How To Make Distilled Water at Home

We’ve been making and drinking distilled water at home since January 2018 and haven’t looked back since. It’s become one of those daily habits that just happens automatically – fill the distiller, switch it on, walk away. A few hours later, you have four litres of pure distilled water ready to drink. Here’s exactly how we do it.

Why do people distil water at home?

The water in our tap is full of impurities and minerals that we don’t need. By distilling the water, we get rid of all these impurities and make it safer to drink. Distilled water is pure in the sense that it contains no minerals, such as calcium or magnesium, so it has a neutral taste. It also does not have any contaminants like chlorine, fluoride or lead, which can be found in tap water.

Distillation is a very simple process that takes a little bit of time but is quick and easy to do with the right appliance. Distilling your own water at home can save you a lot of money compared to buying bottled water.

This is exactly why we made the switch back in 2018. We were buying numerous bottles of water each week for drinking water as our tap water tasted bad and smelt bad. We also used a TDS meter we’d ordered from eBay to measure the total number of dissolved solids in our tap water and it came back with a reading of 220 ppm. This means there were 220 different dissolved substances in our tap water. Yuck!

Becoming more health conscious, eating a vegan diet, and choosing as much organic food as possible, it was only natural we started questioning what was in our tap water, especially as sometimes it smelt bad or didn’t ever taste quite fresh, not in comparison to bottled water.

We researched the benefits of drinking distilled water and whether distilled water is safe to drink after it was recommended to us, and literally purchased a Megahome countertop water distiller the very next day!

Distillation is the process by which impurities are removed from a liquid by boiling it in order to evaporate the liquid and collect the vapour or steam. The vapours are then condensed back into liquid form, leaving any impurities behind.

There are many different types of distillers on the market today, but they all work on the same principle: boiling water until it turns into steam, collecting that steam as it rises up through a tube or pipe, cooling it down again so that it condenses back into liquid form, and collecting what’s left behind in a container. This can easily be completed with a Megahome water distiller which is what we use to distil water at home with ease.

Search for Megahome Water Distillers on eBay by clicking here!

Other brands are available too, and some are a bit cheaper, but when we were researching water distiller reviews to make our decision, the Megahome water distiller was shown in some review videos to remove more impurities from the water than other brands.

We tested it ourselves with a TDS meter reader which means Total Dissolved Solids. The Megahome water distiller removed more than 99% of the substances in our tap water! Our tap water measured 220 parts per million before being distilled, and then only 2 ppm after it had been distilled using the Megahome countertop distiller! What a difference!

Is boiled water the same as distilled water?

This is one of the most common misconceptions about distilled water, and it’s worth clearing up before anything else. No – boiled water and distilled water are not the same thing.

Boiling water kills bacteria and some pathogens, which is useful in an emergency. But it doesn’t remove the dissolved substances in the water – the minerals, chemicals, heavy metals, fluoride, and chlorine all stay behind. When the water cools, everything that was in it is still in it.

Distillation goes much further. The water is boiled into steam, that steam is collected and cooled back into liquid in a separate container, and everything that was dissolved in the original water gets left behind in the boiling tank. That residue you can see at the bottom of the distiller after a few uses? That’s what stays out of your drinking water.

Our tap water measured 220 ppm of dissolved solids before distilling. After boiling, it would still measure close to 220 ppm. After distilling, it measured just 2 ppm. That’s the difference.

How to make distilled water at home

By using a countertop water distiller, you will find it quick and easy to make generously sized batches of distilled water at home. While the original investment may seem a little costly, compared to regularly buying bottled water you will save money over time as well as prevent so much plastic pollution.

Also, we actually prefer the taste of our home distilled water to bottled water now. Even bottled water doesn’t taste clean to us anymore as we are so used to the purest taste of distilled water with nothing in it! Well, aside from the 2ppm that is left, whatever they are. It could be from our carbon filter which we have in the spout of the distiller.

The easiest and quickest way to make distilled water at home is to purchase a water distiller like the Megahome distiller. This machine is a device that takes water and purifies it. The process by which distilled water is made is called distillation. Distillation is the process of boiling water and then capturing the steam to condense it back into clean, pure water. The residue and solids such as the minerals and impurities in the water are left in the tank of the distiller machine and the freshly distilled water drips out into a jug.

Here are the instructions to make distilled water at home with a countertop unit:

• Fill the water distiller tank with tap water to the fill line. Don’t go above the fill line or the jug may overflow. Some people fill from the hot tap as they believe it quickens the distillation process if the water is already warm or hot, but you can fill with cold water if preferred.
• Position the jug under the spout to ensure it catches the distilled water drips. Make sure it’s in the proper position so the jug catches the drips and they don’t leak onto the kitchen side.
• Switch the distiller on to start the distillation process. On our Megahome distiller, this means making sure the cable from the lid is plugged into the tank of the distiller. Switching on the distiller at the wall plug and on the switch on the distiller itself, and pressing a small round ‘reset’ button on the distiller each time we want it to distil.
• Simply wait!
• After approximately four hours, you will have a jug filled with delicious distilled water ready to drink! It’s warm when it first comes out and we actually quite like a glass of warm distilled water. Or you can wait for it to cool down before drinking.

