DIY portable water purification system

[Anonymous No.350293]

I've got a few weeks and nothing to do, so I'd like to start on a project. The thing I've decided on is a water purification system made out of things found around the house, at Lowe's, goodwill, etc.

- I want it to be completely non-electric
- I'd like it to be either compact or easy to assemble, to make carrying it camping more feasible
- I'd like to incorporate filtration and distillation processes
- It would be great if it could desalinate as well
- The cheaper the better, I'm willing to work with anything I can get my hands on

I thought of even trying to build a manual pump to use with it, so you could place a hose in the source and simply pump in the water.

Do you guys have any ideas about this?

[Anonymous No.350303]

>>350293
sand
activated charcoal
distill (which will desalinate)

in that order, check out "reverse osmosis" too.

[Anonymous No.350323]

heard of this, OP? its about as portable as you can get, though desalination isn't accomplished with this.
http://www.treehugger.com/clean-water/life-straw-all-you-can-drink-for-a-year.html

Its called a lifestraw. You can get something similar easily for about $15, though I'm not sure if it would be the same quality

[scroton !SW7uh6H3p. No.350327]

I was going to recommend polar pure iodine (it's pretty much the best water disinfectant available, and can treat something like 2000 liters from a single bottle) but I just searched and apparently the DEA and CA disallowed them from selling it because they were worried people would use the iodine to make meth.

[scroton !SW7uh6H3p. No.350347]

>>350327

Did some searching and it looks like Betadine (or equivalent store/other brand) can be used to disinfect water as well. Dosage is 4 drops/liter. While not as concentrated as the Polar Pure stuff, you're still carrying far less to disinfect the same amount of water as other treatment options. It (and/or equivalents) can be bought at most pharmacies or big box stores like Wal-Mart.

http://www.high-altitude-medicine.com/water.html#chemical

The reason you'd want this over the tablets they sell is that it's cheaper than the tablets, contains more iodine and it doesn't have to be discarded 6 months after opening.

The only thing is that iodine treated water shouldn't be used by people with iodine allergies, thyroid problems or pregnant women.

>>350293

OP your best bet is probably going to be something you make coupled with the iodine treatment in this post.

You'll probably end up with some kind of filter and some kind of distilling device rather than a single item.

Any reusable fabric filter will take care of larger contaminants and possibly improve taste. You probably don't need to worry about having the pores small enough to block things like an actual one-step filter since you'll be taking care of bacteria and viruses when you boil the water or treat it with iodine. The distiller you come up with will probably be most useful when you need to desalinate water since it won't treat water as quickly as iodine and will require you to stop for quite a while (ie can't do it while on the trail.)

If you want to make the distiller using stuff you can find at goodwill a good place to start would be getting a teapot or something similar. They seem to always have plenty of them.

[Anonymous No.350350]

The only problem I can see with your application is removing giaridia from the water. The parasite resists boiling temperatures and can only be caught in a filter rated at 0.5 microns (I don't remember exactly). Other forms of bacteria such as salmonella and e. coli range from 0.5 - 0.2 microns.
Anyway, the point is, boiling your water will remove the majority of bacteria (not giardia) and be ready for filtration.
Filtration can be as simple as cheesecloth or as thorough as a ceramic filter. I think that some sort of rock, sand and charcoal filter after boiling the water would be adequate.

[Anonymous No.350356]

moss + coal + a tube or bag = fine water

[Anonymous No.350358]

>>350350
Check your info. Giardia is killed by boiling the water.

[Anonymous No.350360]

>>350358
You're right. Don't know where I heard otherwise but that was my impression. Still, boiling your drinking water regardless of filtration is a good idea.

[scroton !SW7uh6H3p. No.350409]

>>350327
>>350347

Adding again, another decent option for treating water is chlorine dioxide drops.

Stay away from the tablets (both iodine and chlorine dioxide) as they are overpriced, not nearly as compact and generally crappy.

Saging for my multiple posts.

[Anonymous No.350702]

use a dumbed down version of reverse osmosis. two pots, one slightly larger than the other. place dirty water inside largest pot and place over camp fire, smaller pot sits inside large pot with the lid for the large pot covering both but placed upside down so all the steam collects on the lid and drips into the smaller pot. if you're worried about heat resistant bacteria as a safeguard you could buy a sport water bottle with a charcoal filter as well. if you're out in the woods you're gonna need pots and a water bottle anyways.

