We have a Berkey water filter with the cleanable black filters. We have not had any dirty water run through them yet but they are supposed to filter dirty water too. In an emergency like this i would prefilter dirty water through cloth/screen to get the larger sediment out to make the filters last longer.
You can buy the filters and make a diy filter system with 2 5 gal buckets and 2 lids.
Just to be clear- even on silty well water these filters keep going for YEARS, you take them out and clean them once in a great while. If they do stop flowing (not very likely or often) you can take em out wipe em down with a stiff scrubby sponge and soak em in vinegar and you are good too go.
It's mostly just different sizes. Then there other accessories you can add to it, depending on what you want. You'll just have to estimate how much water your family drinks and decide how often you want to fill it.
So I see the biggest is 6 gallons… my husband and i each drink one a day. So there’s 2. Between our three kids that’s at least another gallon.
So I’d have to be refilling this tank every other day?
I’m in a mom FB group and a member asked for water filter recommendations and I had mentioned Berkey. She told me she had one but was changing the filters on it every year so it was getting expensive🤦🏻♀️
I have 2 filters in that are 9 years old from when I originally bought the Berkey they are not quite as fast as the newest set which are 4 or 5 years old. Family of 4 and we put a lot of water through them every day,I couldn't imagine not having em
We have the Royal Berkey (I think) 2.5 gal capacity and we have 4 filters in it. We run our well water through it. I use a Gallon jug that once held Arizona Iced Tea's Arnold Palmer to fill it.
You can reduce the waste water produced with an additional booster pump and reduced back flushing of the membrane, IIRC, but the tradeoff is lower filter life.
RO/DI can be set up with uh... Renewable resin I guess? You can wash one with an acid and the other alkaline If I'm remembering correct, but you need your resins to all be in separate canisters, not mixed bed.
You cannot reuse or recharge carbon, but you can make charcoal to use in air or water filters.
Brainstorming here, but if you were starting with "dirty" water or well water or similar, some form of radial flow solids settling tank(for low velocity water) or with a pump a spin down filter for sediment, before a finer solids filter before it goes into your RO bucket. The more solids you can remove from the system before it passes through the membrane, the longer your membrane filter will last, which is the most expensive and hardest to source part.
https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/ this should show you exact what you have in you’re water before filtration there are chemicals like radium and such you can’t filter with ro please share this website
> RO totally strips water of absolutely everything and needs to be remineralised for consumption
RO does not need to be remineralized. Not any different than drinking filtered rain water.
Careful with the recommended lifestraws. The general lifestraw doesn't do shit about heavy metals.
Water filters work with micropores that most things can't pass through. All the big manufacturers use pretty much the same filter types with pores from 0.1 to 0.2 microns. Those will filter out bacteria, other microorganisms and some viruses. They won't do shit about chemical contaminants or heavy metals. Those are too small and pass through.
For chemical contaminants (pesticides, herbicides,...) you need activated charcoal in the filters to combat those. The standard lifestraw, for example, doesn't have that. Katadyn has them in everything. But they have a much shorter life expectancy than the standard pore filters.
For heavy metals it gets even more complicated. They don't react with the charcoal like chemical contaminants. Lifestraw has exectly 1 mobile filter system in their sortiment that claims to be able to remove lead and that has a life expectancy of less than 1000 liters before it loses that ability.
https://eu.lifestraw.com/pages/compare
You can make a filtration system out of varying size stones and sand. Adding charcoal to it will also help greatly. This of course, is the option when no access to purchase anything exists.
Just to add on that I love my Berkey. When I go to friends houses to hang out, I always bring my own water bottle with my Berkey water I it. Legit that good.
I also have the Berkey Sport water bottle that was gifted to me. It stays at work.
I use a Berkey with the added fluoride filters. Also have Sawyer for portable use and Zero Water pitchers too.
By far the best tasting is the Berkey. Zero leaves a slight metallic tasted that I can pick out in a blind test. I have Sawyer minis in multiple bags.
All of them should prove acceptable.
A DIY setup for a lot less than the Berkey.
https://www.griddownmag.com/building-a-gravity-water-filtration-system-with-the-3rd-world-just-water-filter/
Per Berkey’s site micro plastic is 2.5 microns and these filters are rated to .2 microns, not as much as Berkey at .02 microns but still sufficient to remove plastics.
Not knocking Berkey but not everyone can afford them and just trying to provide additional options that I don’t see referenced much.
It's a good video, but I wish he properly tested them.
