Fun with Buckets: The Homemade Water Purifier

A while back I picked up a couple of Black Berkey purification elements. The plan was to build a simple five gallon water purification unit out of plastic buckets. I saw this link a couple of years ago on a preparedness site. Then Creekmore posted it on his blog at the beginning of the week. Thanks for reminding me to get off my butt and get this done M.D.

This was the easiest project that I've undertaken in a long time. You could literally build one of these with a sharp pocket knife as long as you have the rest of the materials. The Berkey filters come with a gasket and everything else that you need to screw them down. They cost $99 a pair at Our Happy Homestead which is pretty cheap insurance if you ask me. They're the same price everywhere so take advantage of Our Happy Homestead's free shipping on orders over $99. For the bottom bucket with the spigot I used an ale pale. It's a five gallon bucket with a spigot installed on the front that you can get at most homebrew supply stores for around $10 or $15. The above link explains how to make one yourself, though. Just get a spigot with a rubber gasket, drill a hole in the front of a bucket near the bottom and install. For the top bucket I used a six gallon bucket since the charcoal filters displace some water. Drill two half inch holes in the lid of your ale pale and two half inch holes in the bottom of the top bucket. Make sure that they line up properly and screw down the filters. Put everything together, add water and wait for gravity to do it's thing.

I filled it up yesterday morning. By last night about half of the water from the top bucket had filtered through. Keep the top bucket full if you want it to filter faster. I haven't tasted the filtered water yet but I've heard that it tastes like distilled water. If you're using dirty water make sure you filter it through a tshirt or something so that the filter elements don't clog up too quickly. Just take everything apart and give the filters a good scrub if the flow slows down too much. I plan on taking it camping this summer. I'll definitely share my results with natural water sources.

This thing takes up a lot of space. Because it's so easy to make my advice would be to keep everything on hand but don't bother building it until you need it. Just keep the filters stashed somewhere. If you don't need the "ale pale" then keep your spigot with the filters. Use the buckets for other things until you really need to put everything together. To speed up the filtration process there's plenty of room for at least two more filters. If filtering a lot of water is important to you then going with four filters would be a good idea. Obviously, having spares is a good idea, too. You never know when unexpected guests that you decide wouldn't be so bad to have around might show up during a disaster.

If you don't want to go through the hassle of building your own water purifier or you want something that's more durable and easier to keep clean then you could always go with a metal Berkey purifier. They range in size from the Go Berkey kit which uses one filter and filters a couple of cups of water at a time to the Crown Berkey which is almost as big as the five gallon bucket purifier that I just built. They also make the Berkey Light. No matter what solution you settle on having a means to purify water is a must. The Hiker Pro in your BOB may be a great short term solution but it won't cut it if you need to use it for an extended amount of time.

Update:

I decided to take some pictures and measurements of the full unit. It's 12" in diameter (WOAH the diameter of a standard bucket!) and 35" tall. The water tastes like clean water. I didn't think that it tastes like distilled water at all. There is still some water at the bottom of the top bucket as expected. It won't filter all the way to the bottom of the top bucket because of the bases on the purification elements. I'd say that it took a full day to filter the entire top bucket. I'll pay closer attention next time I try it. Here are a couple of pics.