We then store our distilled water in a large 5L Kilner jar with a tap dispenser. We sometimes pour into smaller bottles that fit in the door or our fridge for chilled water.

Then, we’ll run the distiller again if we need more water, though you have to wait 20 minutes before starting it again so it can cool down. Once cooled, we swill out with some water from the tap. We pour around 1-2 inches of tap water, swish it around and pour out to give it a quick clean as this sometimes lifts out some of the left behind residue, reducing the number of deep cleans we have to do. You can learn how to clean a countertop water distiller with step-by-step instructions in our blog post!

Using a countertop water distiller machine is by far the quickest and easiest method to distil your at-home drinking water. It takes a few hours, but you don’t have to be physically present, so you can switch it on and leave it to run. The machine will automatically turn itself off when it’s finished.

The only issue is it’s slightly noisy but no louder than our other kitchen appliances like the extractor hood or the washing machine! For this reason, we tend to run ours in the daytime only and not at nighttime as we can hear it from our bedroom, but perhaps your layout is better than ours and you can run yours overnight so you have a fresh batch of distilled water ready in the morning. For us, it’s become a habit to put it on first thing each day.

How long does it take to make distilled water at home?

Using a countertop water distiller like the Megahome, one full batch takes approximately four hours from switching it on to having a full jug of distilled water ready to drink. One batch produces around four litres.

The process is entirely hands-off – you fill the tank, switch it on, and walk away. The distiller turns itself off automatically when it’s done, so there’s no need to watch it or time it. We tend to put ours on first thing in the morning and it’s ready well before lunchtime.

If you need more than four litres, you can run a second batch – but you do need to wait around 20 minutes after the first batch finishes before starting again, to allow the machine to cool down. We run ours once or twice a day depending on how much we need.

How to make distilled water without a distiller

If you don’t have a countertop distiller yet, it is possible to make a small amount of distilled water at home using a stovetop method – though it’s much more time-consuming and produces far less water.

The basic method involves filling a large stainless steel pot with tap water, placing a smaller bowl inside it so it floats or sits above the water level, putting the pot lid on upside down (so the handle points downward into the pot), and bringing the water to a gentle simmer. As the water heats, steam rises and condenses on the cold lid, dripping down into the smaller bowl. Placing ice on top of the upturned lid speeds up the condensation process. What collects in the small bowl is distilled water.

It works – but it’s slow, produces a small amount, and requires you to stay nearby throughout. For occasional use it’s fine, but for daily drinking water for a family it’s not practical.

A countertop water distiller is a much better long-term solution. It’s hands-off, produces a consistent four litres per batch, and the results are measurably purer. If you’re serious about switching to distilled water for daily drinking, a proper distiller is worth the investment.

How does the distiller work?

The Megahome water distiller boils the water which starts to kill any impurities and the steam from the boiled water is caught in a stainless steel coil in the lid. The steam cools down, turning back to water liquid and drips out into the jug.

You can add a charcoal or carbon filter into the spout of the Megahome distiller which will catch any VOCs (volatile organic compounds) that the distillation process misses.

You can pick up big packs of these on eBay or from the official Megahome website where they often have some great sales.

The filters can also aid the taste of the water, giving it a slight flavour. They need to be changed approximately once per month. We actually tend to notice our carbon filter needs replacing as the water starts tasting less pure, so we change by taste rather than religiously once per month.

Is home distilled water safe to drink?

Yes – completely. Water distilled at home using a countertop distiller is safe to drink and is what our whole family has been drinking every day since 2018.

The distillation process removes contaminants rather than adding them, so the result is purer than tap water, not less safe. The only consideration is keeping your distiller and storage containers clean, which is straightforward with regular maintenance.

There’s a common concern that distilled water is somehow unsafe because it has no minerals – but this isn’t something to worry about if you’re eating a normal varied diet. Your body gets its minerals from food, not water. I’ve covered this in much more detail in my post on whether distilled water is safe to drink if you want the full picture.

Where to buy a water distiller

There are lots of places to buy a water distiller to suit your needs.

We love and recommend the Megahome water distiller, and it’s available on many dedicated distiller websites from around £219 to £249.

Or you can find new or preloved versions on eBay, often for a cheaper price.

Shop Megahome water distillers on eBay by clicking here

More about distilled water

If making distilled water at home has got you curious about what else it can be used for beyond drinking, my post on what distilled water is used for covers everything from steam irons and humidifiers to plants and car batteries.

And if you’re wondering how long you can keep your distilled water once it’s made, does distilled water go bad answers exactly that – including how we store ours and what to watch out for.