Finding ultra-pure water locally...


I've been reading up on record cleaning, and there seems to be something of a consensus that rinsing with ultra pure water / lab-grade water / triple distilled water (I'm assuming these are just different names for essentially the same thing?) helps. Where does one buy such water locally? I would imagine paying postage to ship 10 lbs of water would be rather high. I'm in the San Francisco Bay Area. Tks!

John
john_adams_sunnyvale
Crem1, I went to pep boys and the battery water was $2.99 a gallon, not $4. Am I getting the right water? I should email you directly as I got the prefection steamer and am getting some spitting. Obviously, I'm very impressed by the results.
Let see to really do this right we would need to have a broad range of purity as well as price. We would need to do a broad sampling of records to be cleaned and then rinsed with our rinse water. From my experience with Walker's water and both distilled water bought at the grocery store and RO water from my unit where I heard a cleaner record with the Walker, we might well expect a strong relationship between price and purity, but would we see a strong relationship between purity and cleanliness of records and their sound? Or would waters with relatively high to high purity sound the same down to some point where the sound went bad. The lowest purity before the sound went bad would be the best buy. Do we know if it is a linear and smooth relationship or a step relationship where there is a sudden jump as purity increases? I don't think so.
I generally take great interest in threads such as these, and others about cleaning-rinsing, etc., as well, that can discuss the actual science, and appropriate products, without perhaps the need to shell out $40 for a 1/2 oz of cleaner, such as what LAST charges for thier Power Cleaner.

I'm sure we would all like knowing to what point of purity is "ideally" needed, then to what point there are then diminishing returns, and what boundary we should recognize for a "good enough" grade of water.

Of course, we all read the posts day in, and day out about those who will claim 'Hey, I use my Tap Water run through my Britta, or Wally World Distilled with perfectly flawless results, without any scientific testing-study-research to back those claims.

Out of curiosity, I've browsed suppliers like Fisher Scientific, and seen water prices that would make even Michael Jordan cry. Things like DNA grade, which I'm sure does not need to be in a Vinylphile's aresenal.

Part of the ethical problems I see, is while many of us patronize many good companies, we all mostly trust such good companies such as Walker to provide us with very good products.

With that being said, I would not at all feel comfortable contacting somebody such as Lloyd, and saying something so stupid, such as: "Hi Lloyd, what grade water do you use, I like it very much, works fantastic. but wish to bypass spending $88/gal for your products". See what I mean?

About expiration dates, and of course suitable storage containers, and transference to them, do we actually need to don clean room-biological repellant suits so we now look like the folks in the Dustin Hoffman movie "Outbreak"? Mark
Tbg : I have been actively searching out water sources for steam cleaning for years.

In theory, I believe that most any material thing can be purchased for a reasonable cost , provided one is willing to search off the beaten path. Aquiring water products is no different than other objects , just a tad more challenging.

What I have been attempting to do is to locate some national resource available to all interested parties at the lowest price. My reasoning has always been that the more obsecure the manufacturer the greater the control of pricing ,particularity, when ascribed as "medical or Lab" grade. Understandably, they do have greater requirements and specifications that support the cost(s) out-lay(s). Nevertheless, what I have discovered is that certian manufactures require , say demand, huge quanities of reagent grade ++ water products for production purposes at the lowest outlay of money.

The most significant are certian car battery manufactures ; the others, the Water, Soda and Food Industries. All of these industries are under the onslaught of foreign competition that could cause some to go out of business but not today.

This returns me to my earlier recommendation for Peak Battery Water ; this product has been distilled, RO'ed , de-mineralized ,de-ionized and filtered product for $4.00 Gal @ Pep Boys Auto.

Whether the Peak Product is as pure as other products I can not confirm but it does appear to be superior to most , low cost and nationally available. For now that's my personal contribution to the search.
Markd51 and Crem1, as we really don't know what the benefits of purity are, I do think we have to go by what we personally judge to be pure enough. I have found, as I noted, that Walker's water sounds better as a final rinse than either store bought distilled water, which should be a pure as the steam that it comes from, and reverse osmosis water. Given what I use I will continue with Walker's water. I do wish some scientist would evaluate the benefits of greater purity for various purposes.