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Iamzeke

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Safe water is a term invented by me because the medical and engineering industries have chosen to codify terms like filtered, purified, etc, but laymen haven't adjusted to this and frequently use these other terms incorrectly. My nomenclature grants us a clean slate to describe what we actually wish to achieve, instead wasting time trying to get everyone to digest medical terminology.

Let me start off with a few key points:
* This is a theory discussion thread, not a gear discussion thread.
* This thread does not cover distillation.
* Your urge to talk about those first two points doesn't negate the fact this is not where I will help with them. Find/make a different thread.
* Look to the end of the discussion for me to elaborate on why I have those two points.

The point of this thread is to bring your knowledge base beyond gear. I see lots of folks on prepping sites talking about what filters, gadgets, and chemicals to use for make drinking water after SHTF or just for wilderness use. The problem I see most often is their focus on the parts instead of the process. When someone suggests some other part or idea many readers get stuck back at zero again unsure how this would affect their planning. But once you understand the process then all your options begin to start making more sense.

Safe Water = Sediment Removal > Biological Remediation > Toxin Removal.

If you understand that process then all you have to do when you see new chemicals, filters, or gadgets is figure how each works and where they fit into the process above. In theory the last two can be switched around but for practical reasons it is better to do toxin removal last as those components tend to have the shortest volume lifespan so the cleaner the water is the longer the toxin filter will last.

The equation explained:

Safe Water is not perfect water. Only labs make perfect water. Instead it means where the risk factors are so low that a moderately healthy or mildly sick person can feel safe drinking it. It need not be crystal clear. It's not sterile, pyrogen free, injectable, triple distilled, or any other term you might see out there. It just means almost everyone can drink it without worry.

Sediment Removal is taking the bulk of the solids out. Solids interfere with the next two processes, making them harder and shortening the lifespan of filter media.

Biological Remediation is removing dangerous lifeforms from the water. There are two levels of this. First is removal of bacteria, cysts, protozoa, algae, and other microflora. The second level is removing viruses. The removal of viruses is only for regions where virus present a realistic threat. Most temperate areas, especially in 1st World nations, have negligible viral water threats. Hot tropical and cold tundra areas do pose special viral risks.

Toxin Removal is dealing with non-living threats in the water. Mycotoxins from the metabolism of living creatures, soluted metals, arsenic, hydrocarbon and other solvent waste, cleaning agents, fungicides, herbicides, pesticides, fertilizers, acid rain, mining runoff, industrial waste, and post consumer runoff all exist out there. The more industrialized and urban an area is the more likely the risk is. Rural areas are not much safer as farms offer their owns risks. Almost every place is downstream from somewhere and anything upstream or up elevation flows down. Acid rain will fall even at very high and population free areas. Even where no man exits there is risk simply from the earth. Naturally occurring metal deposits and arsenic are found all over. Remember that every man created toxin was once something man grew or pulled out of the earth. Your risk for toxins is lowest in wilderness settings of 3rd World tropical nations.

Now let's cover what you can use for each of the three steps.

Sediment Removal
Sand: Preferably clean boiled sand. Play sand is a good choice. Used inline.
Flocculation: Using an agent to clump or flake the sediment so it floats or sinks to the bottom. Used in batch method.
Spun filters: Artificial fibers spun into a cone or cylinder. Used inline.
Filter cloths: Expedient method using cloth or fabric mesh like pantyhose. Used inline.
Paper cloths: Expedient method using strong paper, like a coffee filter. Used inline.
Tight weave wire or nylon mesh: A stainless steel or nylon weave of around 100 mesh fibers per inch grade. Used inline.

Biological Decon
Boiling: Rolling boil for 1+ minutes at sea level.
Ozone: Typically found at pool stores as a generator.
Potassium permanganate: 2.5mg/liter, but will not kill viruses at safe drinking amounts.
Miox: Currently off market but some still available on Amazon and eBay.
Silver: Usually as part of an existing filter. No official guidelines for colloidal mixtures because it is only bacteriostatic.
Xylem: Water filtration using plant xylem - PubMed
Alcohol: ethanol only. Difficult as you need about 20% ethanol (40proof), but 3 parts water to 1 part red wine will work due the phenols.
SODIS: Solar water disinfection - Wikipedia
Iodine: Potable Aqua, Lugol's solution, tincture of iodine 2%.
UV: Steripen, Puritest, UV mercury vapor bulb, Watts, many other brands.
Chlorine: sodium hypochlorite (household bleach), calcium hypochlorite (pool shock), chloride dioxide (tablets).
Sub-micron filtration: .1 micron for everything excepts viruses, .02 micron for viruses.
Sodium Dichloroisocyanurate: Sodium dichloroisocyanurate - Wikipedia

*I'm a real big fan of the last one.

