Easy Life-Saving Water Filter

Fun Fact: Humans can live about 20 days without any food but can only live about 5 days (maybe even less) without water. We may take water for granted now because it is in such rich supply, but what if disaster strikes? I will tell you right now, YOU WILL REMEMBER THIS INSTRUCTABLE AND YOU WILL LIVE TO FIGHT ANOTHER DAY! The method introduced in this Instructable is the same method by which your drinking water is filtered now but just on a smaller scale. With just a few common household items that you more than likely have just laying around, you can supply clean water with this Environmental Engineer approved method to you and your family when you so desperately need it.

DISCLAIMER: I am not responsible for any harm/ accident / sickness caused as a result of this Instructable. Water treatment such as this is extremely safe but if not done properly, it can make you very sick. Perform at your own risk!

With that being said, let's get to it and save some lives!

Step 1: Assembling the Materials

This project is easy as it gets. All you need is just a handful of items that you can find at home.

- Coffee Filter (I used the cone-shaped ones to fit in the bottle better but any coffee filter should work just fine

- A small shovel

- A colander

- Sand / Dirt (Sand is much better but dirt would work)

- Knife / Scissors

- A 2 Liter Plastic Bottle

Optional: Charcoal- to refine the purification process even further but it is not always necessary. I did not use it for this instructable and the water purified just fine.

*Tip* It might be worthwhile to have these things already set aside in a emergency preparedness kit. Who knows, you may only have minutes to leave your home and these materials could very well save your life!

Step 2: Making the Filter

The first step is getting the bottle ready to hold the sand. Take your knife or your scissors and cut a little less than half of the bottle away (Picture 1). After you cut the bottle, you will want to set the tip inside the bottle so that it can drain into the bottom piece. If you have done this correctly, it should look similar to (Picture 2). Next, take the coffee filter and expand it to conform to the edges of the bottle (Picture 3).

The next step is to prepare the filter through which the water will flow to give you 95% clean water! We will talk about the last 5% in a later step! Take your Sand / Dirt and add it to the colander (Picture 4). Be sure to have a bowl beneath the colander to catch your refined material. With the material in the colander, gently shake the material to separate the finer sand particles from the rougher sand particles. The distinction between the two should be rather dramatic (Pictures 5 & 6).

For the final step, you add the most-refined material to the least-refined material. With that being said, add the fine sand particles in first then the rockier particles. Depending on what you are filtering, it may be worthwhile to add slightly larger pebbles, but in this case, it was not necessary. If you followed the steps correctly, it should look like the filter I made (Picture 7)

Now that your filter is built, lets filter some water!

Step 3: Filtering the Water / Purifying the Water

To test this homemade filter, I got the nastiest water that I could find. I got a few scoops of dirt and added it to some water and shook it up to get a really filthy concoction (Picture 1). This could represent an absolute worst case scenario of water filtering.

Now it all comes down to this, an epic showdown between dirty water and our filter! (Picture 2) Remember this could be the difference between life and death so lets hope this works!

Add the water to the top of the filter (Picture 3) and watch it drip down through the filter! (Picture 4) The filter will catch twigs, small organisms and even the tiny particles of dirt! It might be difficult to see, but the water is pooling at the bottom of the bottle! So Cool!

*Tip #1 * The water may still be a little cloudy after the filtering process (especially with this dirty of water) so the best way to fix it is just running your filtered water back through the filter again. After that, it should come out pretty clear!

*Tip #2* To avoid running into the problem discussed in Tip #1, if you have extremely dirty water, let it sit for a moment so the majority of the dirt sinks to the bottom before pouring it into the filter. It will minimize the amount of filtering you will have to do. *If you filter rainwater or pull water from a river you shouldn't have this problem at all!*

Well, let hope it worked... Drumroll please!

Step 4: Raise Your Purified Glass of Water to Success!

Success! The water looks great! I know what you are thinking "Now let's boil that sucker!" WRONG. It takes an immense amount of precious energy to boil water. You want to use your fire/ energy source to cook your food not boil your water! It will deplete your valuable resources dramatically and waste your time as well!

The most efficient way to clean up that last 5% of dirty water (mostly microorganisms) is to use common household bleach. When used properly, it cleans the water to become totally drinkable.

Here is a table to give you an idea of how much bleach is need for the amount of water you are filtering.

Volume of Water to be Treated to Amount of Bleach Solution to Add:

1 quart/1 liter - Add 5 drops

1/2 gallon/2 quarts/2 liters - Add 10 Drops

1 gallon - Add 1/4 teaspoon

I did a little less than a liter so I used 4 drops to be safe. Mix the solution thoroughly. Once you add the bleach, it is wise to wait about forty-five minutes to an hour for it to kill all of the bacteria.

* Tip* Sniff test! If you can still smell bleach after forty minutes, wait a little bit longer, it is probably still killing bacteria. Once you can no longer smell the bleach, the water should be totally safe to drink.

If you are brave enough, give it a shot and try it for yourself! :)

Step 5: Bottoms Up!

Here I am drinking that tasty new filtered water! I did this about a week ago and I feel great with no sickness in sight! I am amazed how easy this is to do! Again, this is one of the easiest, most efficient ways to purify water! Don't forget these super easy steps so if something were to ever happen you will be prepared! Water purification is so important and everyone should know about it! Share this with your family and friends so they can be prepared as well!

