Food Prep for the Lazy, Late & Cheap 14 Field Expedient Water Filter on the Cheap

Some good reading for background: http://www.aqsolutions.org/resources/DIY.pdf
http://www.aqsolutions.org/resources/Charcoal_Filtration.pdf
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_filtering
http://www.nscss.org/content/how-make-charcoal-gary-gilmore
http://www.wikihow.com/Make-Charcoal

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• Food
• Cooking
• Water
• filter

[cfarkas76]

great video bud. i have seen a lot of yours and they have been very useful. however, my activated carbon says on the container "known to cause cancer by the state of california". should i be concerned about this? i ASSUME this means not to breath in the dust, but i was hoping for some insight. also, do the pebbles have any filtering properties, or is it more of a mechanical layer of the filter? i put a small kit like this in my BOB so i want to make sure it is right. thanks for your time.

[ZombieTactics]

@cfarkas76 Just about EVERYTHING causes cancer, so that warning appears on on so many things its ridiculous. The pebbles are mostly as a diffusion layer to keep the water from eroding little channels and pockets. They provide SOME mechanical filtering, but not enough to be of much benefit.

[cseverhart]

I was watching a show called The Colony and they made a water filter similar to this using busted up charcoal briquettes ( I assume without lighter fluid added). Have you heard of anything like this working as well as what you have shown?

[ZombieTactics]

@cseverhart I'm not a fan of using charcoal briquettes, as many use binding agents and other chemicals which are toxic. If I you confirm that they are PURE charcoal briquettes ... then you are good to go.

[EnduringEagle]

This actually is very interesting. I just read that one gram of activated carbon can have the surface area equal to 1/2 a football field to 1.5 football fields depending on how it is treated. Additionally, there is evidence that this technique goes all the way back to the ancient Egyptians. Interesting don't you think?

[ZombieTactics]

@EnduringEagle It's not by any means a perfect solution, but it does the job decently. It has teh plus side of being very low-tech, well-established and able to be implemented with minimal resources.

[millster101]

Cool video , thanks for sharing it.

[crowe9107]

Thank you so much for this video and all the others in the series ZT, well thought out and informative as always.

[lostburro]

Very patient kitty you've got there.

Interesting video, TNX! I knew there was a reason I bought that charcoal a couple of years ago. NOW I remember.

[asimov13647]

When I was a youth in the wilds of Arkansas (almost 50 years ago) I lived in a tin-roofed house whose water supply was a cistern. Rain falling on the roof would run through troughs to a box filter and into the cistern. The filter had a layer of fine sand at the bottom, a layer of coarse sand above that and a layer of gravel topmost. The gravel, being the coarsest, would stop gross objects such as grass, leaves, and bugs. We replaced the gravel with creek gravel periodically.

[istarianjinsama]

Rock. That's what I was hoping to find.

[Littlejon126]

Cool video ZT! I live in the desert now and potable water is a real concern for me now.

I learned to do this but using a slightly different method - gravel on top, charcoal powder in the middle, sand on the bottom, using old denim between each layer as it's free flowing, and a tighter weave cotton sheet or two for the final layer.

Also, running boiling water through the filter a few times before using it for cool drinking water helps sterilize the whole unit and clears out all the carbon dust.