What's the best (and simplest) way to make a solar water still using household devices?

Question

The solar water still needs to have a base area not exceeding 0.25m² (approx. 500mm x 500mm).
Prefabricated or professional constructed collectors, purifiers, heaters or storage devices cannot be used.

Answer 1

What is the solar still being used for? If it is for purifying dirty or salty water, the best is to make a sealed still out of glass sheets with a reservoir painted black and a clear angled side for the water vapor to condense on, that leads to a pure water reservoir. The pure water reservoir can connect to a hose and fill a container.

|\
|....\
|........\ < angled glass
|............\
|................\
|............|.......\
|______|_____\

----^ dirty water reservoir
--------------^ clean water reservoir

The dirty water in the black painted reservoir evaporates condenses on the glass and runs down the angled glass into the clean water reservoir.

If you want to get water from soil or branches etc, the hole with plastic sheet ig idea will work.

Answer 2

any sort of plastic sheeting can be used (bin bag,shopping bag etc) for the top ,as for the base all you got to do is dig a hole then put a cup, can or anything that can hold water in the center of the hole place the sheet over the top cover the sides to make it airtight and place a weight on top in the middle ; i dont think you would get a lot of water because of the size tho

Answer 3

Use plastic sheet 0.25m2, aluminium foil of the same area and some large stones. Make hole in the garden, lay down plastic sheet put foils over the plastic lay on the stones and leave to work.