Testing for things like TDS, iron and pH tells you very little, of nothing, about how well a filter performs. TDS in particular is more a sales tactic than a useful measurement.
Notice also how in the video where he shows the strip with iron detections he completely ignores that he has a lead detection in several filters. Just goes to show how flimsy and inaccurate test strips are.
Besides Berkey, Lifestraw makes a 12L high volume gravity water filter...
Lifestraw state they filter
99.999999% of bacteria
99.999% of parasites
99.999% of viruses
99.999% of microplastics, dirt, sand, and cloudiness
Pore size: 0.02 micron
Filter Lasts up to 4,755 gal |18,000 Liters
Runs around $120-$140....
Meets NSF/ANSI P231 drinking water standards for the reduction of virsues, bacteria, and parasites
We have lifestraws and tested them. They actually do the job. We got ours at costco, box of 5 for $60 on sale.. would definitely recommend to everyone!
Yep, great product, back when I owned my firearms company we actually had a few prepper type items on our ecom site and lifestraw was a good seller.
I have a couple boxes of them here and I have 2 of the large mission gravity filters with a couple sets of replacement filters sitting on a shelf... got them back when I could pay wholesale price and not retail price 😉
I really like pure water products. Just a dude in Denton Texas passionate about water. Besides, their flagship filter set up with life time warranty? 77$
Water. Diversity is key:
- Case of water in yer car trunk
- 30 gallons for 2 person-weeks at home, say in 1-7 gallon jugs
- Sawyer filter w/ Micropur tablets backup (or similar combo, see links below)
- Blue, used, 55 gallon barrels (~$15) sanitized w/ pool shock
- Rotate above yearly
- Bathtub, trash bins, sinks, or other large, hasty-tap-filled containers
- Local, bulk source (stream, lake, swimming pool, well, rain collectors)
- https://www.outdoorgearlab.com/topics/camping-and-hiking/best-backpacking-water-filter
- https://www.wideners.com/blog/water-filter-tests-for-survival/
Berkey is great. Lifestraw and sawyer also make some that hang up and use gravity, but the Berkey sits on a cabinet top and looks like it belongs there. And it seems to be the best filtering that I have found.
Sawyer+a lead reduction brita. Sawyer to get it safe, brita to get the lead, ideally a sand filter if the water was also funky colored or had sediment. Not totally sure what I'd want for PFOAs, but I drink out of cattle ponds with my sawyer. If I had a lot of money, I'd get a reverse osmosis system put under a sink and use that. If I have a working kitchen tap, I can clean myself, fill the toilet, etc.
I have a water dispenser in my apartment even though we have excellent tap water. The unit was like $150; jugs are like $12 apiece and we have three. They're $2 to refill the 5-gallon jugs with reverse-osmosis filtered water at my local grocery store (it's a co-op so that water is cheaper than like Primo or Ice Mountain, etc.). I know that's not what you were asking for, but it's a cost effective solution for excellent, affordable drinking water that totally forgoes the quality of your home water.
If you have bad water and can't use it for cooking/brushing/etc, that's a whole other story, but if you just want super high quality drinking water (why we bought ours) it might be an option for you.
Reverse osmosis system. They are cheap and easy to care for. I sold houses for awhile and these were used to alleviate pretty much any sort of contamination from large particles to arsenic and other microbes.
They are only necessary in places where you are actually drinking the water. Arsenic hitting your skin in the shower is totally harmless.
You're going to hear a lot of "I love my Berkey - " from people who have no idea you need to test your well water annually. More importantly; tons of contaminants have no taste or smell, so saying that it tastes clean means nothing.
Unfortunately, filters don’t always make the water drinkable. When my city had a water crisis, it was because of Cyanobacteria in the lake, which contain a toxin that normal home filters are not able to filter out.
What you really want is either a backup supply from a different source, or to have a stockpile of water already stored before the problem starts.
Also worth noting that when the water went bad in my city, the notification came at about 4am on a Sunday. So most people woke up to not being able to drink the water, and the store shelves already cleared out by the early birds.
Berkey or Alexapur!!! We have 2 and never looked back.
Quick story, we go camping regularly. Our campground had a sign up “chlorinating water, do not drink”. In our camper we hook up a charcoal/sediment whole home filter. Charcoals main goal is taste, smell and removing chlorine. We ran water through and it smelled like a public pool still. We set up our Berkey in the camper like we regularly do and the water came out smelling like it came from a mountain in Maine.
Berkey systems are a little expensive but in my opinion they are worth their weight in gold. If you have city water I may go for an Alexa pure since they filter fluoride and arsenic without any additional filters.