Toxin Decon
Membranes: Inline reverse osmosis cartridges.
Activated carbon (charcoal): Good for most organic and some inorganic toxins. Not good for arsenic, fluoride, or heavy metals. Sometimes called AC or GAC.
Bone char: Better than activated carbon on arsenic, fluoride, and heavy metals. Good for other toxins, but not as good as AC.
Activated alumina: Good for arsenic and fluoride. Not so very healthy itself though.
Zeolite: Good for metals and ammonia compounds; Mediocre for other organic toxins.
Ozone: Good for mycotoxins created by algae and fungi.
Tight packed cilantro/parsley: Cilantro, that favorite salsa ingredient, purifies drinking water - American Chemical Society ; Cilantro Filter: Researcher Find That Plant Has Water Purification Properties ; Cilantro Hailed for its Water Purification Properties - Green Prophet ; Cilantro, that favorite salsa ingredient, purifies drinking water
Banana peels: Dehydrated and powdered homemade media; Banana peels get a second life as water purifier - American Chemical Society ; http://www.mindthesciencegap.org/20...etals-from-polluted-water-an-apeeling-option/ ; 4 Steps for Creating a Banana Peel Water Filter
Nopal (prickly pear) cactus: https://www.nsf.gov/news/special_reports/science_nation/cactus.jsp ; Common cactus could be used to clean water

Continued in next post.......
 
Important Note: BBQ or fire charcoal are not good for detox. AC and GAC work on the principle of adsorption, which requires extreme surface area. A 55 gallon drum of fresh fire charcoal is less effective than a small handful of GAC. Carbon for toxin filtration isn't a realistic DIY option. By the time you chopped down several cords of wood you will have sweated more water than you would get back from the fire charcoal filtered water. All the trees on your lot won't help without the industrial processes needed to do this right. Note that adsorption is not absorption and is the key reason basic fire charcoal will not do what you might hope it will do. You can read more on adsorption here: Adsorption - Wikipedia

Elaborating on my gear restriction issue: If you are looking for an explanation of what a component, chemical, or piece of gear does and its efficacy then I'll help. This is about understanding the process. What I don't do is compare, rate, or promote gear here. You will definitely not deliberately pitch or promote branding here either. I'm basically willing to tell you what something does and if it does it nominally. If two things both do what you are asking for work nominally then I'm likely not going to help you rate them side by side. Also, for the record I do not support things made in China for water filtration. That also means gear make to appear like it was made elsewhere but still comes from China, like for example Berkey. I don't care if you like Chinese gear and want to bring it up. I'll just ignore you.

Elaborating on the distillation restriction issue: Distillation is not simply boiling water in a tea kettle. It is far more complicated and requires a lot of precision gear. As such it is a topic that needs its own dedicated thread to avoid making this thread into a very confusing hash.

Finally, I get challenged a lot on my positions. I'm here to help but if I think you are feeling that I'm your obligated research monkey then I'll disabuse you of that notion. Telling me that I'm wrong and then thinking you can send me to prove that I'm wrong is a logic fail. You take on the proof burden if you call out someone on their position.
 
Important Note: BBQ or fire charcoal are not good for detox. AC and GAC work on the principle of adsorption, which requires extreme surface area. A 55 gallon drum of fresh fire charcoal is less effective than a small handful of GAC. Carbon for toxin filtration isn't a realistic DIY option.

Natural lump charcoal is a viable option for the average person, even someone alone. All that's needed is a little knowledge. In fact it's the only option many would have in a grid down situation. (And it doesn't take a cords of wood either.)

