tap water are salts and will not boil with water.

You might try tasting your distilled water. You'd notice that it's very bland. Water is actually tasteless. The flavor of water comes from dissolved gases and salts.

If you don't have the parts I used for my still, you can substitute other parts for them. The design is flexible. And that's why I wanted to tell you about this still. It might even save your life.

Remember the 4-4-4 rule? You can live 4 minutes without air, 4 days without water, and 4 weeks without food. Water's pretty important.

To make a still in a survival situation, all you need is something to dig with (shovel, trowel, flat rock), a sheet of clear plastic (2 x 2 feet should be big enough), and something to catch water in (cup, bowl, scooped out piece of wood). Just dig a hole deep enough to sit your collection vessel in and set the vessel in the center. Stretch the plastic over the hole and anchor it in place with some pebbles. Place a pebble in the center so the plastic is cone shaped with the point of the cone over the collection vessel. Wait for water to collect. 

This solar still will even suck moisture out of seemingly dry desert soil. Look around for a place near vegetation. The plants are getting water from the soil. You might even throw some of the plant material into the hole. You can even urinate into the hole but don't drink your own urine! After it's distilled, urine might not taste good, but it's drinkable. Most of the impurities will distill out with the water but most of the toxins will not.

What about collecting rain water? Well, you might be able to get away with it in some areas, but near big cities with a lot of pollution, acid rain will be a thing and you don't want to drink it if you can help. Distilling is still a better idea. (did you see what I did, there?)