Is a Berkey worth the price?

[Ronnie]

Would this filter lake water especailly of bacteria? or other harmful pathogens?


We at times do take on lake water to refill our water tank, however not to drink. Drinking water we either buy or get from known safe sources.

[synestine]

Originally Posted by Ronnie

Would this filter lake water especailly of bacteria? or other harmful pathogens?


We at times do take on lake water to refill our water tank, however not to drink. Drinking water we either buy or get from known safe sources.

By "this" do you mean a Berkey or a reverse-osmosis filter?

Berkey claims to exceed national water standards. However they don't seem to want to subject their product to independent testing, claiming that could spill their trade secrets.

For a DIY system, anything that filters to 0.2 microns removes 99.something percent of bacteria, cysts, spores, etc. Having a sediment filter on-line before the 0.2 micron ceramic filter keeps out dirt and other stuff that would clog it. An activated-charcoal filter removes reactive chemicals (chlorine, fluoride, arsenic, lead, etc). A UV filter destroys microorganisms.

For my build I'm working on a 4-stage DIY filter (sediment, ceramic, charcoal, and UV) so I can do exactly what you describe and fill my tank from any available source.

-S

[Rock-N-Ruth]

Originally Posted by RobOfYork

I noticed a lot of people use a Berkey for drinking water. We plan on doing a lot of boondocking and are particular with our drinking water.

Is a Berkey worth spending $300 dollars on? or is there a cheaper option that is just as good?

A Sawyer filter from Walmart in the camping section is about 20 bucks and will filter ditch water to safe to drink. You can check them out online just Google Sawyer filter far less money van three hundred bucks.

[dzl_]

Originally Posted by Rock-N-Ruth

A Sawyer filter from Walmart in the camping section is about 20 bucks and will filter ditch water to safe to drink. You can check them out online just Google Sawyer filter far less money van three hundred bucks.

I love my sawyer mini ($20 backpacking filter) but its a small chore to filter a couple liters at a time, and requires a backflush every once in a while. I imagine it would be less than ideal paired with a few hundred liter water tank.

Is there a high volume version, or something that would work inline in a pressured system maybe? I could imagine a higher volume version working well, inline, on a dedicated drinking water tap. Or if you wanted to get creative you could create some sort of gravity fed system.

Originally Posted by synestine

A Berkey is a gravity-fed reverse-osmosis filter.

I admittedly couldn't really define RO, but I don't believe Berkey actually does reverse-osmosis, if you search "Berkey reverse-osmosis" you just get a bunch of articles from sites (including many Berkey owns or markets through) titled "Berkey VS reverse osmosis"

Originally Posted by synestine

For my build I'm working on a 4-stage DIY filter (sediment, ceramic, charcoal, and UV) so I can do exactly what you describe and fill my tank from any available source.

Do you expect this type of system will have the inefficient purified/waste water ratio that @kazetsukai expects from RO systems? I have vaguely looked into systems like you are planning and didn't recall hearing anything about wastewater.

[kidharris]

Originally Posted by A Crafty Beaver

So, the Berkeys are pretty much just a glorified carbon filter with a huge markup. I've been a plumber who has done a lot of water filtration systems in the 8 years I've been plumbing and I was not happy with what I could find on their system. That being said, I've never had one or tested one myself, going by what I read on the internet(so it must be true) and the fact that they refuse to be certified by the NSF/ANSI. NYTimes did a pretty decent write up on them(https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/r...filter-system/)

RO systems are nice but like others have said they have waste water and aren't ideal.

Best bet in my opinion, is an activated carbon filter for basic function(say if you only got your water from a city source) or a sediment filter(probably 20 micron) followed by activated carbon filter followed by a UV light filter for pulling water from a stream other water source that wasn't treated.


My plan(I have not built a bus yet but soon....) is to have all my incoming water be filtered through the sediment, carbon and UV filters before it gets into my storage tank. This way I can hook up a small portable transfer pump to a hose and get water from a stream or I can hook up to a garden hose from a house or a RV park and know that the water I'm getting will be clean.

The housings for the filters are fairly inexpensive ($20-$50)and the filters themselves are cheap as well and readily available just about anywhere. The 10"x4.5" filters are pretty over sized for the application but you won't have to worry about the filter slowing down the flow of water when filling tanks.

you could also capture rainwater.


