Rain water for distilled water in car & iron at home?

Not really, distilled is pure. Rain brings down the crap in the air

What is acid rain explain? Acid rain, or acid deposition, is a broad term that includes any form of precipitation with acidic components, such as sulfuric or nitric acid that fall to the ground from the atmosphere in wet or dry forms. This can include rain, snow, fog, hail or even dust that is acidic

I have a friend who visits and he only drinks distilled water, plus I use it for the car battery and used to actually do ironing.

So I buy a gallon, which is pretty cheap even by my tightwad standards, though now they are pushing not steam-distilled by something else I forget.

Then I left it on the cement basement floor for months, and then put it on the formica kitchen counter, and that night it leaked, the water entered a crack between the top and front, and the counter swelled. I assume there was some connection between the cement and the leak, even though it didn't leak until after it was on the counter. ?????

One serious example of the difference between distilled and rain is acid rain. I don't think that exists everywhere and iirc it's not as great even in the Northeast as it was, since changes occurred as to what fuels were burned in the midatlantic and midwest and w.va., kentucky and tennessee. But I was in a cemetery a couple days ago and any tombstone earlier than 1870 was almost impossible to read, because of acid rain on marble. About that time I guess it was, people started switching to granite, which is iiuc not affected by acid rain.

If there were nothing but air in the air, rain water would be the same as distilled.

Doesn't all that acid get removed from the air in the first hour of rain? Besides, I don't live in a city.

Is the rain that acidic in the country too? Hours and days after the first rain?

That's a LOT of acid if it lasts for days of rain and hasn't come out. But if it hasn't come out after days of rain, how much can be in rain?

Call me confused because I'm not saying you're wrong as I don't know. But it doesn't add up right to me.

Depends where you live. If you are downwind from a coal fired steel mill or power plant it could be worse.

Does it snow where you live? Take a look at the purity after it sits and collects everything for a while. If you leave the windows open do you get dust in the house?

Why do they put air filters on cars?

Yes, and no. Distilled water is purified in a *contained environment* Rainwater can be *contaminated* by atmospheric dust, chemical contaminants, etc. It really depends on where you live whether your rainwater can be considered the same as distilled water. If you live near, say, Bejing, China, your rainwater might well be toxic. After all, the air in Bejing is toxic.

Oh, did I mention dust and other pollutants on the roof and in the rain guttering? The rain water will gather these up in the process of washing your roof and deposit them into the rainwater tank.

A car drives through dirt and debris while rain just comes out of ocean (which is what's happening now with these atmospheric rivers).

And snow is pure white where I live, at least until people walk near it.

I can see the FIRST rain being dirty like the roads get slick from oil, but after weeks of almost daily rain, I wonder how much acid is left.

Didn't the EPA get rid of "acid rain" long ago in the US already?

For me, there isn't an industrial city anywhere and if there were, I guess only a portion (How much? I don't know) of the acid is washed out in each rain. And, only a portion of the acid is ADDED to the atmosphere each day.

Of course, then the ratio matters, for example, if we have ten rains, and

10% is washed out in each rain, the next rain is clean; however, if 5% more is added between each rain, then it would take 20 rains to wash it all out, and even then, 5% would be added the very next dry day.

So if you had two dry days in a row, it would take another rain to wash it out. But didn't the EPA fix all that long ago?

If you ever run into a statistic on how acid the rain in the rural areas of the US alongside the ocean is, that would be interesting information.

It's a real thing and concentration (pH value) varies both locally and over time:

Thank you for that link which showed in the first 99% that chemistry is hard, but in the last 1% showed chemistry is easy with its conclusion.

What it said, in effect, if I understood what it said that is, is that rainwater is naturally carbonated to about pH 5.6 by CO2 in the air.

It says that means if the rainwater is lower than pH 5.6, only then is it considered to be acid rain. If it's pH 5.6 or above, it's not acid rain.

Seems simple enough.

I think they sell test strips somewhere where the plan based on that information is if the pH is below 5.6 then it's acid rain water.

Another question to ask is whether it really matters for what people use distilled water for, which for me is the cooling system, summer windshield washer mix (a drop of dish detergent is added to the full fill) and steam iron.

What else than that do you use distilled water for around the home & car? Does it matter for what you use distilled water around the home & car?

Maybe. It sure isn't in Los Angeles.

Put a small puddle of rainwater on a piece of glass, then let it evaporate inside in a clean and dry place. Does it leave any residue? Does it leave a whole lot of residue? Does it leave corrosive residue?

--scott

Purity of Essence. That's what it's about, Mandrake.

--scott

And bird shit.

And, a warmer atmosphere holds more moisture, so there will be even more lower-pH rain.

Warm(er) water holds LESS dissolved gases than cold(er) water. Not more.

But you're correct that the warmer atmosphere may hold more water although tell that to the Gobi Desert so it's not just the temperature.

Overall it's a wash I'll bet that the amount of dissolved CO2 is the same now as it was before the media learned to change the terms every few years from global warming to climate change and more recently to climate crisis.

You'd need a lot more than a puddle to see the deposits, although you could run that experiment with a glass tea kettle to boil the rainwater dry.

As for being corrosive, rain has long stopped being corrosive at the levels that anyone would notice in their lifetime, even on marble & limestone.

While pH 5.6 is acidic, it's mostly carbonic acid which is a weak acid.

Some irons are made to be used with tap water.

In any event, all irons are made to be used with water that is free from excessive levels of particulates.

My husband uses steam-distilled water in his CPAP humidifier. He's pretty picky about what goes into his lungs.

Not around here. Around here, the rainwater leaves VERY obvious spotting. Layer thick enough that you can see color in it too.

Depends where you are. In Tidewater, VA you can see a big triangle of increased corrosion downwind of the trash-burning plant.

--scott

It's time for me to go to bed, so I haven't rad your whole thing.

The EPA definitely reduced acid rain. I'm not on their mailing list so I don't know how much.

the answers you are getting are abot if they are the same?, which iirc was your question. But what I think you're interested in, and your subject line (and I hate when a subject line includes something that's not in the bodytext) seems to be about, Can I use rain water in the iron and the battery without doing damage?

Those are two different questions.

When media change the terms they use, it's generally because their sources change what terms they use. I guess you know this and that's what you meant by "learned", learned from their sources, the people working in each given field, but I wanted to make it clear.

That brings up another point. Though I'm not saying how big a problem acid rain is these days, someone distinguished between city and rural, and that's not valid. The acid in acid rain can come from 100's of miles away and as the wind blows, it can rain on every place in between.

The acid in acid rain is generated from a broad area and that area doesn't suffer from it anymore than the places downwind.

In the NE USA, the wind is mostly from the west. Weather comes mostly from the west. For some reason I think I remember that acid rain in NY and New England comes from West Virginia, or maybe Kentucky, but I can't remember why that would be. For one thing, those are not W but SW of New England.