Water filter, stand alone, a good one please

Wig

Hi

I'm looking for the best stand alone water filter on the market, must have a large filter capacity of about 5 litres or at the very minimum 2 litres. i.e. you pour 2 - 5 litres into the reservoir walk away, and come back to 2 - 5 litres of filtered water. Hopefully not taking too long to do the process, hopefully the filter cartridges will last a long time and will not be expensive to replace.

Must be good at filtering, especially nitrates.

Do these things really work anyway? How good are they?

moonrakerz

IMHO these things are a "scare tactic" con trick.

The trouble that it is very difficult to get unbiased advice, especially off the web - all you find is sheer bunkum like this :

"Showering without a shower water filter probably seems fine but it is extremely dangerous"

Oh really ?

The article that came up with this justifies this statement by saying Chlorine is fatal - so is life !

Wig

I agree for this country it is unecessary, but I want it for another country where there is problems with the supply water.

moonrakerz

Wig wrote: »

I agree for this country it is unecessary, but I want it for another country where there is problems with the supply water.

The only problem with that is that many filters won't remove the really harmful nasties, you are safer with water purification tablets - or the local beer - hic !

Volcano

Let's see if we can find some useful advice eh? :rolleyes:

Before you decide on what system you'll need, you really need to know what you want to filter out. Is your water source a private well? Mains drinking water? Have you already had the water tested? If so have you got the results?

The type/s of filtration required is going to depend on the type and level of contamination of the water you wish to filter.

ceridwen

What you need is a Big Berkey.

I get a bit confused on this - but there is also British Berkefeld - which is very much the same idea.

I cant say I've used one yet - mine will hopefully turn up today in fact. I ordered it from

www.kernowrat.co.uk

Its not cheap. Getting the smallest size one - with all the added bits in to cover all angles of filtering out various "nasties" is about £150 plus the £10.50 postage. Apparently these British Berkefeld ones are very similar to the Big Berkeys the Americans seem to like so much - but are a good deal cheaper (in this country anyrate) than the Big Berkeys.

I understand these gravity-fed type water filters are specifically made to cope with being in disaster zone areas and the attendant water problems.

Dont know specifically about nitrates - you would need to check their specifications on that - would think they do the trick?

ceridwen

See also:

http://www.bigberkey.com/big_berkey_filter.html

On a U.S. blog there is a fair size entry recently (couple of months ago?) specifically about Big Berkeys and her experience of:

www.walkslowlylivewildly.com

Volcano

ceridwen wrote: »

I understand these gravity-fed type water filters are specifically made to cope with being in disaster zone areas and the attendant water problems.

Dont know specifically about nitrates - you would need to check their specifications on that - would think they do the trick?

They seem to be targetted at likely major contaminants which is ideal for disaster situations, not so useful for mains water in the UK. Nitrates are not mentioned as far as I can see, (as they tend not to be a problem in most treated water supplies) so therefore won't be filtered out, especially as the manufacturers admit to flitering "without removing the beneficial minerals". While nitrates are not really thought of as beneficial, it'd be a stretch to think the filter is intelligent enough to decide what's 'good' and what's 'bad'! If the manufacturers have not specifically designed the filter for nitrates, then it won't remove them.

Activated carbon (that features in some water filters) can remove nitrates to a limited extent, but you really need a specific system to do it properly.

walmslei

In agreement, Nitrates and Nitrites are pretty much untouched by activated carbon, tiny effect, but you need selective ion exchange resins to deal with Nitrates much as you would scale forming minerals such as Calcium and Magnesium.

For those technically interested this is a pretty good article about resins:
http://www.wwdmag.com/Nitrate-Removal-by-Ion-Exchange-article3906

These filters from British Berkefield are designed to filter physically at sub-micron level through ceramic filtration (tried and tested technology), which means bacteria and cyst removal - essentially protecting against things like Crypto, Giarda, Cholera etc. Now it isn't foolproof - no system is, and probably from a highly questionable source, I'd go with spotting with iodine or another safe disinfectant (given the carbon in the filters will polish out the iodine taste / discolouration, it's usually the more common), but in all such cases obviously check with the manufacturer directly for specific advice.

But yes, essentially such filters are taste/odour and safety - The concept of Nitrate, Fluoride or major heavy metal removal really isn't that important a consideration in their design as they are built for ensuring 'relative' safety in areas where water frankly carries not only the risk of making you ill, but potentially being fatal.