Bests & Worsts Reviews from Amazon

Got this out a couple days after I got it as I would be home all day. Read the manual, washed, rinsed and dried off the parts sans the silicone hose, and filled two parts with water, put it on the stove and let it do it's thing. A factor that other buyers might have encountered that would render this useless is mistaking the boiling pan for the condensing pan. I did that and was quite miffed and confused when after the first hour, there were only drops in the catch pan. So, after getting the tower set up right, with marbles in the boiling pan so I can keep track of the water level better, the distilling started working like it should. After the first hour since restarting, I got a little over a quart of water in the catch pan, but it would not drain through the hose despite adjusting the spout and putting the spout below the stove. I had to drain the catch manually. Testing after the water cooled with a separate TDS meter, the first quart was not true distilled. I ended up with a quart of water that had 12ppm instead of 0ppm like what I get from the store. I suspect this unit needs a few rounds before it'll start giving 0ppm. As for cost, if this does end up doing about a quart an hour, then calculations are about $0.92 a gallon. I was paying $0.90 a gallon + tax + the cost of gas to drive to a store that has more than a few gallons in stock or will permit me to take home more than 3 gallons a day. I'm running a humidifier nearly constantly in my very dry apartment and there is no recycling for the plastic bottles. So add the cost of at least 2 empty gallon bottles a day to the detriment on the planet since there is no local place to drop them off, and if there was, that's an added gas cost. I will update this when I learn more, but if this does turn out to work like I think it will and I can get 0ppm water, then I would say this is a winner. Perhaps though some more obvious clarity for which is the boil pan and which is the condensing pan. They were stacked in reverse in the box and I took it as that was how it was supposed to be stacked on the stove. Steam escaping and water spitting had me confused but what sealed it was no water collecting in the catch pan. -update- I did eventually achieve 0ppm with the fourth quart. And I did eventually get the distilled water to go through the hose. There is a 'sweet spot' for the temperature setting needed to produce the 1 qt/hour. Too low, that isn't achieved. Too high, the device doesn't work properly.