I've heard that many people just but the Berkey filters and put them in their own containers to fit their needs.

[n2wbl]

It’s nothing more then a britta filter, the YouTube folks are/get a little a carried away! “1 tuber” shows taking a bucket of Roadside Ditch Water, pouring it into the filter and passing glasses of WATER to his children,,,, that moron should of been locked up,,,, Cryptosporidium (Crypto) and other parasites include Guinea worm, schistosomiasis, amebiasis, giardiasis. There is no way in hell a cartridge filter is going to clean this up,,, SO KNOW YOUR WATER SOURCE and how it’s deliver it to you. Non approved hoses play a big part in RV hookup?

[kkwip]

I use a Travel Berkey at home and love it, although it is a bit high maintenance in terms of needing to refill it often. When I see these Youtube videos of folks in vans and buses with them, they rarely look well secured which always astonishes me. And I've yet to hear one explain how they refill the Berkey since sometimes they have set it up a ways away from their sink. If you have a Berkey on your bus, you certainly have to have a fresh water setup of some kind as well, because it doesn't hold enough water. Which makes me wonder why they don't just put an inline filter or UV filter directly on their water supply and save the space/hassle of dealing with the Berkey. Maybe I'm missing something.

[dzl_]

Originally Posted by kkwip

I use a Travel Berkey at home and love it, although it is a bit high maintenance in terms of needing to refill it often. When I see these Youtube videos of folks in vans and buses with them, they rarely look well secured which always astonishes me. And I've yet to hear one explain how they refill the Berkey since sometimes they have set it up a ways away from their sink. If you have a Berkey on your bus, you certainly have to have a fresh water setup of some kind as well, because it doesn't hold enough water. Which makes me wonder why they don't just put an inline filter or UV filter directly on their water supply and save the space/hassle of dealing with the Berkey. Maybe I'm missing something.

A lot of the buses / vans on youtube are built or staged for aesthetics, not practical living or travel. And at least some of the products you see in those videos are compensated product placement (no idea if its the case with Berkey, but something to be mindful of).

[Ourversionoflife3]

We just got a Berkey about a week ago and so far we absolutely love it. It is definitely NOT an RO system. We didn’t want RO because that removes minerals from the water during the filtration. We want the minerals because if you drink non-mineralized water it will pull minerals from your body. Berkey systems leave the minerals in.

In our short experience, the filtered product tastes fantastic. We were using a regular Brita filter, but could still taste the chlorine that is present in our tap water. The Berkey water has a very smooth and neutral taste and feel.

Berkey recommends doing a test with red food coloring to make sure there aren’t any leaks in the system once you’ve set it up. We tested our setup as recommended and no coloration made it through. For grins, we poured the red food dye through the Brita filter and it didn’t filter the dye out at all, so Berkey is definitely in a league beyond Brita.

As far as testing - from their website “The Black Berkey filters have been tested by several EPA-accredited laboratories including the Department of Toxicology and Environmental Science at Louisiana University, Spectrum Labs, and the University of Phoenix. This extensive testing confirmed that the Black Berkey Purification Elements far exceed EPA and ANSI/NSF (Std. 53) protocol.“ They do post the specific test results on their site. Take that with a grain of salt, I suppose, but we did find blog sites reporting independent testing that is in line with test results from Berkey’s site. Take that with a grain of salt as well.

Bottom line, we love it so far and plan on using it on our bus. Yes it takes some space, but we find it valuable enough to give it the space.

[novice]

Originally Posted by A Crafty Beaver

So, the Berkeys are pretty much just a glorified carbon filter with a huge markup. I've been a plumber who has done a lot of water filtration systems in the 8 years I've been plumbing and I was not happy with what I could find on their system. That being said, I've never had one or tested one myself, going by what I read on the internet(so it must be true) and the fact that they refuse to be certified by the NSF/ANSI. NYTimes did a pretty decent write up on them(https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/r...filter-system/)

RO systems are nice but like others have said they have waste water and aren't ideal.

Best bet in my opinion, is an activated carbon filter for basic function(say if you only got your water from a city source) or a sediment filter(probably 20 micron) followed by activated carbon filter followed by a UV light filter for pulling water from a stream other water source that wasn't treated.


My plan(I have not built a bus yet but soon....) is to have all my incoming water be filtered through the sediment, carbon and UV filters before it gets into my storage tank. This way I can hook up a small portable transfer pump to a hose and get water from a stream or I can hook up to a garden hose from a house or a RV park and know that the water I'm getting will be clean.

