Tuesday, August 11, 2009

Homemade water filter

Homemade water filter (Black Berkey) Gravity fed- 100% filtration- will even take food coloring out of water!- dirty water goes in the top and filters to the bottom bucket where I have a tap. (buckets were 2.79 at Lowes). filters were $100 (I have since found filters much cheaper at www.InternetPrepper.com)- this will process lake water, rain water- pretty much anything I throw at it- good for 6,000 gallons.
I made this myself after looking at all the expensive ones. I've been running this now for about 3 months. The water tastes better than Britta. The hardest part was the spigot, but I was able to cobble it together from parts at Lowes. (Internetprepper.com sells a kit with a spigot that works much better). I made a stand for it next to my washing machine.

I like that it's portable and it works great. I put a gallon of water in and take a gallon of water out.

3 comments:

WrethaOffGrid said...

That is such a good idea! I thought about making something similar using the plastic water containers that are used on water dispensers, the ones you see in offices and such, they go "glug glug" when you get water out. Anyhoo, good job!

Em said...

I was thinking that maybe we could use a beer siphon bucket with a spigot already built in, are your buckets bpa free?

Jimmy (pen name) said...

There are seven classes of plastics used in packaging applications. Type 7 is the catch-all "other" class, and some type 7 plastics, such as polycarbonate (sometimes identified with the letters "PC" near the recycling symbol) and epoxy resins, are made from bisphenol A monomer.[4] [12].
Type 3 (PVC) can also contain bisphenol A as antioxidant in plasticizers.[4]
Types 1 (PET), 2 (HDPE), 4 (LDPE), 5 (polypropylene), and 6 (polystyrene) do not use bisphenol A during polymerization or package forming.

All my plastic buckets are Type 2. Most 5 gallon food grade buckets are. HDPE buckets are Bpa free.

You can tell if it has the recycle triangle with the number 2 inside of it.

Good luck with the beer spigot. Seems like it would work fine.