DIY inexpensive high volume crystal clear Drinking Water Filtration

Using Diatomaceous Earth, Sand, Silver Mesh, and homemade Activated Charcoal inexpensive high volume water filters can be no prolem for extensive periods.

Please do add any other potantial filter stage elements that would fit here!

Key Technologies:

Diatomaceous Earth (DE): Microscopic fossils with amazing capabilities. You can drink it to annihilate internal parasites, dust your garden for the ultimate organic pesticide, and use it for large scale water purification. One pound can treat many thousands of gallons. In fact, there are over 200 municipal DE water purification plants in the US. The major downside is you cant expect to dig this stuff up as you need it.
Cost: My initial searches have it as low as 50lb bags at $50.

Silver: Silver has unique inherent antibacterial & antimicrobial properties. It also helps reduce slime buildup. So this is obviously an ideal substrate for screening purposes in the different filter elements, but I also see the potential for a special filter stage consisting of many layers of silver mesh. If we can find pure silver mesh then obviously you could bake it to help clean it better for resuse. Of course, if you have actual silver (coins, jewelry) you could have a chamber filled with silver bits.
Costs: I havent yet tracked down pure silver mesh, but have found silver coated nylon mesh at about $4 per square foot. Pure silver is spot priced at just under $20 per ounce these days.

Sand Bed: Sand beds are another key municipal water filitration method. But the sand needs to be very fine and not saline. Sifting screens (which have many other food and chemistry uses) can be used to process your own sand, and a hydrometer (needed for measuring salt levels in marine aquaria) can be used to measure salinity, but a good glass type will be needed above the cheap plastic ones for best results. Of course you can always buy sand of this grade.
Costs: Sand - depends, but cheap. Hydrometer -

...continued...

From there the actual construction materials are of significant issue. To have a .8m deep body for it to travel thru sand is first. This could be solved using wide PVC pipe, but this technology causes many potential problems in any concept of single step water filtration. Swimming pool filters are often about 2' high instead of 8'.

It gets easier with activated charcoal, in a gravity fed system as stacking several 5 gallon buckets full of AC could suffice. But ideally the silver chanber will be long and narrow to allow the slowest flow thru this stage. With area of necessity issues DE might be of most concern, having to match filter element specs with recharging apparatus specs.

Um...

Discuss!

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


You only need about 3 ounces of silver to work up a decent filtration system. NEVER use plated jewelry as the base metal can and will poison your water. If you use a tank full of silver ingot or coin, pull the coin out every few days and polish them as they will oxidize to black in a short amount of time and screw with you system potentially causing harm. Other than that this system is genius.

I am curious if this would be or replace the DE
amazingsuckitup.com...

STARRED and FLAGGED!

Great Info! D.E. is great to have around the house for many things! Everyone should by a bag for their gardens, shrubs, houseplants, and then it will be on hand when you need it for water filtration! My mother has used this in place of pesticide for decades.

Activated Charcoal is another great thing to keep around! It has so many uses! You can even ingest it for accidental poisonings!

Silver "SilverWare" had benefits throughout the ages. I had never thought of building a filtering screen with it, but it is a great idea. As vxn mentioned earlier, it requires a little more maintenance than some would imagine, but it is still an effective device.

Great Thread!

reply to post by projectvxn


Hmm. You know any renewable / off-the-grid ways to go about doing that regularly?


reply to post by imd12c4funn


Can't say.


reply to post by getreadyalready


Great tip about if you swallow poison! Could be useful if you go eating the wrong wild bits. But are you sure the stomach acid or elsewhere doesnt dissolve the chemicals from the AC bits?

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss


You can roll silver out very thin and the perferate it by hand and layer it just off center. I would create an inner tank for the water lined with silver. And polishing is something you'll have to do by hand. There aren't any renewable ways of heating and rolling silver, but is a bad situation it's not going to matter much. You do what you have to.

reply to post by IgnoranceIsntBlisss

Studies show that Activated Charcoal is harmless when ingested or inhaled, or when it comes in contact with the skin. In rare cases, charcoal may mildly irritate the bowel in sensitive persons, but no allergies or side effects have been recorded. Ingested Charcoal may linger in the colon, but this is not harmful. Many pediatricians and pediatric handbooks recommend that Activated Charcoal be kept on hand as an antidote in the family medicine chest, especially in households that include small children (5, 10, 38, 41, 53, 64).

Scientific experiments over many years attest to the effectiveness of charcoal as an antidote. In one experiment, 100 times the lethal does of Cobra venom was mixed with charcoal and injected into a laboratory animal. The animal was not harmed (15). In other experiments, arsenic and strychnine were mixed with charcoal and ingested by humans under laboratory conditions. The subjects survived even though the poison dosages were 5 to 10 times the lethal dose (1, 3, 14, 16, 17, 38).

healingtools.tripod.com...

It can be ingested safely at any time, even by children!! I have had several experiences with this and alcohol poisoning in dumb college girls!!

It does wonders!