DIY Big Berkey Style Water Filter System with 5 Gallon Buckets (for 1/4 the cost)

great lakes prepping here one of the most important things to anybody who values preparedness is the ability to purify drinking water and perhaps one of the most popular standalone water filtration products on the market is the big berkey water filter the big berkey has pretty much become the standard for freestanding water filters and rightly so the sleek stainless steel container holds a lot of water and comes with two very high quality water filters but as always quality comes with cost and the big berkey comes with a price tag of about 300 so while it's a great product and a very important tool to have some people including myself just aren't that thrilled about this price point so i decided to make a berkey style water filter system by myself out of five gallon food grade buckets the process is really quite simple and it makes perfect sense once you get a basic understanding of how the berkey water filter works in the first place so in this video we're going to talk about exactly that and i'm going to show you exactly how i built my 5 gallon bucket water filtration system for a mere 25 of the cost of the big berkey [Music] while the big berkey has a stylish appearance and finish of a well-built consumer product there are really only four components to it that matter the upper water container the lower water container the filter elements and the spigot pretty much all the magic happens with the tube shaped filter elements this is a simple gravity fed system water is poured into the upper container in which the filter elements are located water seeps through the filter elements and drips out the bottom into the lower container from there the spigot can be used to conveniently dispense water into your glass a brand new big berkey system costs about 300 a set of two replacement filter elements costs about 130 that means you're paying 170 for the pretty stainless steel containers so right off the bat we can save around 150 by building this ourselves to take it a step further there are several alternatives out there for the filter elements big berkey filters are known to be very high quality in their filtering specs but doing some research and shopping around there are comparable alternatives that cost a bit less of course this involves a certain balance of scrutiny and trust as many of these other products are chinese copycats they aim to replicate the quality of the berkey filters and claim very comparable specs but for what is essentially an experimental water filter i decided to try out one of these alternative brands i ended up going with a brand called water drop these filters are the same size and shape as the berkey filters and claim almost the exact same specs in fact they are marketed as replacement filters for the big berkey both the berkey and water drop filters claim removal of over 99.9 percent of both viruses and bacteria the only difference seems to be how many more nines there are after the decimal point and both claim to remove heavy metals both have the same filter life which is 3 000 gallons per filter at the end of the day all i really have to go on is the word of these companies product specs unless i take matters into my own hands and send water samples to a laboratory to test since filtration is only one step of my water purification plan i decided to just go with the cheaper product to recap on amazon the big berkeley replacement filters cost 128 dollars for two and the water drop filters cost 65 for two so there's a savings of another 63 dollars the total cost for my build was just about 80 dollars the majority of this cost being for the filters 65 for the filters 12 for two buckets and two lids and three dollars for a plastic water spigot so that's just shy of 75 cheaper than buying a big berkey also the big berkey only holds two and a quarter gallons while mine holds almost five gallons building this thing couldn't have been simpler all i need is two buckets two lids two filter elements and a spigot you can find these five gallon bpa-free food-grade buckets at lowe's both buckets and lids cost about twelve dollars first i need to drill two holes in the bottom of one bucket and one lid on the bottom of one of the lids i measured four inches from the edge on two sides so they'd appear somewhat symmetrical the purpose of this lid is to give the top bucket a way to sit atop the lower bucket and also provide a little more structure on which to hold the filter elements so placing this lid top down over the bottom of what will be the top bucket i drilled two 3 8 inch holes through the lid and bucket clean the plastic burrs up a bit and it's all set since the filter elements are threaded and use an included plastic wing nut to affix it to the berkey filter that's all i'm going to do here after threading the filter through the bucket and lid holes i just need to tighten it in place with the plastic nut at this point the lid will be affixed to the bottom of the top bucket but i'm not going to tighten them into place just yet because i still have to prepare the filters for use a quick note the big berkey comes with two filter elements but it can accommodate up to four this doesn't filter the water any better but it reduces filter time and extends the overall total number of gallons the contraption can filter i absolutely could have done the same here in fact i could have put a half dozen filter elements in this bucket if i wanted to spend the money but two is just fine for my purposes now to drill a 5 8 inch hole on the side of the lower bucket near the bottom and install the spigot before the filters are ready to use they need to be primed this basically involves using the faucet to gently force water up the filter to flush out the element and saturate the pores with water these filters come with a small rubber gasket that is used to press against the faucet thereby forcing water into the bottom side of the filter element here you can see water begin to seep out the sides of the filter after doing this for several seconds to both filters they're ready to use the last thing i'll do before installing the filter elements is give both buckets a good cleaning with dish soap and water a quick test to make sure the spigot is attached securely and doesn't leak once the filters are attached to the upper bucket and lower lid with the plastic wing nuts this thing is ready to use to test it out i poured in 4 gallons of water right away water began dripping out of the bottom of the filters into the lower bucket at first it dripped very quickly but as the water level in the upper bucket went down the drip slowed way down too this makes sense since more water means higher water pressure which pushes water into the filter elements and also as the water level goes down less of the filter elements are actually submerged meaning much less surface area is filtering at this point in all it took about seven hours to filter all four gallons though more than half of the water was filtered during the first couple hours of that in the end i'm really happy with how this turned out it's not especially sleek or stylish since it's made out of 5 gallon buckets but since it will really only be employed on an emergency basis i don't care about that at all it's just a great big old water filter system that took around 20 minutes to build and cost 75 percent less than the big berkey as always i'll include links in the video description to the materials i used be sure to like and subscribe and stay up to date on all our latest stuff thanks for watching and until next time this is great lakes prepping

Channel: Great Lakes Prepping

Views: 166,293

Rating: 4.9561777 out of 5

Keywords: bucket water filter, DIY berkey water filter, 5 gallon bucket filter, homemade water filter, DIY filtration system, big berkey, how to filter water, emergency water, best water filter, prepper water

Id: _gx2nDtEDXo

Length: 8min 11sec (491 seconds)

Published: Thu Jan 28 2021

Reddit Comments

[u/sobakablack]

Great Lakes Prepping. Berkey water filters such as the Big Berkey have become the standard in free-standing, home water filtration systems. But with a price tag of $300, I wanted something that was a lot less expensive. So using food-grade buckets and the same type of filter elements that the Berkey systems use, I was able to build my own high-capacity water filtering system for 75% less than the Big Berkey costs.

[u/BrotherMonk]

Water standing in plastic buckets vs. stainless steel - sounds great for an emergency, but I'm sticking with my Berkey (which will last a lifetime).

[u/megalomustard]

Ehhh at anything that requires replacement filters. I like three buckets. Three buckets with gravel, sand, then charcoal is faster, cheaper, and easier to clean.

Like if your water is so risky that you need a micron filter, you should be boiling it first anyway

[u/switchbladesally]

I’ve also made one with two giant stainless steel soup pots. Worked great! Held almost 3 gallons

[u/angelicasinensis]

What I’m wondering as someone who has the metal berkey is how to make your own filters.

[u/Rex_Lee]

What happens if the seal around the bottoms of the filters is not 100% watertight lets minute amounts of contaminated water (and pathogens) into your clean water? Seems sketchy

[u/Je_me_fais_chier]

Ah, the Peace Corps special. Love it.

[u/greenmanofthewoods]

I messaged berkey and they said to filter stream and rain water I'd need a reverse osmosis set up, its was pressurized and not cheap comparatively.

I told them I was concerned about viruses in the water.