Gravity Feed Ceramic Filter Buckets - camping, fishing, survival, boil orders!

Description

Gravity Water Filter System
Description:
(
2
)
5-gallon
food-grade plastic buckets
(
2
)
4" low-profile
silver-impregnated ceramic filters
(
2
)
filter socks
to cover the filters, and extend their useful lives
(1) spigot
That's it!  It's the simplest thing in the world!
But it works.
We lived out "in the boonies" in SE Asia for quite a few years, and used 7" long  Sterasyl filters set up like this for our own drinking water. We would load the top bucket up with muddy, quite turbid water from the local village water hole, and after a short time, we could drink the water that flowed into the bottom bucket!
(Note:
If you catch rain water and run it through your filters to drink or make tea or kombucha, it tastes really nice!!
)
Some folks there bought the expensive stainless steel Berkey water filter arrangements, but we got the same pure water to drink at a fraction of their cost!
This works for most any kind of water,
with just 2 exceptions that I know of:
1.
No salt water.
It doesn't work, and will gum up the filters.
2.
No water
where a car or truck's radiator steamed up and
mixed
antifreeze
with the water!!!  This is deadly!
These filters are produced here in the US, and are just as good - if not better - than the Sterasyl filters we used to use.  They are rated at 0.2 micron pore size, so they will filter 99.99% of particles larger than 0.2 microns in size. They are silver impregnated, so they actually KILL bacteria and amoeba that try to swim through the filter with the water! There is a core of activated charcoal that removes bad tastes and odors from the water, too.
2 of the pictures are of a water filter I threw together last week when we had a boil order for our area of St. Louis.  It went from a pile of 2 buckets and 2 filters to good water we could drink in under 1 hour!  In fact, we had almost 2 1/2 gallons of water available in just under 1/2 hour.  Pretty sweet!
To use these on a regular basis, you'll have to clean the filters when the water that SHOULD flow through them turns into a dribble.  Some people use a green kitchen pot cleaner - if you do, make sure it's an OLD one that's been worn down, so you don't wear down your filters too much.  2 filters like these used to last us 1 year, being used on a daily basis.
To use, place the enclosed cloth filter socks over the filters, and secure with rubber bands.  Take these off when they get dirty, and rinse out, then pull back over the filters.
When the surface of the ceramic filters turns brown, it's time to run a dish cloth or old green pot scratcher lightly over the surface of the filters.  The brown color (the stuff that the filter stopped from coming through) will wipe off as you clean it with fresh water.  As you rub them lightly with the cloth or green pad, the color will gradually change from dark brown to lighter brown to a light cream color. Now it's clean.
Then I would use either a dish cloth or my hand to rinse the surface of the filters with clean water, and then wipe down the inside of the bucket.  Rinse with clean water, and refill with any old pond or river water again.
NEVER use soap
on either the filter socks or on the filters.  You will
RUIN
them.
You can speed up the filtering by making a siphon hose:
Get 2 pieces of 5/16" OD clear plastic hose, and push one up over the threads on the bottom of each of the filters.  Let them hang down in the bottom bucket so the ends rest on the bottom of the bucket.  When clear water flows and covers the ends of the hoses, it will start siphoning water through the filters, and will speed up the filtering process.
Technical Info: These filters will remove...
99% Arsenic 5
99% Hydrogen Sulfide (Rotten egg odor - H
2
S)
95% Chlorine and Chloramines
99% bad taste
99% bad odors
98% Aluminum
96% Iron
98% Lead
90% Pesticides
85% Insecticides
90% Rat poisons
85% Phenols
85% MTBE
85% Perchlorate
80% Trihalomethanes
95% Polyaromatic hydrocarbons
100% Giardia Lamblia
100% Cyclospora
100% live Cryptosporidium (WRc Standard)
100%
Cryptosporidium (NSF standard 53)
100% E. Coli, Vibrio Cholarae
99.999% Salmonella Typhil, Shigella Dysenteria
99.999% bacteria
Dry Storage Life: indefinite.
Wet Usage Life:  about 1 year (depends on how dirty the water is you put in the top bucket!)
SHIPPING:
PLEASE NOTE THAT THIS NEEDS TO BE SHIPPED BY UPS - that means that if your address is a PO Box and you can't supply a street address, I'll have to cancel your purchase and refund your money.