Instant water—just add water

The Woodpile Report's water processor.

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Normally we'd never have to use anything other than safe-for-sure potable water for anything, but in an emergency we'd use clean water—meaning good water, but not potable water—for making well-boiled coffee or tea for instance, and it's okay as-is for housecleaning and laundry and toilet flushing and such. But merely clean water is not good enough for drinking as-is or with cold drink mixes such as Tang, or with merely hot drink mixes like cocoa, or for washing dishes, tooth brushing and other personal hygiene, first aid and so forth.

This purification unit delivers potable water, safe-for-sure water by microfiltering clean fill water. Most sources say a gallon a day of potable water per person is the minimum. This unit has a pass-through of about a gallon an hour, providing two and a half gallons of safe-for-sure water per day for two people with one fillup. It would supply six people with two and a half gallons per day with three fillups, say, one every five hours. And that's water of a quality almost certainly equal to commercial bottled water.

When we saw this version of the venerable "missionary" drip-type ceramic water filteration system, namely, the Just Water system from monolithic.com (article, specifications, instructions, source) we just had to have one. It's affordable too, twenty-two fifty for the filter, the sleeve, and spigot. Add the price of the buckets—top grade blue FDA buckets with an o-ring lid go for less than ten dollars each—we were getting a workhorse water treatment system for about fifty bucks, all in.

Our top bucket has a lid with an optional pre-installed filler cap, the bottom lid is plain. When filling the top reservoir we use a funnel and a coffee filter, just to keep out the twigs and little fishys. We use the seamless cup-style coffee filters for such duty, it's not as nice a fit to the funnel but the conical filters may part at the seam.

We get our buckets from US Plastic, here, but other folks get the same buckets free or nearly so, used, from bakeries and such. Just so you know, yer ol' Woodpile Report has no association with either Monolithic or US Plastics other than as satisfied customers.

Among the nastier things that could be in open-running water are protozoa and bacteria and that's where this system shines. The filter is 0.5 micron (see bottom of page for * information about filter ratings from Berkey's site) which makes it rated 100% efficient for Giardia Lamblia, E. Coli, Vibrio Cholerae, Cryptosporidium and Cyclospora. It's effectively 100% efficient (99.999%) for Salmonella Typhil, Shigella Dysenteria and Kiebsiella Terrigena. And it's silver impregnated so microbes can't live in it. The activated carbon treats for organic chemicals (such as the tannin from decayed leaves), insecticides and similar and renders the water tasteless and odor free.

The cermaic filter will crack if dropped, rendering it useless so, being belt'n suspenders types, we ordered two complete sets of filters, and sleeves and spigots (why not?), putting it all back for spares. The filter is rated for "100 or more cleanings" which, while a long time, isn't forever. Given the quality of our fill water, we figure the main filter is good for a half to three-quarters of a year. We also bought enough activated carbon to refill the filters several times.

Assembly

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Assembly of the Just Water unit was straightforward and problem free:

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1. The bottom bucket was quick and easy. We drilled and deburred a hole and installed the spigot and washers finger-tight. Then we filled the bucket with water and checked for leaks. No leaks. It would be more correct to call the washers gaskets, they're thick, compliant and forgiving. The spigot is spring loaded and defaults to the closed position. Somebody thought this one out. Aside from the assembly instructions that is. Charitably said, they're incomplete, puzzling and included unhelpful itty bitty photos.

 

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2. This is the stuff that does the work, the ceramic filter with a washer-gasket and wingnut. We set the top of the bottom bucket on the bottom of the (overturned) top bucket and drilled a hole through both in one pass. Then we deburred the holes, put the gasket on the filter stem, pushed the stem through the holes and finger-tightened 'er down snug with the wing nut. That's the drip-stem and wing nut in the right hand picture, protruding through the lid for the bottom bucket (and passing through the bottom of the top bucket), attaching the bucket and lid together, necessarily.

 

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3. This is looking into the top bucket with the ceramic filter installed. The sleeve (right hand photo) fits over the filter like a snug-fitting sock. Its purpose is to keep stray crud an' corruption from fouling the main filter, extending the time between cleanings.

Final assembly. We were tempted to hammer the lids on tight, but then we considered the down side. The sleeve and filter need to be removed for cleaning about every two weeks so easy access has high value and hermetic sealing, um, doesn't. We just set the top bucket assembly on top of the bottom bucket and left the top filler lid unattached as well. If the unit were to be carted around we would have done differently but as it is, it sets on a shelf in the back room awaiting our pleasure.

Maintenance - The sleeve can be washed laundry-style but the ceramic filter must be cleaned with cold water, no soap. We'd use a fresh ScotchBrite-type dishwashing sponge. The activated carbon in the ceramic filter should be replaced every six to eight months. We bought five pounds of activated carbon for thirty bucks at charcoalremedies.com. Pet stores usually carry it too. If worse comes to worse we can make small quantities of charcoal ourselves and substitute it for the activated carbon, at a sacrifice in effectiveness.

High quality fill water isn't usually much of a problem outten the hills, for us it comes down to simple collection and carrying. It's good water too, we drank from local creeks and springs as kids and lived to tell about it. But, aside from rainwater, most folks in the cities and suburbs mostly don't have secondary-source water worthy of the name. And much of what there is doesn't bear thinking about, even with boiling it or defanging it with a few drops of Clorox. We've referenced below some methods of treating nasty water when that's all you have.

Hill folk have ways and ways, but for our urban friends an economical and simple water filtration outfit may make the critical difference should things get interesting. Survivalists would be the first to point out a person couldn't last more than a few days without water no matter how many beans, bullets and bandaids they had. Boiling is the gold standard for making water safe but it's easy to imagine situations where boiling water in a grid-down city may be more dangerous than the water.

Should we find ourselves in a long term crunch we would put up water by running the unit ahead of our needs, simply because there may be situtations where even the minor chore of collecting and carrying water from a spring or creek gets problematic, illness or injury say, or when the water is turbid during heavy runoff. We prefer the option of waiting out such contingencies.

We've also equipped our bugout bag with a low-cost portable unit by Katadyn called the Vario Dual-Technology. We got ours here but they're available from many sources. It's a hand pump type that fits most water bottles. We can't recommend it from experience because we haven't used it yet, ceramic filters can mildew if used and then stored.

Here's information for preparing and filling containers of water for safe storage.

Here are plans for simple methods to treat water using readily available materials. The methods generally do not yield safe-for-sure water without further treatment, but rather water clean enough for other uses or as fill water for a treatment unit.

Here's how charcoal is made with no equipment whatsoever. There are better methods but none cheaper.

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* Information about filtraton ratings from Berkey

There is much confusion with respect to nominal and absolute micron ratings. An absolute micron rating is one that states the maximum pore size expected within an element. The nominal micron rating is the average pore size within the element. This means that if 90% of the pores are .02 microns and ten percent are 2 microns, one could claim the nominal micron rating as .2 microns, which would imply that pathogenic bacteria and parasites would be totally removed. But in reality the bulk of the water would channel through the larger 2-micron pores and thereby allow both bacteria and parasites to pass through. Therefore a nominal micron-rating claim can be very misleading.

With respect to the absolute micron rating, there is also confusion because there are two different standards to determine absolute; in the US the standard is 99.9% removal, but the international standard in 99.99% removal or 10 times greater removal.

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