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Hey all
I've just ordered 200 dropper bottles from china for my citadels hehe.
Was thinking about adding a drop of water/flow aid to each one as I move them, but then considered that tap water doesnt store well. I normally use it just fine mixing up small amounts to use there and then.
So I need distilled water yes?
Ive been looking around and can only find de-ionised water locally. Will it do? I know its not the same thing ; both would be best really

Im not about to buy my own distillery to make my own life time supply when a 1L will probably do the trick, maybe 5L for a large stock pile.

In the States, we can buy distilled water from supermarkets and drug stores, however after a quick glance on Google it seems that distilled water is hard to come by in the UK. Filtered tap water is probably fine but you could also use bottled water as it most likely went through a distilling process.

Try auto parts stores, or hardware stores.

Halfords will sell it. Should be in the battery section.

Maybe apotecary?

You can distill your own water. You boil water in a pot with a glass in the middle of the pot you put the pots lid on it upside down. As it boils the water the condensation runs down the pot lid and drips back into the glass.

Pictures here.
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Distilled-Water

1. What is the problem with regular tap water?

2. Why should distilled water be better than deionized water?

There are only two possible reasons for distilled/deionized water. First would be that some ions in the water interfer with your colors which is to the best of my knowledge not the case. Unless your have some extremely strange water that's full of hydrogen sulfide or similar, there won't be any reactions with your paint. And the residual calcium, potassium and sodium ions do not pose a threat to your paints so tap water is fine.

If you are afraid that the water will provide nourishment for some bacteria then rest assured that whatever decides to grow in a small, tightly closed pot of acrylic paint will probably grow there with or without the drop of water, whatever it's origin may be.

 Kosake wrote:
1. What is the problem with regular tap water?

2. Why should distilled water be better than deionized water?

There are only two possible reasons for distilled/deionized water. First would be that some ions in the water interfer with your colors which is to the best of my knowledge not the case. Unless your have some extremely strange water that's full of hydrogen sulfide or similar, there won't be any reactions with your paint. And the residual calcium, potassium and sodium ions do not pose a threat to your paints so tap water is fine.

If you are afraid that the water will provide nourishment for some bacteria then rest assured that whatever decides to grow in a small, tightly closed pot of acrylic paint will probably grow there with or without the drop of water, whatever it's origin may be.

Tap water contains rather a lot of impurities. If i mix up a bottle of flow aid wit it, then do not use it up within a fortnight, I get things growing/floating in the water. Paint thinned with it, overtime develops a lovely smell :/ . Basiacally tap water is not good enough for mixing paint that wont be used today.

De-ionised is filtered through some special equipment that removes ions only. minerals and bacteria can remain,

Distilled is boiled, the steam collected and condensed. It removes most minerals and bacteria, but not anything with a lower boiling point than water.


I know the two are not one and the same thing, doing both processes results in the purest water. But I dont know if de-ionised will be just fine? or if I really want distilled?

ebay. loads of it quite cheap. APC Pure. £13 delivered for 5L

HairySticks wrote:

 Kosake wrote:
1. What is the problem with regular tap water?

2. Why should distilled water be better than deionized water?

There are only two possible reasons for distilled/deionized water. First would be that some ions in the water interfer with your colors which is to the best of my knowledge not the case. Unless your have some extremely strange water that's full of hydrogen sulfide or similar, there won't be any reactions with your paint. And the residual calcium, potassium and sodium ions do not pose a threat to your paints so tap water is fine.

If you are afraid that the water will provide nourishment for some bacteria then rest assured that whatever decides to grow in a small, tightly closed pot of acrylic paint will probably grow there with or without the drop of water, whatever it's origin may be.

Tap water contains rather a lot of impurities. If i mix up a bottle of flow aid wit it, then do not use it up within a fortnight, I get things growing/floating in the water. Paint thinned with it, overtime develops a lovely smell :/ . Basiacally tap water is not good enough for mixing paint that wont be used today.

De-ionised is filtered through some special equipment that removes ions only. minerals and bacteria can remain,

Distilled is boiled, the steam collected and condensed. It removes most minerals and bacteria, but not anything with a lower boiling point than water.


I know the two are not one and the same thing, doing both processes results in the purest water. But I dont know if de-ionised will be just fine? or if I really want distilled?

Dude, what kind of third world country do you live in that the bacteria starts to grow over night...? I know that Germany is very well off in terms of water quality but even in eastern europe water doesn't start growing things in 24 hours. If you are that concerned about bacterial growth, just boil your water. You don't have to distill it, just boil it to kill most things off.

I'm painting with tap water I leave standing in a jar for weeks on end and only change it when it becomes too colored from the paint. Never saw a single thing growing in or on it.