[Anonymous No.350706]

>>350702 these charcoal filter sport bottles run about $15

[Anonymous No.350709]

I also realize buying a bottle with a charcoal filter isn't really in keeping with /DIY/ practice, but if you're having to purify water in the wild it's probably best to have something reliable and trustworthy as it could be the difference in your survival.

[Anonymous No.350755]

>>350293

i've done this. for the last 4, 5 years we drag our water processing system to Burning Man. our criteria there is to mainly dispose of used water (dish and body washing, etc) because you cannot dump it, you have to haul it home. what we do is purify it so that it can be spriinked on the street, and one year, it was nearly potable but we used it in an evaporative cooler. But most of the pieces there were for potable water.

i have all the pics on my laptop but have not assembled a page about it yet. but these are the steps:

the worst is dish washing water. fucking gross, food, playa dust (high pH), hair, etc.

1) strain it. 5 gal paint bucket with hole in the bottom and a paint strainer bag in it. gets the big chunks. (at the end of the week that shit is dry, and goes home into the compost).

2) settling tank (5 gal bucket). then we add flocculant, alum, aluminum sulphate (swimming pool supply store). that makes the fatty droplets coalesce, and either sink to the bottom or float to the top. the settling tank has a 1" plastic valve 2" up from the bottom, so after floccing we drain off the water. it's still cloudy and stinky, but not chunky.

3. sand filter. yet another 5 gal paint bucket has a perforated table in the bottom, screen, and covered with 25 lbs of white "play sand". the water from above is run through this filter. in the bottom of the sand filter is another 1" plastic valve. the filtered water runs into ...

... either the evapotron II or sprinkle can (for application to the street). In both instances bleach is added. this kills the smell and most of the bacteria.

sorry tl;dnr, more posts.

[Anonymous No.350756]

>>350293

the evapotron II is device for evaporating waste water, ask if you want details.

for the potable path, we did one year, my friend david brought an additional 7-state purification system. we skipped the bleach, and ran it through his system.

sadly, i dont know all the details, but they are standard filtration processes. sand, activated charcoal (in a tall tower of 5" PVC pipe, we used gravity a lot), ...?, the final was UV light.

The water still smelled a bit funny, tasted bad, but was safe to drink. but we ran it through the swamp cooler instead.

water purification is not trivial. it really helps to know what you are removing from the water!

Oh! in our system we had to use ONLY castille soaps to wash dishes -- the usual hand dishwashing liquid soaps refused to flocculate.

after you do this you gain a lot of respect for municipal waste water procssing, where they've routinized this stuff -- accepting unbelivably random and awful shit -- and take all of it out. it's quite amazing. (and people hate paying taxes for this stuff... how we'd scream if we didnt have it!)

[Anonymous No.350837]

coffee filters.

[Anonymous No.350852]

>- I want it to be completely non-electric
Your options are hand-pumping it or having a two bag system and raise one bag above the other, using gravity to force water through your filter system.
>- I'd like it to be either compact or easy to assemble, to make carrying it camping more feasible
A two bag system can wrap up to a small volume, filling up less space in your pack.
>- I'd like to incorporate filtration and distillation processes
distillation? u cray nigguh
>- It would be great if it could desalinate as well
reverse osmosis

[Anonymous No.350855]

>>350852
emulate this, is what I'm saying
http://www.amazon.com/Platypus-07014-GravityWorks-Filter/dp/B00453R308/ref=sr_1_1?s=outdoor-recreati
on&ie=UTF8&qid=1355351600&sr=1-1&keywords=platypus

[Anonymous No.350919]

Would this help?

[Anonymous No.350984]

use big litter bottle or gallon bottle.
cut out the bottom, hang upside down from tree. fill it from bottom to top (in this order) with charcoal, water rocks,sand, more rocks, sand, and rocks at the top. to be safe add a coffee filter at the bottom where the water comes out, (cap of bottle)
pour water from top, (bottom of bottle) and let gravity and minerals do the rest

[Anonymous No.351010]

>>350984

far, far too small. i take it you have not actually done this, with dirty water, and drank the result.