AC is chemically treated charcoal to provide surface area. Charcoal from red oak is extremely pitted naturally with lots of surface area. 3x the amount of surface area compared to maple or hickory. Again, knowing which wood produces effective charcoal is key. There are several species that produce crappy charcoal. To broadly paint "all charcoal" as ineffective is ignorance of the subject

How do I know this? I used to make and sell charcoal at the farmers market. I even posted the instructions here...

https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/making-natural-charcoal.13059/
 
Natural lump charcoal is a viable option for the average person, even someone alone. All that's needed is a little knowledge. In fact it's the only option many would have in a grid down situation. (And it doesn't take a cords of wood either.)

AC is chemically treated charcoal to provide surface area. Charcoal from red oak is extremely pitted naturally with lots of surface area. 3x the amount of surface area compared to maple or hickory. Again, knowing which wood produces effective charcoal is key. There are several species that produce crappy charcoal. To broadly paint "all charcoal" as ineffective is ignorance of the subject

How do I know this? I used to make and sell charcoal at the farmers market. I even posted the instructions here...

https://www.homesteadingforum.org/threads/making-natural-charcoal.13059/

3x the surface are of another type of wood in nothing when your average surface area of GAC is roughly 3000 square yards of surface area per gram.

60% of an entire pro football field of surface area in something that fits in a teaspoon.

A 5 gallon bucket of GAC would adsorb more toxins than what you could make from an entire tractor trailer load of any wood species you could haul in.

As a DIY method you could do far better by growing a small plot of flat leaf parsley than busting your hump all week trying to hack down and anaerobically burn an entire woodlot.

Fire charcoal is a waste of calories and useful heat energy. Buy enough GAC to sustain you a few seasons and then transition to something far less sweat energy intensive to produce. Packing a 1 foot pvc pipe with cilantro or parsley will be far easier and require far less volume in your filter rig than trying to filter your drinking water through a 55 gallon drum of fire charcoal.

Use your trees for more useful jobs. Whacking the woodlot down just for water filtration is a waste of resources. Heat your building, cook your food, make lumber, and enhance your permaculture food production with the trees instead. Also, your time and caloric needs will be at a premium when SHTF time comes. Why send a man out to labor hard all week to accomplish what a preteen could handle in 20 minutes? Letting the kids or grandma grow a tiny plot of easy-to-grow herbs and stuffing their work product into 1 foot piece of tubing makes far more time/energy sense. As a main provider you have far more important demands on your abilities than swinging axes all day on trees to replace the sweat you just lost doing it.

Work smart, not hard.
 
GAC is no longer chemically treated. The old sulfuric acid way is bad old tech. Factories now use superheated steam instead. An industrial process that is chemically safer for the environment, but still having all the hazards of high pressure boiler technology.

Fact is that the old sulfuric acid way is something that could be done in a DIY setting, but you would need to lay in a huge supply of hazardous expensive acid. Now we are back at the non-renewable resource problem, and you might as well just stock of on pails of GAC instead of inorganic acid.
 
I feel like we are getting sales spiel.
Nope, quite the opposite. Too many spend their time focusing on the products instead of the process. I'm trying to teach the process so you can use most any product that works that you like.

Maybe it looks a bit too polished and detailed. That's because this isn't my first posting of this on the internet. It has been condensed and polished before it was posted again here. But I'm definitely not selling anything.
 
Saying AC has more surface area than the charcoal I make is valid. The claim it'll take acres of wood and days of work is for the same cleaning power is misleading at best. The point isn't "one is 3000x better" than the other. The question is how much is needed to keep your family is safe drinking water.

It does not take acres of trees to produce high quality charcoal. 300lbs of wood a week will produce all the charcoal I need to make water safe for a family of 4. I know, I tested it.

Run off water from a city parking lot was used for testing. A friend took my cleaned samples to his neighbor who drills wells for a living. His testing show the water exceeded the standards set by the county and state. The water was safe to drink.

I've actually used my charcoal to treat a copperhead bite. It was effective. So, I have a readily available medium for medicine, heat and water filtration.

No point in going on a scavenger hunt or jump through hoops to filter water. Most folks have what they need on hand. Smart not hard...
 