I didn't realize this was a problem. I can make gallons of double distilled water in my lab at very little cost. Why is this a rarity in the UK?

It's not.

Go to any decent car parts store, most DIY stores, hell even Tescos sells it.

I bought a 5L can of it from a gardening store that specialised in drive on mowers.

Some cigar shops should carry it as well. Distilled water is required for a humidifier to work properly. Basically not smell like death or turn green or become fuzzy.

 notprop wrote:
It's not.

Go to any decent car parts store, most DIY stores, hell even Tescos sells it.

I bought a 5L can of it from a gardening store that specialised in drive on mowers.

What automotive stores carry (and ASDA, presumably Tesco's too) is going to be de-ionised. Perhaps both distilled AND de-ionised in the same bottle. Typically for car batteries, you would want the de-ionised specifically as distillation alone does not remove all the ions from the solution.

Halfords carry de-ionised, I already found that. Knowing that the two types of purification are not the same, I just wondered if theres a particular need for one over the other for what we do ; both are significantly cleaner than plain old tap water. If I can't find more info about which is more suitable and why, or distilled water locally then I'l probably go with de-ionised. Still need to try the local pharmacy; they need the stuff for mixing medicines right? I expect they have a distilling machine. I can find it online, can find both distilled, de-ionised, and both in one, but frankly who wants to pay shipping on water? its heavy and bulky.

I've noticed it in my 200ml dropper bottle, I don't think I ever used up the whole bottle of mixed flow aid + water before i found things in it. typically it happens after a week or 2 straight out the tap. A little longer if boiled first. It could be down to where I put it; just left out on my desk usually. It gets a bit of light from the window, water + light = things growing usually.

I'm fully aware of how to distil water, but am not prepared to invest in equipment to do it myself just for this one off occasion hehe.
I dont think doing a few dribbles in a pan with an upturned lid on the hob is going to be enough either, just sounds like a massive pita and inconvenience.

If anyone can shed light on which is better and why, I'd love to know
I normally do use tap water, and tip my flow aid mixture away when I see things growing in it. And I'm fine with that - should mix up less so I don't waste as much flow aid.
But for this occasion I want to add some water to paints that might not get used for weeks/months... the last thing I want to do is put a drop of tap water in them and find that I've made 90 something pots of citadels extortionate paint go bad. Now I do want to swap to Vallejo Model Colour... but no need to waste what I already have from Citadel. moving to droppers is part of that, so as things run out and I replace them I'm not dealing with 2 pot shapes at my desk, and well we all know the pro's cons of droppers vs citadels.

edit; I think some people misunderstand what Im trying to say I'm okay using tap water to thin paint that I'm using there and then. The paint will dry long long before any problems could occur
But when I want to put some water into the pot with the paint to be stored, its quite a different scenario where it could be months before I come back around to one particular colour and find it smells bad or has things growing in it.

Sort of depends on your specific issue to be dealt with. In the US, distilled is used more. Chlorinated municipal water tends to kill the things which might grow. We do have a lot of areas with hard water, some of it is very hard and the mineral deposits can cause chalkiness and even rusting in paint jobs.

Distilled tends to get closer to pure water. Most organisms will be removed. Almost all the minerals as well. Several modern bottlers of distilled water take an extra step as well to have even more pure water. By preheating the water, they can cook off most the compounds which have an evaporation point below water. After that, the water is boiled and distilled leaving the minerals and other impurities behind. The only thing that makes it through the process are the small handful of compounds with boiling points within a few degrees of water.

 Sean_OBrien wrote:
Sort of depends on your specific issue to be dealt with. In the US, distilled is used more. Chlorinated municipal water tends to kill the things which might grow. We do have a lot of areas with hard water, some of it is very hard and the mineral deposits can cause chalkiness and even rusting in paint jobs.

Distilled tends to get closer to pure water. Most organisms will be removed. Almost all the minerals as well. Several modern bottlers of distilled water take an extra step as well to have even more pure water. By preheating the water, they can cook off most the compounds which have an evaporation point below water. After that, the water is boiled and distilled leaving the minerals and other impurities behind. The only thing that makes it through the process are the small handful of compounds with boiling points within a few degrees of water.

thanks for that, so I want distilled over de-ionised then. (water is relatively hard here - although its not as bad as it was where I went to University, Id n ever seen a kettle scale so fast till I lived there!

I can't say exactly what it is growing in my water; I never let it get too substantial before throwing it out. I guess its organic as it grows. Not usually a big problem, just this one time about storing it Hopefully the pharmacy will have what I want then, as all I can find locally is labeled as de-ionised... which could very well be distilled aswell but it doesnt mention it.

Might be an organic like mold or algae, but lots of inorganic things "grow" as well. Light and heat can act as a catalyst to cause dissolved minerals to precipitate out of a dissolved solution, and certain ones to start clumbing together (either just by chance or as an actual growing crystal).

