Water Filter Project

[Mortblanc]

I don't know if I mentioned it on the forum but I had a bout of kidney stones a month back and had to have some treatment, which included having the stones blasted sonically and removed.

Don't ask, you don't want to know!

It is just part of life and there is nothing you can do to prevent them if you are prone to them. I know every faith healer and herbalist has a sure fire cure for kidney stones but history, experience and medical research say differently. Everything you eat or drink can cause them to some degree and you can have them even if you have lived 20 years on a diet of lettuce and water. Yes even the water will get you!

Speaking of which, I give the water in my region a big raised eyebrow blame for my ailment. The water coming out of my pipes leaves a crust that must be chiseled from the fixtures. And overnight drip to prevent freezing can create a stalagmite in the sink before morning.

I just spent the morning making a water filter.

No, not an old tee shirt, sand and gravel in a 2 liter plastic bottle, a real filter.

I bought a Berky replacement cartridge, and two 20L plastic food grade buckets with lids. The whole thing set me back $50 US which would be about 35# your pound money.

The single Berky filter is good for 3000 gallons at 99.9999% purity when using African pond water. It will probably do more filtering my utility treated water, unless the scale builds up. The instructions said I could actually crack the scale off the outside of the filter and continue using it with no ill effect!

Using this at the rate I consume water for drinking and cooking I think I have about 5-8 years expected life of the cartridge.

I drilled a hole in the bottom of one bucket and installed the filter cartridge. That is my top bucket.

I drilled a slightly larger hole in the lid of the bottom bucket so the spout of the filter cartridge fits through. I also went fancy and installed a spout like you would use on a coffee urn on the bottom bucket.

This was a twenty minute job using just a drill, an 18mm and a 10mm drill bits.

As I type, the first batch of water is running through the new system. That run will be discarded due to charcoal dust washing through the filter on its first use. That and I washed the buckets out with detergent and they needed more rinsing than my flush out gave.

Now having two 20L plastic buckets on the counter might not appeal to some, I am a single man and don't give a crap! If there was a "significant other" to complain about the decorative appearance of my handy work it would work just as well if living in a garage or utility room beside the deep freezer. You could fill your fridge container once daily and forget it was outside.

Or!! it might be a good project for that complainer to take a ceramics course and make a decorative set of glazed pottery jugs to meet the need more attractively.

I have been wanting to do this for a while, and now it is done. I am ready for TEOTW and fixed to drink from the rainwater butts, runoff from a tarp caught in the wheelie bin, puddles, or the lake down the road.