@Peanut geoff lawton..famous permaculture guy..says theres a difference in charcoal and bio char.says charcoal still has oils in it and its reason it burns were as true bio char is cooked down till no oils are present and you cant get it to burn.you can tell he says by if you can clean your hands after handling because if oils are present you dont wash clean easily. but i wonder if bio char would be the best since apparently everything is forced out of it? my only interest in any type char is for garden to hold fertility and water,minerals etc. etc.we been cutting firewood and timber this year so i have slash piles to make char for big garden.i hope to get at very least a few holes dug and burnt and buried and 'charged' to grow a few things in this year to see how it does or does not work.seen your post and thought about char..



seen he had this about bone char put it here too for you to see.

 
Zeke,
Keep going. I know that there are good, better and best ways to make charcoal filters and what to use but none are as good as the herbal cleansing paths. Do cilantro and parsley work best together?
 
Biochar is the actual term for what you make, Peanut. It is time and labor intensive to make. It's also somewhat easy for a novice to screw up the anaerobic phase.

I never said it was any exact efficacy lesser than AC, but my my implication that the amount is rather substantial is well founded. An exact amount is improbable to state because both biochar and AC come in in many forms.

My goal is to move the reader to options that are definitely higher inside the efficacy gap between biochar and AC. If actual AC "grew on trees" then that would certainly be what you would want to use, but it doesn't. But high surface area plant leaves also outperform biochar as well. Growing a 10x10 plot of cilantro is easy and quite renewable. It has a time/space/skill/labor advantage choice over biochar as well.

That charcoal you make for the farmers market? It should be sold for cooking/heating. You won't be growing little 10x10 plots of herbs to replace that product as a fuel source. Proper tools for the job philosophy, right?

If you really wanted to spend that effort you do already making the biochar in order to make a filtration product then perhaps research how to make bone char.

Bone char even surpasses GAC for inorganic toxin removal. Inorganic meaning soluted metals, arsenic, and natural fluoride. Making a mix of bone char and GAC is considered far better than GAC alone for a wider array of toxins. Come SHTF then a 2 stage filter of bone char and high surface area plant leaf packing would create an outstanding and very renewable filtration option.
 
Sheepdog, cilantro has been what they have been doing all the testing on down in Mexico. That where the lab and field numbers come from.

The use of flat leaf parsley as a substitute for cilantro testing is implied by them because of the leaf texture that the species share. There is no actual field data coming out from parsley though.
 
It is time and labor intensive to make. BS

You won't be growing little 10x10 plots of herbs to...

For extra cash I hunt medicinal plants over a 200sq mile area and sell to select herbalists around the country... just my farm is over 100 acres with a 17acre section for medicinals, the only plot I have is in a cemetery.

There is no "perfect" medium. That said I didn't not mean to turn this into a discussion of charcoal. But when someone makes outlandish claims that it takes "cords of wood" to make quality charcoal I'll call them on their bs every time. It's a false statement. I know exactly how much time and wood it takes from practical experience.

It took a day for me to make 40+ pounds of charcoal and I'm disabled. A much younger, healthy man could do it in 3 hours.

I made charcoal to sell so by the 2nd year there was no wasted effort or time in my methods. The other reason I made it was from a prepper stand point. I wanted a simple viable method to produce safe drinking water. My charcoal will produce safe water... tested to exceed local and state standards.
 
I feel like we are getting sales spiel.
What's wrong with this stuff?:dunno:
Our version of 'safe water':
maxresdefault.jpg

I am not spending an hour of my life making a dollar's worth of drinking water, just because I could.
 
Where will you get good water when the store is decimated?
 
Peanut, I stated my case well, and you clipped out the context.

If you have an existing garden then watering the cilantro equates to no added time. Even a paraplegic could stuff a tube with cilantro in almost no time. Said tube would be far smaller than the tube needed to hold the filtration efficacy of biochar filtration. The resources taken to grow whole trees cannot remotely compare to growing a small plot of ground herbs. Making biochar for filtration is an utter waste of that resource when it does a better job at something else.

Supervisor42, consider this. Clean safe water is effectively immortal in the right container. Yet when you buy plastic bottled water at the store it comes with an expiration date. Why? The container is the fail point. Store bought plastic bottled water is not how to ensure long term water security. But that topic is a complete thread on its own.
 
It runs out of the side of the mountain here.
Does your mountain have metal ore deposits? Fluoride deposits? Coal deposits? Shale deposits? Arsenic deposits? Did anyone ever once mine in that mountain. Does acid rain condense on the mountain top? Do any animals live above where you collect your water?