But yes...distilled is normally the more pure option of the two.

Thanks for the clarification Sean.
Fingers crossed the local pharmacy has it then I'd go right now if it wasn't raining heavily! I suppose I can bite the bullet and pay the postage for it if I can't source it locally. Just feels a bit dumb to be paying postage on water lol! Atleast it would just be a one off.

Just another searching point...most those fancy coffee makers recomend distilled water. Checking grocery stores, coffee specialists and the like may be fruitful.

I've been searching for distilled water for years now, I can find deionised easily enough though. Whenever I read/watch a painting vid or thread (like Les' wash mix for example) it says DISTILLED, specifically. Now, what I really want to know is, will deionised do the job as well as distilled. I know the proccess is different, but for paint mixing/thinning purposes... does it matter/make a real difference?

Some have said that any old bottled water from a shop will do like spring/mineral, but surely the whole point of distilled is that it's stripped of all minerals, no?

You guys have trouble getting it over there? Really? We have it in every grocery store, walmart, target...basically every shopping center that carries anything resembling food.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
You guys have trouble getting it over there? Really? We have it in every grocery store, walmart, target...basically every shopping center that carries anything resembling food.

Yeah, so I keep hearing. But over here? Nope. Les says "grocery store" as a source, over here we have "supermarkets" and I can't find any there. I asked at Boots (pharmacy) if they sold it and they just looked at me like I was crazy. Some people say you can get it at Halfords or any car supplier, but that's DEIONISED, not distilled. And like I said some people say any old bottled water from a shop or supermarket will do, but again, I'm not convinced its the same stuff and am pretty sure distilled water is not for drinking.

Any Brits know how to get hold of distilled? Failing that, any Brits use deionised instead for paint thinning/mixing? Does it work the same?

i asked in the local pharmacy, they could order me a 5L of it. But tbh I really dont need that much. So I ordered 1L on ebay from a chemical supplier.

I really dont know why its so hard to get. Theres de-ionised water just about everywhere you might want to find distilled. But hardly any actually distilled :/
Bottled mineral water, I would've thought has minerals added to it, so its even less pure than whats in the tap.


Without testing it, Im going to say that de-ionised doesn't work the same. De-ionisation will remove most of the ions (various elements) but leave things such as bacteria and anything that is not affected by an electromagnetic field.
While distillation removes everything with a boiling point above that of water, leaving only a select few things that have a boiling point below that of water, but you could boil those off at just shy of waters boil point.

 timetowaste85 wrote:
You guys have trouble getting it over there? Really? We have it in every grocery store, walmart, target...basically every shopping center that carries anything resembling food.

What do you use it for? As a replacement to tap water for some things?

surely another reasonable source would be your local high school, college or university science department. If you ask nicely you might be able to nick a small bottle, or offer to buy some.

 Flinty wrote:

 timetowaste85 wrote:
You guys have trouble getting it over there? Really? We have it in every grocery store, walmart, target...basically every shopping center that carries anything resembling food.

What do you use it for? As a replacement to tap water for some things?

Generally distilled water isnt preferred for drinking at it tastes kind of off to what you would be used to. It get used in coffee machines and irons. I have the impression that coffee machines are common in USA? And that this would be the purpose of getting it in any store?
I hear it used to be commonly sold in the UK for iron's, but increasingly theres branded (with detergent brands), scented water for that now. Which I imagine is distilled but then has a scent added so we dont want it.

I work in Boots. We can order 5L bottles of it from Unichem, our main supplier, delivered to the pharmacy next day, I'll look up the cost when I'm in work tomorrow. It's pretty cheap, anyway. Ask at the pharmacy counter; if they struggle to find it to order they can either phone Unichem or search 'Bell's' purified water on their connect2 order pad. Have to ask at the pharmacy or healthcare counter, though. They won't know anything in the rest of the shop.

distillled water is great for drinking. it only tastes a bit off because you aren't tasting the upwards of 120 different chemicals that they put in it.

like I said before, EBAY. most offer free delivery.

bopins wrote:
most offer free delivery.

Lol, no they don't, they include delivery within the price of the item so that its a rip off to buy more than one of anything but yeah ebay is a convinient source, I got a 1L bottle on there for the needs mentioned in the OP. Normally tap water (boiled) does me just fine, but I want to add a drop of it to the pot of paint as I move to droppers this time, as such wanted clean and pure to avoid things growing over time or pigment problems with whatever ion

Deionised should be good enough. I'm a lab technician so make distilled water in bucket loads. I'm pretty sure home distillation kits would be cheap enough to reproduce.

http://www.thedistilledwatercompany.com/distilled-water-10-litres

10l for £22 plus free delivery in mainland UK