Make a Water Filter at Home in Fourteen Steps

A homemade water purifier can be made in two ways: firstly,by purchasing the commercial filter element and placing it in some sort of containers and secondly, by making the filtration media from locally obtained low cost materials. In this article we will discuss only the second method. Here it goes:

1. Purchase two 15 liters plastic buckets with lids. Make sure to purchase food grade buckets only.

2. Arrange a ½” drill machine and use it to perforate the bottom of one of the bucket.

3. Similarly perforate one of the lids. Make sure that perforation density of the bucket and that of the lid should look somewhat like below:

click to enlarge

6. Purchase a food grade plastic tap. The thread end of the tap should be suitable to fit into the ½” drill hole of the second bucket. 7. Tighten the nut of the tap properly, so that there is no leakage of water from the hole. You can use locktite for making the joint leak proof.

8. Next, you have to create the so-called filter element by using gravel, charcoal, sand and excelsior.

9. Clean all the materials properly. Take the first bucket (which has perforated bottom).

10. Place one layer of clean gravel at the bottom of the bucket. Keep the layer thickness around two inches.

11. Place a charcoal layer over the layer of gravel.

12. Put one layer of sand now.

13. Again put another charcoal layer. This way put three layers of charcoal and three layers of sand alternatively. Keep all the layer thickness around two inches.

14. Finally place the excelsior layer at the top. Total thickness of all the materials should be around half the depth of the first bucket. The arrangement of the first bucket should look like below:

click to enlarge

Pour water to the vacant portion of the first bucket and wait till it drops down to the second bucket. Throw out the first lot of water and then use the rest of it for drinking.

The water filter you just made may not have all the features available in a commercial water purifier, but the homemade water filtration system will definitely provide you safe drinking water temporarily.