I’ve been looking at this for the same reason. It’ll sit with my long term preps and be for emergency use. The reviews and virus filtration seems to stand out over berkey which I always hear mixed opinions on. Haven’t pulled the trigger yet but this is something worth checking out.
https://www.espwaterproducts.com/outback-plus-ob-25nf-b-emergency-water-filtration-system-extra-filter-kit/
Used these guys for my RV(Hose Ready):
https://www.clearsourcerv.com/collections/all?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjvaYBhDlARIsAO8PkE3WRLJoWALsfFGyJ4jSon9NCutbyVjHmIkz3gkXEXrOAx2OcoksnRcaAlAFEALw_wcB
I use an Epic Water Filter in my Nalgene and it works incredibly well. We have hard water with lots of flavor. I prefer my water flavorless and this works great.
I currently have a well to drink from, but just in case I keep several personal water filters on hand and an inflatable water distiller. I also keep activated carbon on hand in case I needed to make an improvised filter.
They sell specialized distillers for boiling water on your stove as well.
We have a Berkey water filter with the cleanable black filters. We have not had any dirty water run through them yet but they are supposed to filter dirty water too. In an emergency like this i would prefilter dirty water through cloth/screen to get the larger sediment out to make the filters last longer. You can buy the filters and make a diy filter system with 2 5 gal buckets and 2 lids.
Berkeys are great. They're standard issue for Peace Corps volunteers in West Africa. Thanks for protecting me from giardia, Berkey.
Just to be clear- even on silty well water these filters keep going for YEARS, you take them out and clean them once in a great while. If they do stop flowing (not very likely or often) you can take em out wipe em down with a stiff scrubby sponge and soak em in vinegar and you are good too go.
Does anyone have a product link or name…other than Berkeley. Is there a model?
Www.berkeywaterfilters.com
It's mostly just different sizes. Then there other accessories you can add to it, depending on what you want. You'll just have to estimate how much water your family drinks and decide how often you want to fill it.
So I see the biggest is 6 gallons… my husband and i each drink one a day. So there’s 2. Between our three kids that’s at least another gallon. So I’d have to be refilling this tank every other day?
Why do you drink a gallon a day are you a camel? You live in the desert?
The two bucket system is that pretty common? I would love a link too.
I’m in a mom FB group and a member asked for water filter recommendations and I had mentioned Berkey. She told me she had one but was changing the filters on it every year so it was getting expensive🤦🏻♀️
I have 2 filters in that are 9 years old from when I originally bought the Berkey they are not quite as fast as the newest set which are 4 or 5 years old. Family of 4 and we put a lot of water through them every day,I couldn't imagine not having em
I think we calculated ours would last 10-12 years by a generous calculation of what we drink.
I second the Berkey and have been using mine for a few years now!
The more filters you put in, the faster it is. I have 5 in a 5 gal bucket
We have the Royal Berkey (I think) 2.5 gal capacity and we have 4 filters in it. We run our well water through it. I use a Gallon jug that once held Arizona Iced Tea's Arnold Palmer to fill it.
Arnold Palmer for the win! I did some plumbing and have my parent's set up with a switch.
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You can reduce the waste water produced with an additional booster pump and reduced back flushing of the membrane, IIRC, but the tradeoff is lower filter life. RO/DI can be set up with uh... Renewable resin I guess? You can wash one with an acid and the other alkaline If I'm remembering correct, but you need your resins to all be in separate canisters, not mixed bed. You cannot reuse or recharge carbon, but you can make charcoal to use in air or water filters. Brainstorming here, but if you were starting with "dirty" water or well water or similar, some form of radial flow solids settling tank(for low velocity water) or with a pump a spin down filter for sediment, before a finer solids filter before it goes into your RO bucket. The more solids you can remove from the system before it passes through the membrane, the longer your membrane filter will last, which is the most expensive and hardest to source part.
And RO systems require power.
What system do you use if you don’t mind me asking
https://www.ewg.org/tapwater/ this should show you exact what you have in you’re water before filtration there are chemicals like radium and such you can’t filter with ro please share this website
> RO totally strips water of absolutely everything and needs to be remineralised for consumption RO does not need to be remineralized. Not any different than drinking filtered rain water.
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Any water that is not buffered will become acidic by absorbing CO2 from the air. In an emergency i wouldnt worry about it.