Be safe, and live life to its fullest! Thanks for reading and I will see you on my next Instructable!

Comments

[nicksname73]

Advising people to eat dirt doesn’t seem safe for a general guideline.

[iDoMissMayberry]

Well as long as you thought it through.

[JoeC25]

Most of the comments that are saying that this is a bad filter for pure drinking water are 100% true. Lets just say that this filter may be a good starting point to clean water up but you still are running a huge risk of drinking very contaminated water. This should be renamed or removed from this site!

[iDoMissMayberry]

Or it's for if you're lost on the Appalachian trail where there's a certain amount of mountain runoff and all you have are these ingredients in a tampon holder.

Where the heck everyone else planning on being foe their emergencies. Think smart go with mine, der. Lol

[Mastering Me]

What is your reasoning? The water filter follows common themes of filtration from sifting to treatment. I can see your concern because of the nature of filtering can be risky (hence the disclaimer at the top). However, if done properly (boiling/bleach/UV treatment) this is an easy solution to getting drinking water. Thanks for the comment! See you on the next Instructable!

[Captain_Nemo]

The only common theme your 'filter' has with proper water filtration, is
that they both make the water transparent. Water from your 'filter' is not safe
to drink, it won’t filter heavy metals, it won’t filter viruses, it will only
filter bacteria if you find fine enough sand. Encouraging people to use this
'filter' is like encouraging people to eat paint chips and play Russian roulette.
Maybe it kills you, maybe not…

[Mastering Me]

Here is some reading for you. A couple of doctorate thesis to smooth you over on the subject.

https://www.researchgate.net/publication/47745904_Removal_of_heavy_metals_by_slow_sand_filtration/amp

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0304386X03001610

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1572440999801503

https://dspace.lboro.ac.uk/dspace-jspui/handle/2134/6981

[Seasloth]

Did you actually read these or just the abstracts? Your filter does not qualify as a slow sand filter, it is not deep enough, it does not have fine enough sand and must importantantly it does not have schmutzdecke. What you built is dangerous and miss leading

[RumpelS]

The question is where does your water come from? If it is rain water you don't need any filter. If there are toxic substances in the water your sand will be useless. So where exactly does the water come from in the case of a "disaster" ??? You omitted the most important point.

[iDoMissMayberry]

It was from the back of his toilet that that was marjonally protected indoors and by the porcelain shielding.

[jakekaiser]

Nice job, only thing I will suggest is if you don't have coffee filters you can use a bandanna or cut a cotton t-shirt doubled up. As some have said iodine can be used, yes but hard to drink lol. I'd prefer bleach after time it mellows, iodine doesn't in my experience. Keep it up and just ignor the ones that are so critical. They probably never been a real situation, like being 6 hours from your camp and run out of water.

[iDoMissMayberry]

Or go up a trail at the campground to see to outlook area only to find the path back not so well marked and end up lost on the Appalachian trail for 19 hours with your two youngest kids who.werent old enough to stay back.with the rest who then ate practically the entire trip worth of food while you were gone and never even reported you missing.
....or something like that.

[Gamer4Fire]

Will this also filter out radiation?

[iDoMissMayberry]

Absolutely, but only if you drink very quickly so it doesn't have a chance to activate in your system. Cheers.

[JohnC430]

yes sure.... u mean IR? UV? sunlight? Nuclear? it will do all the above!!! high Gamma rays will also kill the bacteria all around even in the soil.... and if u are close enough then you too.... LOL!!!!

[spiderstones]

This is great.....will make one or more.......I hate to be a downer this time of year....butttttt
time is coming when the grid will go down and all will stop.....including water on shelves in stores........thanks for for the info....can’t wait to try it...
spider

we we must be prepared.....

[iDoMissMayberry]

Way to think to yourself. There's so much, cheap that came onto the market, hopefully all the neigh says, trying to squash independent though went and bought alternatives, cause now, good like even adding charcoal to this without be priced like a free diamond was included.

[JohnC430]

well the real thing happened on January 4th at 4:30 am, in Northridge California Big earthquake and then no water, no power, no houses, no roads, no freeways...no sleep.... everything went down... took 2 weeks just for power to start, (I bought a 5KW generator. funny thing it is still in the original box. never opened it because I could not buy gas. the gas stations could not pump. when power returned they could pump, by then i also had power. LOL) then water, then 3 months for the roads to be cleared... after shocks made people nervous for months.. it was scary for some. I was sitting in my back yard studying for my exams and the ground was actually rolling in waves with each after shock. I used pool water and boiled it on the barbecue so we had coffee and could cook and plenty of HOT drinking water... even was able to bathe using the pool water... one big bucket per person... watered the plants pretty good.

[RMF808]

Drink bleach? No thank you. You’re just reading one “poison” for another. I study particle physics and everything adds up.

[iDoMissMayberry]

Do you know what the bleach level is in your drinking water now? Ideally, as I do know, you can then go ahead and boil it to achieve some dechlorination. But in a pinch, well that is the point in a survival category.

FYI, because of what's used in our water is harder to breakdown than just boiling, if I'm going to making something, say fermented, after boiling, to have a shot at the chlorine still not killing the ferment, I need at least to rest it another night as well. Major metropolitan area I live in. And I'm sparing so much to not sound like an alarmist. But it's easy to check out for yourself. Please, don't take my word for it.