By:Cassandra Stephenson-September 3, 20256:30 am

 Altitude Water’s machines have made Amy Grant’s rural Hidden Trace farm able to produce, save and purify enough drinking water to support itself without city hookups. The machines pull moisture from the air to produce clean water, and the company also uses an ozone generator to purify water from the farm’s underlying aquifer and rain catchment systems. (Photo courtesy of Altitude Water)

A company looking to make clean drinking water more climate-resilient and accessible during disasters found an ideal testing ground in an unlikely place: Amy Grant’s farm in Tennessee.

Florida-based Altitude Water began working with the Grammy-winning singer-songwriter in 2014, when she needed a drinking water source to support a youth summer camp on the rural property in a short time frame.

Grant already had one of the company’s smaller machines, which use technology to pull water from the humid atmosphere. In a matter of weeks, Altitude Water installed a large machine capable of producing more than 100 gallons of drinking water each day, enough to have a gallon of water on hand for each camp attendee.

“We got it done,” Altitude Water Founder and COO Jeff Szur said. “Then from that, as the farm kept growing, we needed more water. She allowed us to use the farm to do some research and development.”

Eleven years later, Grant’s Hidden Trace Farm in Williamson County is now fully water independent — generating, purifying and storing up to 800 gallons of water each day with no reliance on city infrastructure, Szur said.

Altitude Water’s machines have made Amy Grant’s rural Hidden Trace farm able to produce, save and purify enough drinking water to support itself without city hookups. (Photo courtesy of Altitude Water)

The system is an unassuming cluster of machines and storage tanks tucked under a covered patio.

An atmospheric water generator uses evaporation and condensation to turn humidity from the air into water. An ozone generator runs an electrical charge through the air to create ozone gas. That ozone is then used to purify rainwater and water from the sulfur-laden aquifer below ground.

Using ozone to purify water is also a time-tested idea first developed in the 1890s in Europe.

Weather at Altitude Water’s South Florida headquarters is often hot and humid, ideal conditions for the atmospheric water generators to produce high water yields. But other areas of the country — and the world — experience greater range.

The company needed to test the machines’ limits in cooler, dryer conditions.

“Testing at Amy Grant’s farm gave us the cooler temperatures and conditions we needed to develop the water and purification systems we are now using in disaster zones and rural communities,” Szur said.

Altitude Water’s smallest machine, which is about the size of a 5-gallon water cooler and sells for around $4,000, can produce up to 15 gallons of water each day. The machine will produce about six gallons of water in 74-degree weather with 45% humidity, he said.

That drops to three and a half gallons at 35% humidity.

“We can only take the water out that’s in the air,” Szur said.

Grant’s farm uses a machine that can produce around 185 gallons of water in 24 hours.

While other companies make machines that similarly use evaporation and condensation to produce water from the air — a natural process that Szur says no one can patent — Altitude Water does hold a patent for their ozone injection system.

The “water hub” system first tested at Hidden Trace can now be seen around the world, providing water to off-grid Maka, Cameroon, and helping survivors in Asheville, North Carolina, in the months after Hurricane Helene.

“As communities across the U.S. face ground contamination, aging infrastructure, and climate-driven water emergencies, the work we’ve achieved at Hidden Trace Farm has given us a replicable path forward,” Szur said.

Water, power and cell service on wheels

Altitude Water’s Disaster Relief Trailer got one of its first field tests after wildfires scorched Maui in 2023. It was equipped with a machine that could capture up to 390 gallons of water from the air per day, and a 500-gallon storage tank. There was no time to set the trailer up for solar power, Szur said, so it ran off of a diesel generator.

The company’s second trailer — this time, with a solar power option — was put to the test in Asheville after Hurricane Helene.

Altitude Water partnered with Grassroots Aid Partnership and Footprint Project, a nonprofit that provides solar power for communities facing crisis, for disaster response efforts.

The trailer was equipped with machines able to produce 210 gallons of water and purify 1,500 gallons. Solar panels could generate 12 kilowatts an hour and with 60 kilowatts of battery storage that allowed the water purification machine to run at night. The company also installed Starlink satellite technology, providing phone and internet service.

“It’s basically a command center with everything you need, without having to ship everything in every day,” Szur said. “You don’t have to ship in gas; you don’t have to ship in bottled water. And then you have your communications, which we added because we saw in Maui — with all the towers burned — how bad the logistics were.”

The trailer is compatible with a gas generator and municipal hookups as well, “because you never know when you get into a disaster what the situation is going to be.”

SOURCE

Taxonomy

• Atmospheric Water Generator
• Produced Water
• Water Supply
• Drinking Water
• Florida, United States
• Water from Air
• Domestic Water Use

1 Comment

1. Insightful. Need detailed demo and supply chain to access to these devices. In India we are a a disaster prone country with vulnerable population. We must focus on these technologies during disasters