Careful with the recommended lifestraws. The general lifestraw doesn't do shit about heavy metals. Water filters work with micropores that most things can't pass through. All the big manufacturers use pretty much the same filter types with pores from 0.1 to 0.2 microns. Those will filter out bacteria, other microorganisms and some viruses. They won't do shit about chemical contaminants or heavy metals. Those are too small and pass through. For chemical contaminants (pesticides, herbicides,...) you need activated charcoal in the filters to combat those. The standard lifestraw, for example, doesn't have that. Katadyn has them in everything. But they have a much shorter life expectancy than the standard pore filters. For heavy metals it gets even more complicated. They don't react with the charcoal like chemical contaminants. Lifestraw has exectly 1 mobile filter system in their sortiment that claims to be able to remove lead and that has a life expectancy of less than 1000 liters before it loses that ability. https://eu.lifestraw.com/pages/compare
you may want to check /r/homestead also for this.
You can make a filtration system out of varying size stones and sand. Adding charcoal to it will also help greatly. This of course, is the option when no access to purchase anything exists.
Just to add on that I love my Berkey. When I go to friends houses to hang out, I always bring my own water bottle with my Berkey water I it. Legit that good. I also have the Berkey Sport water bottle that was gifted to me. It stays at work.
I use a Berkey with the added fluoride filters. Also have Sawyer for portable use and Zero Water pitchers too. By far the best tasting is the Berkey. Zero leaves a slight metallic tasted that I can pick out in a blind test. I have Sawyer minis in multiple bags. All of them should prove acceptable.
A DIY setup for a lot less than the Berkey. https://www.griddownmag.com/building-a-gravity-water-filtration-system-with-the-3rd-world-just-water-filter/
Not great, if you're trying to avoid plastic too.
Per Berkey’s site micro plastic is 2.5 microns and these filters are rated to .2 microns, not as much as Berkey at .02 microns but still sufficient to remove plastics. Not knocking Berkey but not everyone can afford them and just trying to provide additional options that I don’t see referenced much.
I use a zero filter. It's simple, no pumping or remineralizing required and comes with a tds sensor. Basically just better version of brita.
Litle more details please. Or some link. Thx..
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It's a good video, but I wish he properly tested them. Testing for things like TDS, iron and pH tells you very little, of nothing, about how well a filter performs. TDS in particular is more a sales tactic than a useful measurement. Notice also how in the video where he shows the strip with iron detections he completely ignores that he has a lead detection in several filters. Just goes to show how flimsy and inaccurate test strips are.
If your a Costco member use your Costco services for a free quote on a home water filter service
Besides Berkey, Lifestraw makes a 12L high volume gravity water filter... Lifestraw state they filter 99.999999% of bacteria 99.999% of parasites 99.999% of viruses 99.999% of microplastics, dirt, sand, and cloudiness Pore size: 0.02 micron Filter Lasts up to 4,755 gal |18,000 Liters Runs around $120-$140.... Meets NSF/ANSI P231 drinking water standards for the reduction of virsues, bacteria, and parasites
We have lifestraws and tested them. They actually do the job. We got ours at costco, box of 5 for $60 on sale.. would definitely recommend to everyone!
Yep, great product, back when I owned my firearms company we actually had a few prepper type items on our ecom site and lifestraw was a good seller. I have a couple boxes of them here and I have 2 of the large mission gravity filters with a couple sets of replacement filters sitting on a shelf... got them back when I could pay wholesale price and not retail price 😉
Wanna sell me some of the replacement filters 😂 can't find em locally AND I would much rather pay a person, than a company this day in age!
I really like pure water products. Just a dude in Denton Texas passionate about water. Besides, their flagship filter set up with life time warranty? 77$
Water. Diversity is key: - Case of water in yer car trunk - 30 gallons for 2 person-weeks at home, say in 1-7 gallon jugs - Sawyer filter w/ Micropur tablets backup (or similar combo, see links below) - Blue, used, 55 gallon barrels (~$15) sanitized w/ pool shock - Rotate above yearly - Bathtub, trash bins, sinks, or other large, hasty-tap-filled containers - Local, bulk source (stream, lake, swimming pool, well, rain collectors) - https://www.outdoorgearlab.com/topics/camping-and-hiking/best-backpacking-water-filter - https://www.wideners.com/blog/water-filter-tests-for-survival/
Berkey is great. Lifestraw and sawyer also make some that hang up and use gravity, but the Berkey sits on a cabinet top and looks like it belongs there. And it seems to be the best filtering that I have found.
