Water Question?

[coyotlviejo]

Stryver-

I have often camped and hiked in the desert and have dug down in the soil until I found damp earth without ever reaching "liquid" H2O. And there have been other times that I have found standing water underground, but it was so brackish that that some form of purification would definitely be desired. I'm sure that a still would have netted me plenty of pure water. The thing about the desert is that you might have a bone-dry area, but the dust and alkali on top might be acting as an insulator, keeping moisture just a foot or two down from evaporating for years.

I have never hiked in the sonoran or sub-sonoran zones, so I imagine that there is a lot of desert that varies greatly from my own experiences, which have been mostly in the great basin / high desert zones.

 

[swami_p]

for me i would not rely on any of these methods-ie stills and cutting cactus. the best thing is to carry more water than you will need and ration your sweat.

 

[Fabulous45s]

First, the disclaimer, I have never attempted to build a solar still.


I've been told, by people who probably knew, that evaporative stills were one of the worst methods for procuring water, but did have a place. That place was a sunny beach by the ocean, where water is plentiful, but fresh water nonexistant.
Stryver

An even better method on the ocean beach is to go back three dunes and dig down. That sand does a survivable amount of filtering of the salt. If it's still pretty salty, go back another dune and try it.

Solar stills aren't a very efficient water producer, better off trying transpiration bags. Either way, you should have a bunch of them done up. One won't cut it. As well as a rock wieghing it down at the bottom, you should have a length of tube running to that low point, so you can just sip the water out without disturbing the machine. If you have to open up your bag each time you drink, it takes forever to get the process going again.