Slow Sand Filters for long term water collection and sustainment.

[Xombie75]

Has anyone built one of these or had experience with on small or large scale? I'm thinking of building one next spring.

http://www.slowsandfilter.org/index.html

[Winter]

Meh? For less then the cost of building one, get these.
http://www.monolithic.com/stories/a-practical-life-sustaining-water-filter

I love their site, but I have no business with them other than my grand scheme to build a dome subdivision.

[Xombie75]

Thats a cool idea also but I have about 90% of the stuff already to build this one for free. I'll have to get more into the other one you showed. I don't think it'll process as much as I'm looking for.

[Rick]

Take a look at this starting at post 29:

http://www.wilderness-survival.net/forums/showthread.php?5361-Home-Made-Water-Filter/page2

Mac hasn't been on in a while but he also has a YouTube channel:

http://www.youtube.com/user/Colhane?feature=watch

If you have questions you might be able to reach him through it.

[Xombie75]

Thanks for the info.

[Winter]

Rick
Thread Killer

"No thread too short".

[Rick]

You know size doesn't matter. It's how you use it....you know, the information.

[kyratshooter]

If we had a better search engine no one would ever have to type again. We could just link to the threads that have already answered 99.999% of what is continually asked. I think they keep the search engine useless just so everyone will have something to do.

Sand filters come up about every six months. One time they are the bees knees and the next time they are a pile of crap. Just depends on who answers first.

[Rick]

Fix the search engine?! You really want to get rid of the mods, don't you?

[crashdive123]

Search engine? Yeah, sometimes it's tough to find one for those older models.

[hunter63]

Used a crude sand a charcoal fliter on my water collection, sand turned green, and a month or so.....I guess i should have maybe did a better job of researching it first.
Just a plastic garbage can with layers or gravel sand, charcoal, under a rain collection gutter system.
I guess I don't know how you stop that with out a lot of chemicals.

Still use the collection system just don't filter of drink the water.

[wtrfwlr]

Fix the search engine?! You really want to get rid of the mods, don't you?


Search engine? Yeah, sometimes it's tough to find one for those older models.

If it's and engine, if it has fuel, fire and compression it should fire up!

[Rick]

Oh, it fires up. It just idles a little rough.

[crashdive123]

Seems that I'm losing compression somewhere along the line.

http://i261.photobucket.com/albums/ii67/crashdive123/Forum%20Fun/Fart-1.gif

[Geek]

I don't know about the filter referenced, but back in my youth I was a Life Guard and most of the pool filters for commercial sized pools were either sand or diatomacious (sp?) earth. Of course we also used chlorine. The sand filters were physically larger than the DE filters, but worked just fine. You needed new DE whenever you did a backwash, but the sand filters didn't need new sand unless you were going to tear the whole thing apart, which only happened every few years.

If I was going to mess with any of this, I'd do it in the context of installing a swimming pool in the yard.

[finallyME]

I didn't know bees had knees. :)

[hunter63]

Used to have knees back in the 40's....not so much these days.

[finallyME]

Used to have knees back in the 40's....not so much these days.

The war must have been more brutal than I thought.

[Xombie75]

About half way through plumbing the sand filter I linked in my OP. I'm getting into making the activated charcoal (Wood & Bones from the bone pile) and making a charcoal stage in the filter. Finally I'm going to try to find a UV light source to final filter the bugs and nasties left over. When I'm done I'm going to have tests run like they did on the site to see. If anything I could use the non UV treated to wash clothes, shower, just not drink. I bought 3 330 galon food grade plastic cubes in aluminum frames for $120 to use for reserve storage. Cool dry storage area, the water should be good for a long time. I'll probably buy the other 6 containers from the company and that will give me almost 3000 gal of water stored. Or maybe just fill one with home made hooch :)

[Rick]

You can't make activated charcoal. You can make charcoal but ACTIVATED charcoal has to be heated to over 250°C in an steam, O2 or CO2 environment.

If you're going to use a UV light then I don't understand all the primary and secondary stages. Pass the water through finely crushed carbon and UV it. The carbon will remove debris and some taste issues and the UV will kill pathogens.

[canid]

you sure as heck can make activated charcoal. you can't make it quite as well as the commercial stuff easily, but suitable aparatus can be made from a suitable pressure vessel (probably even seamless tubing) and bottled inert gass.

[canid]

I've long suspected it can even be made to a usefull quality in a pressure cooker, but then i'm well known to have a pressure cooker fetish.

[Crabapple Plum]

The principles of a sand filter are the same as an aquarium filter. It cleans the water and makes it safe by microbial action growing in the medium, the sand, to digest all the bad stuff that will harm you. If you pour chemicals in it to kill off the green-grey gooey gross microbes, it no longer works. You are simply filtering out chunks and not viruses, bacteria and protozoa.

It takes time for the filters to get activated just like an aquarium. You cannot pour water through a bucket of sand and charcoal and get safe water. It has to grow its culture. They require very little maintenance when the water going in is screened and filtered, and those are maintained, and leaves and dead squirrels pulled out of the catchment regularly.

The advantages of gravity fed sand filters is they require no power whatsoever, no parts to break or fail and will clean any water. A well made system can run with very little maintenance for over a century.

I cannot access my books with details, nor can I remember exact tiles of the books. I think the seach phrase would be Microbial Sand Filter.

[SHTFMIKE]

You can make a gravity, drip system with a ceramic dome filter, 2 food grade buckets with lids and a spigot for less than $50. If you use a dessicant filter over the ceramic dome, it will lengthen the life.
The ceramic dome filters can be cleaned so you can use them for a very long time.
Cheap and easy.