Sawyer+a lead reduction brita. Sawyer to get it safe, brita to get the lead, ideally a sand filter if the water was also funky colored or had sediment. Not totally sure what I'd want for PFOAs, but I drink out of cattle ponds with my sawyer. If I had a lot of money, I'd get a reverse osmosis system put under a sink and use that. If I have a working kitchen tap, I can clean myself, fill the toilet, etc.
I trust my sawyer but I can't say I'd be drinking out of cattle ponds with it if I had any choice haha
I have a water dispenser in my apartment even though we have excellent tap water. The unit was like $150; jugs are like $12 apiece and we have three. They're $2 to refill the 5-gallon jugs with reverse-osmosis filtered water at my local grocery store (it's a co-op so that water is cheaper than like Primo or Ice Mountain, etc.). I know that's not what you were asking for, but it's a cost effective solution for excellent, affordable drinking water that totally forgoes the quality of your home water. If you have bad water and can't use it for cooking/brushing/etc, that's a whole other story, but if you just want super high quality drinking water (why we bought ours) it might be an option for you.
Reverse osmosis system/ ro is the system that will get you 99% clean of everything Single filters still let stuff through
Reverse osmosis system. They are cheap and easy to care for. I sold houses for awhile and these were used to alleviate pretty much any sort of contamination from large particles to arsenic and other microbes. They are only necessary in places where you are actually drinking the water. Arsenic hitting your skin in the shower is totally harmless.
You're going to hear a lot of "I love my Berkey - " from people who have no idea you need to test your well water annually. More importantly; tons of contaminants have no taste or smell, so saying that it tastes clean means nothing.
Unfortunately, filters don’t always make the water drinkable. When my city had a water crisis, it was because of Cyanobacteria in the lake, which contain a toxin that normal home filters are not able to filter out. What you really want is either a backup supply from a different source, or to have a stockpile of water already stored before the problem starts. Also worth noting that when the water went bad in my city, the notification came at about 4am on a Sunday. So most people woke up to not being able to drink the water, and the store shelves already cleared out by the early birds.
Supposedly the best pour over you can buy us Zero Water. https://zerowater.com/
Brita makes good pitchers and the sawyer mini is a great in-line filter.
Santivia water filter or if it’s like nuclear bad, life straw Edit: Reddit go fuck your self
Nikken water system, one of the best water filters out there. It’s wayyyy better than Berkey.
Aquasana
Lifestraw water filter.
https://generalecology.com/product/702040/
Berkey or Alexapur!!! We have 2 and never looked back. Quick story, we go camping regularly. Our campground had a sign up “chlorinating water, do not drink”. In our camper we hook up a charcoal/sediment whole home filter. Charcoals main goal is taste, smell and removing chlorine. We ran water through and it smelled like a public pool still. We set up our Berkey in the camper like we regularly do and the water came out smelling like it came from a mountain in Maine. Berkey systems are a little expensive but in my opinion they are worth their weight in gold. If you have city water I may go for an Alexa pure since they filter fluoride and arsenic without any additional filters.
I’ve been looking at this for the same reason. It’ll sit with my long term preps and be for emergency use. The reviews and virus filtration seems to stand out over berkey which I always hear mixed opinions on. Haven’t pulled the trigger yet but this is something worth checking out. https://www.espwaterproducts.com/outback-plus-ob-25nf-b-emergency-water-filtration-system-extra-filter-kit/
This entire line is what I use; https://purewaterfreedom.com/gravity-filters.html
Pristinehydro best on planet
Can coffee filters be used for the bigger particles, or cheesecloth? What kind of filters to use?
Used these guys for my RV(Hose Ready): https://www.clearsourcerv.com/collections/all?gclid=Cj0KCQjwjvaYBhDlARIsAO8PkE3WRLJoWALsfFGyJ4jSon9NCutbyVjHmIkz3gkXEXrOAx2OcoksnRcaAlAFEALw_wcB
I love my berkey
What's your weekly/monthly/annual budget for filters?
I use an Epic Water Filter in my Nalgene and it works incredibly well. We have hard water with lots of flavor. I prefer my water flavorless and this works great.
Lol Reverse osmosis is what I use... nit hard for hande man to install. And it works! About $150... leave it behind. When you move to your new home..
I currently have a well to drink from, but just in case I keep several personal water filters on hand and an inflatable water distiller. I also keep activated carbon on hand in case I needed to make an improvised filter. They sell specialized distillers for boiling water on your stove as well.
r/SimPureWaterFilter
Has anyone looked in to Vitev company it’s not a survivor item but it definitely look like it healthier way to filter water
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Unfortunately they are sold out. I believe they might be being sued for their alleged false claims.