With many households forced to buy bottled water as their house tanks dry up, entrepreneur Richard Kowalski has been doing the rounds demonstrating that they could instead be self-sufficient, extracting their drinking water from the air around them.
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His unit produces water from the air much like the drip from an airconditioner, but this water is very pure (although trace minerals are added) and not at risk of spreading Legionaries disease as it's kept below 10 degrees.
Mr Kowalski said the units can pay for themselves from the money saved buying bottled water, and he sees it as an option not only for households but larger premises like schools and offices.
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Smaller units producing up to 12 litres a day could be ideal for caravans, and the system's scalable up to thousands of litres per day. Running off mains or solar power, Mr Kowalski said the units offer a degree of independence for travellers and self-sufficiency in times of natural disaster when bottled water may be the first thing to disappear off shop shelves.
A unit producing up to 30 litres a day costs $2499, and looks much like a traditional office water cooler.
It's an Australian initiative that's generating a lot of interest, Mr Kowalski said. It's smart enough to sense drier air (generally in the middle of the day) when it's uneconomical to extract water, and automatically switch off for a couple of hours until the relative humidity is back in range.
It uses a reverse osmosis system with the water then passing through three stages of UV light to kill off any pathogens.
