1/16/08 - 4th Day - After Breakfast. We use a British Berkefeld "Big Berky" water filter for all of our drinking and cooking water here at the ranch. For those of you who are new to the blog, we live in an off-grid Christian community in the center of Texas...

We live in a small (less than 500 sq. ft.)cabin. We personally have about 37 acres of land, with 2 small tanks (ponds) that usually hold water pretty much year around, unless we have a big drought. There is a seasonal (run off) creek running through the property, but it is dry most of the winter. There is one well in the community, and we are thankful for it, but it is a low producing well and the water is heavy in minerals and gypsum. This water is generally only used for purposes where it will not be consumed by humans. All of our drinking water comes from our "catchwater" system which captures rainwater that hits our small cabin and funnels it into a 2500 gallon tank. This rainwater is then purified in our Big Berky for drinking and cooking. We have been using our Big Berkey for close to 9 years, and it works well for us and we would recommend it.

As part of the Cold Weather Camping and Survival course that I have been teaching to the men in the community, I was intending to teach them how to make a field drip water filter during phase two of the course. Well, we had to cancel phase two because of high winds and the fire danger (burn ban), so I had part 1 of the water filtering and purifying class here on the land for the men and anyone else in the community who wanted to attend. We captured the class on video, so I will be attaching it here in this blog. I made a passive drip water filter which works similar to the Berky - and I made it out of materials that were readily available on the land. The main purpose was to teach principles, so that the actual filtering could be adapted according to whatever materials are at hand or available in an emergency situation. ***Disclaimer - I am NOT a water professional, and I am not guaranteeing anything that you might do. This is provided for informational purposes to show how WE did it, and what I would do in an emergency. You are responsible for yourself****

Notes: I hadn't done this in awhile, and usually you have to change and adapt things as you make the filter based on what materials you have, etc. Sometimes you have to experiment a little to make it work, if you aren't getting good flow, etc. However, this filter worked on the first try, which was a blessing. The one "mistake" I made was that I took the creek gravel directly from being boiled and put it in the filter while it was wet. This meant that it had quite a bit of water soaked in it, and this was the water that came out first during the exhibition. Since we had boiled the gravel in well water, which is real "gypy", the first runnings tasted a bit mineral rich. This wasn't a problem, because it was clean and sterile having been boiled, and the amount of water ran through pretty quickly, so after pouring out about 8 ozs. the water ran clear and pure like from the Berky.

Check out the movie: (If you are having any problems with the video, please go watch it at my blog:  Click Here

Here is a picture of the filter, made from two large Gatorade bottles, along with the pure and clear water that passed through it. This water started as VERY murky pond water.


This next pic is from a smaller water filter that Jennifer made. She was excited about the whole project and made her own after watching me. Hers turned out great:


Ok, this is the end of part 1. I will (Lord Willing) be making a part 2 soon.

Your servant in Christ Jesus,

Michael "Salty" Bunker

***PS - the filter is still working fine three days later. I have changed the coffee filter three times. The main change I would make is that I would use better "silica" sand (instead of "play" sand) or no sand at all. The sand we used is very powdery and blocks the coffee filter within less than half a gallon. I would add more gravel, a bit less charcoal, and better sand or none at all. That aside, we have run several gallons of pond water through the filter and it has performed admirably. Jennifer's little filter works great too!