As far as I am con­cerned, this project has been well over­due.  Espe­cial­ly in the wakes of both hur­ri­canes Irene and Sandy.  With hur­ri­cane sea­son just bare­ly upon us, and the loss of pow­er, etc. last year, I thought it was time to pre­pare a bit for what might be to come.  In hind­sight, this project was SO easy, and rel­a­tive­ly inex­pen­sive, I am sur­prised at myself as to why I wait­ed so long to do it.  I think it’s because I already have some water stor­age.  Which reminds me, I have to dump the old water and replace it with new as it’s been just about a year since I’ve stored it.  That will be the next project.

Like many before me, below you will find the steps I took and the prod­ucts I used to build this project, and it only took me 20 min­utes or less, and was just about a $70.00 — $75.00 project over­all.  The bulk of the cost were in the Berk­feld 9″ ceram­ic replace­ment water fil­ters that I pur­chased off of Amazon.com.

Last year I pur­chased about 20 food grade buck­ets and lids.  The lids need to be replaced with gam­ma lids or oth­er lids to store food as they were cracked around the sides after being opened the first time.   I bought the buck­ets from a plat that had can­dy food fla­vor­ing deliv­ered in them, so I know they are food grade.  I think I picked up the buck­ets and lids for $2.50 or $3.00 each.  A bar­gain in my book…  I sim­ply washed them out with some bleach before using them.

Every­one should do this, it was so sim­ple.  Here were the steps I took:

1. I marked and drilled the hole for the faucet/spout.  I then mount­ed the faucet/spout with the rub­ber rings and the plas­tic nut that it came with.  This was a 3/4″ hole, and I used a 3/4″ bit and it worked per­fect­ly.
2. After I did that, I placed the lid that the top reservoir/bucket it sit­ting on, turned it upside down.  I then drilled two 1/2″ holes that will hold the two Berk­feld 9″ ceram­ic replace­ment water fil­ters in place.
   1. I have read that the two Berk­feld 9″ ceram­ic replace­ment water fil­ters will fil­ter between 10 — 15 gal­lons of water per day.
   2. I went with the Berk­feld 9″ ceram­ic replace­ment water fil­ters because I had read a LOT of issues with the black Berkey ones being faulty.  Ceram­ic are con­sid­ered to be stur­dier as well… If you know dif­fer­ent, please feel free to com­ment… 🙂
   3. Note, that if you are wor­ried about heavy met­als, this fil­ter will not fil­ter out heavy met­als.  Please do your research.  I am not wor­ried about heavy met­als as much as I am bac­te­ria.
   4. The Berk­feld 9″ ceram­ic replace­ment water fil­ters were rough­ly $30.00 less than the Berkey black fil­ters too.  Just sayin’ $30 bucks is $30 bucks.  I paid $65.00 for the pair of fil­ters.
   5. And, how long will the Berk­feld 9″ ceram­ic replace­ment water fil­ters last???  Great ques­tion…  I have also read that they will last (per set of two) any­where between 2,000 and 3,000 gal­lons fil­tered through them, depend­ing on how dirty the water you are fil­ter­ing is.  Not too shab­by for a short term dis­as­ter or one where you are stuck out some­where until you can come up with a longer term plan…
3. Once my holes were drilled into the lid and the bot­tom of the reser­voir, I insert­ed the fil­ters and tight­ened them down with the wing nuts they came with.  I had to look up on the inter­net how to install the rub­ber wash­er that came with it.  Note it should be inside the top reser­voir and the the fil­ter should rest on it, cre­at­ing a seal over the bot­tom hole.  This took me 20 min­utes to find, and I hope it saves you some time…
4. Once the fil­ters were tight­ened down, I put the top reser­voir over the drain reser­voir, tight­ened the lid as best I could, and filled the top with about five gal­lons of water.  It took a few min­utes for the water to per­me­ate the ceram­ic fil­ters, but once it did, I could begin to hear the water drip­ping from the top fil­ters.
5. Voila!  Water fil­ter built.

There were some spe­cif­ic instruc­tions on prim­ing the fil­ters, which I have includ­ed here (click to down­load).

Below, please find a few pic­tures of the steps I took to get from point A to Point B to cre­ate a sys­tem to help me have clean water going for­ward, whether I take this unit camp­ing or use it for emer­gen­cies only.  I am prob­a­bly going to buy anoth­er set of fil­ters just to keep on hand.  While 2,000 — 3,000 gal­lons is a lot of water, we are, after all prep­ping…

Let me know what you think and what you use as a solu­tion today.  Here are some of the pics, I promised.