The housings for the filters are fairly inexpensive ($20-$50)and the filters themselves are cheap as well and readily available just about anywhere. The 10"x4.5" filters are pretty over sized for the application but you won't have to worry about the filter slowing down the flow of water when filling tanks.

Wow, thanks for this write up!

I've lived with a number of Berkeys, but none that I've owned. They've been a fixture in a lot of hippie households for decades now, I believe.

Indeed, the magic seems to be in the carbon filter, but I imagine those might get to a saturation point with contaminants pretty quickly without refreshing it fairly often. I'll be looking into the alternative you offered.

Thanks so much!

[Epomethius]

I’m counting on a pair of berkey filters in a kitchen container and have been using the setup for some months. The berkey stats looked better and more complete when that was the mission. Water tastes better too.

I had used a 5 gallon jug filled at a machine.

If I let gravity do it’s thing then about 45 min for a gallon. If I keep it filled 15 for 1/2 gallon. Not exact guys. It’s fast enough for me.

I’m afraid of the filters snapping off where they are connected with the bus movement - any experiences?

[Drew Bru]

Originally Posted by Epomethius

I’m afraid of the filters snapping off where they are connected with the bus movement - any experiences?

Nah, nothing I'd be worried about. We've been down thousands of miles of pretty gnarly forest roads over almost 2 years and haven't had any Berkey failures.

[Maligator.]

Biggest argument for having a Berkey or equivalent IMO is what happens if your battery banks gets fried, you can't start your rig and you're 60 miles from civilization? Cannot pump water from a river with no juice, cannot force water through your internal plumbing and filters or UV filtration without juice. So survival/worst case scenario put this as at least stored in the garage if not used daily.
I will also be using custom filtration after my water tanks and would really like to build a recirculating shower but still, let's just say an EMP went off(and I don't even dream of that normally) but if all your filtration requires a pump or 12v to UV filter, well redundancy is enough for me. I also want 2 sources to heat my water but again, that's the '2 is 1 and 1 is none' mentality that I cannot escape.

[Epomethius]

Thank you for the good news Drew.

The berkey makes for a comment worthy improvement to the water taste vs tap or through a cheap in-line filter.

[gmflash88]

So I just wanted to chime in on this thread since for a few years I worked for the master distributor of a highly reputable water filtration company in the USA. All I dealt with was water filtration for those years. I distributed filtration products to companies and consumers that were off grid types, water/appliance dealers, NGO's, gov't contractors, arms of the US military...so while I would never claim to know more than anyone on any subject, I feel like I know my way around water filtration and there are some claims online (by both sellers and users) of these products that aren't all they are cracked up to be.

Are Berkey/Doulton/Aquacera, et al filters glorified Brita filters? Yeah, some of the candles are, but others are capable of much more. You need to know what the candle is, what you want it to do, and how to maintain it to continue to do what you want it to do, and know when to replace it. I'm not a fan of RO for a few reasons (waste water as well as the "dead" taste), ceramic filtration has drawbacks, and cartridge type filters vary wildly in their quality.

If safety of the water is a concern, you NEED to treat it either chemically or with UV (provided you don't want to boil it first). While certain filters and systems can keep you clear of harmful microbes, are you certain you are maintaining the system and it's parts properly? Some people will, some won't. If you are treating with chemicals or UV, are you doing it correctly? Please, please, please do not rely on one product's claim or a YouTuber's review. Also, when it comes to standardized testing and certification, please know that these certifications come at a high cost. I won't get into product details, but I can tell you with 100% certainty that there are products on the market that have the certifications and those that do not that are coming out of the same factories and off the same assembly lines. Please don't take this to mean that those that do not make those claims are safe. It just means that some companies pay for certification/testing, and others do not.

Do what works the best for you based on your preferences and system. And as a previous poster stated, have a backup plan if you have no power. There are some great water safety products on the market that can fit easily in a day pack that can ensure you'll always have access to SAFE drinking water. It may not taste great, but they work.

Disclaimer: I appreciate everyone on this entire forum as I enter the world of skoolies. Thank you all for your help and please don't take this post as being combative or anything like that. I just don't want people to do the "wrong" thing when it comes to their drinking water while adventuring!