Moisture vaporator/Legends

"What I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators." "Vaporators? Sir, my first job was programming binary loadlifters—very similar to your vaporators in most respects."

- Owen Lars and C-3PO

A moisture vaporator was a relatively simple device used to harvest excess atmospheric humidity. It was ground-based and used on planets such as Tatooine.

Characteristics
"These machines are responsible for gathering this planet's single most valuable resource: water."

- A moisture farmer to a droid

The device comprised any number of tall slender refrigerated pipes (usually one). When hot, moist air came into contact with one of the frigid tubes, the humidity immediately condensed into droplets of pure water that ran down the tubes and into underground storage tanks.

A properly maintained moisture vaporator could usually collect enough water to sustain three average Humans, even on hot desert planets like Tatooine, and Geonosis; water could be collected from air with a moisture content of as little as 1.3%. Because of the delicate nature of the machines, regular maintenance was usually required.

Patch-in droids were often used as counterparts to the vaporators, as the droids translated the binary language they spoke, for the benefit of the operators.

Farmers called a moist and dark area under the vaporator that commonly housed vaporator mushrooms the mushroom patch.

History
During the Jedi Civil War, Czerka Corporation was known to produce vaporators for use in its more arid outposts, such as Anchorhead on the planet Tatooine. Former Sith Lord Revan was known to have obtained several of these as part of a negotiated deal with a local tribe of Tusken Raiders.

The Republic Army deployed vaporators during the Clone Wars to help reduce the amount of potable water that had to be shipped on transports.

The Tatooine Moisture Farm Collective existed to protect the planet's water supply. Together with the Bestine Chamber of Commerce, they sometimes employed hunters to kill the wild creatures that damaged the vaporators. One Tatooine moisture farm, the Lars homestead, had 63 separate GX-8 water vaporators on property.

Behind the scenes
After filming A New Hope, the vaporators outside the Lars homestead were left there, and are still visited by tourists to the Tunisian desert.

Non-canonical appearances

 * LEGO Star Wars: The Complete Saga
 * LEGO Star Wars: The Yoda Chronicles video game
 * LEGO Star Wars II: The Original Trilogy
 * Star Wars: Yoda Stories
 * Star Wars: Yoda Stories
 * Star Wars: Yoda Stories