I read an article today touting the Big Berkey water filter. The Big Berkey is a great water filtration system. If you have three hundred dollars to invest in a water system, go for it. It looks very nice with a polished metal finish. If you want to accomplish the same for under fifty dollars, I will show you how I built my own. The secret of any good water filter begins with the filter itself. That is what you want to spend your money on. Get a good one that will filter down to .01 or .02 microns. I built my system several years ago, but I am going to build it here with current prices and links.
This water filter is available on Amazon from SHTFandGo for $11.00 and free shipping:
When you are building your system, you don't have to include a faucet. If you allow all of the water to move through the gravity filter before using the clean water, you can merely lift the top off and pour it. But a faucet is a more convenient way to set this system up and it allows you to draw water even while the system continues to filter. And they are inexpensive.
This faucet is available on Amazon from Tomlinson for $4.26 with free shipping.
The final thing you need to tie your filtration system together are two food grade buckets. You have options here. You can go to a fast food restaurant and ask if they have any pickle buckets. Many will give them away free. Firehouse Subs sell their used buckets for one dollar. Bakeries purchase frosting in large buckets and often give their buckets away for free as well. If you are able to get free buckets, you can build this entire system for under twenty dollars. Since I am pricing this out live, I am going to list some buckets that can be purchased and shipped to your house. This is the most expensive option:
Two buckets from USA Emergency Supply will run $16.94 plus shipping. In my case, I would not purchase from here as the shipping is $14.23 bringing the total for these two buckets to $31.17.
This system, using the expensive food grade buckets and ridiculous shipping charges still prices out under fifty dollars. $45.43 for everything you need to build the system. If you use free buckets from your local bakery, you can build this system for $15.26. That is a substantial savings from the $300 you will spend on a Berkey system. For that money, you can buy multiple filters and never run out of water.
To build the system: You drill a 1/2 hole in the bottom of the dirty water bucket and through the center of one lid. The water filter has a plastic screw cap on the bottom. Unscrew the cap and fit the filter base through the bottom of the dirty water bucket (keeping the gasket in place on the filter) and lid, affixing the lid to the bottom of the dirty water bucket by using the plastic screw you just removed.
The bottom bucket is the clean water bucket. Drill a 3/4" hole into the side of the clean water bucket about one inch from the base. The faucet I priced out has two gaskets. You can use them both, or just one on the inside. Remove the plastic screw, insert the faucet from the outside with or without a gasket and affix on the inside using one gasket and the plastic screw.
The key to this system is the filter. The filter should be good for 5000 gallons of water filtered to .02 microns. That is a lot of water for a single filter. This filter will remove cysts, bacteria, heavy metals, Giardia water turbidity and 99% of particles larger than .02 microns. .02 is the standard for exceptional filtration.
This system is easy to store. The buckets fit inside each other and you can placed the filter and faucet elements inside for storage.
Thanks for reading. Feel free to comment with additional tip, tricks or suggestions.