Just because you've gotten away with it does not prove you are drinking safe water. Now maybe if you had regular water lab testing of your product then you could argue that your water was safe.
 
It runs out of the side of the mountain here.

Until last year my family had drank from the same spring since the 1880's, clean and pure from the ground. But having to carry it in buckets out of that holler is exhausting, I've done it a few times. A drop of 200ft in elevation in about that much distance.

On the other side of the farm I have 3 small springs down in the bottoms. The water isn't as pure but easier to carry home. They would be my water source for an extended period without power. I needed a simple effective method to filter water, using what was laying around the barns or shop. I found it.
 
I have never heard of the cilantro/parsley method before. Very interesting. Would you care to go into more detail?
Check the technical links in my OP post. There are several research articles linked there.

Cilantro/parsley works because the surface of those leaves have the extreme surface area characteristics similar to GAC.
 
Just because you've gotten away with it does not prove you are drinking safe water. Now maybe if you had regular water lab testing of your product then you could argue that your water was safe.
So water filtered thru banana peels and cilantro is far better?
I gotta know what that must taste like, since I'm ignorant.
 
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There are a few reasons I left the other forum. And, although there may be some good information, the extreme positions have found their way back to me.
Thanks for the information, but please present it in a friendly format. The harsh and stubborn effort isn't received well by all.
I respect your knowledge of the water topic but please respect the opinions of others.
Thank you.
 
Does your mountain have metal ore deposits? Fluoride deposits? Coal deposits? Shale deposits? Arsenic deposits? Did anyone ever once mine in that mountain. Does acid rain condense on the mountain top? Do any animals live above where you collect your water?

Just because you've gotten away with it does not prove you are drinking safe water. Now maybe if you had regular water lab testing of your product then you could argue that your water was safe.
No and by the way blow it out your hiney hole city boy!
 
It runs out of the side of the mountain here.

same here...springs are everywhere and many been in use since settlement and before by natives.one here comes from under a rock wall they fixed and it measured 3,000 gallons a minute.it looks like a creek but its not since it all comes from underground .i dont have that type spring on my property but still have plenty,plus creek and pond.

p.s. our old farm house and barn had huge cisterns.the barn one was size of a silo.the house one flowed into a box filled with charcoal etc.then into cistern whick was back porch. around here old houses have concrete or block porches.they were cisterns.my buddy had one you crancked in front yard and had little pails/buckets on chainline.it was super cool.he died last year in his mid 90's.
 
Outstanding Info in the OP, Thanks. :cool: Should be a 'sticky'.. 👍

One thought on an addition (..well, maybe 'Pre-Cursor Filtration' is more accurate..) to "Sediment Removal" - That being, 'Coarse-solids / Debris Removal', ie: We use this stuff (and Note: this is NOT 'intending to be an endorsement', though I will say, Fwiw - Excellent Product / Outstanding CS :cool: ) - http://skeeta.com/html/netting/mosquito_no_see_um_netting.htm
..Mostly as 'First-line debris-filtration' over water-barrels / catchment-setup gear-plans (Leaves / sticks / bird-skootie, dead bugs, etc) and even 'runoff / downspout Inlet-guards', etc.. Just a thought. :cool:

jd
 
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There are a few reasons I left the other forum. And, although there may be some good information, the extreme positions have found their way back to me.
Thanks for the information, but please present it in a friendly format. The harsh and stubborn effort isn't received well by all.
I respect your knowledge of the water topic but please respect the opinions of others.
Thank you.
I've written no insults here at all. I'm direct and factual. Information neither friendly or hostile, it simply exists.

An ancient plant material used for filtering... Cleavers... I have no idea how it'd do with toxins or biological contaminants. As a sediment filter it works, I've seen it.

Cleavers
I have no knowledge of any testing on this material. I only post material that people can find reliable testing on. My professional oaths limit what I can safely suggest to others.

If you ever find any testing or research done I'm always interested in adding to the advice I give.

No and by the way blow it out your hiney hole city boy!
You certainly put me in my place with all that. Glad you were able to show some actual proof with your bluster.[/sarc]

Pull the next trick and boast how you ain't dead yet as proof you have it all figured out. When that beaver or squirrel uphill gives you Guardia........
 

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