Gravity Water Filter - Impressions After 1 Year

so welcome back everyone I guess it's been about a year ago I did a video I think it was titled is your drinking water safe and when I was sharing with and that with you guys in that video was the ceramic style gravity style water filter well now I've had a chance to use it actually it's been probably I'm guessing but about a year or so that we have used this for drinking water a daily basis and really have lived with it and so I can kind of tell you more about it or share my experience with it my experience with this filter has been it has been excellent now whether you get this particular brand here the aqua rain or the there's the Berkey or those that I believe the pro pure they're all essentially the same thing and what it is if you're not familiar with it is it's a it's more than a water filter it's actually considered water treatment and they what they have is is ceramic you look inside their ceramic filters that simply filter you know 99.999% of all the things we don't want to drink I do believe I may have mentioned that these filter fluoride I do not believe they do I thought I know that Berkey has an additional canister that you can screw on top of their filters I believe that you can filter out the fluoride and if you are on municipal water and that is something that that you are ingesting or feeding your children you really need to take a hard look at that educate yourself and find out if you think that that's something that you guys should be drinking I personally would not want it but us being on our own well we chose this filter not because our water isn't a potable but we just did not like the taste of it it had a lot of minerals in it and rather than going to all the expense and which is considerable of reverse osmosis and all these treatment systems with filters that you need to rebuy my motto has always been or I've adapted the model of pen fishing reels make it simple make it work and this is just doesn't get much simpler doesn't require any electricity it's just a very simple design and very very effective and the water that comes out of it is just fantastic and delicious to drink so the only thing that I've had to do to this filter is probably about once every three months or so it gets silted up these filters and I can tell because it just it takes a lot longer for the water to to drip down through it it drips down through the four ceramic filters into just as you can see just a base in here and then you drink from that so I have a pre filters I have two ten micron filters that the water goes through from the well or the spring whatever we're using before it goes in here and but there still is a really really fine sediment that gets through those those filters which clogs up the ceramic nice thing about these ceramic is that they're super simple to clean you can just clean them here and I'll demonstrate how to do that here in just a second clean it with just your hands using some water and just use them over and over and over again I don't know what the lifespan you would get on your filters but I can tell from ours because I clean them very gently that they're going to last a long long time so it's been really a great value way better than for us to buy bottled water and going through all that hassle so let's break them down and I'll kind of show you how to clean them real quickly and we'll finish up with my I guess my thoughts and considerations on which one to get and why so again you can see right here are the filters and how you replace them or take them out for cleaning you can see in the back there are four wing nuts you can buy these with one two or four I would spend a little bit extra money and get the four it just filters twice as fast but be very careful I just take these gently out and you can see here there's a this is the ceramic filter element you can see there's an o-ring on there and then that's what seals it up this here you want to be careful not to over-tighten these they're really fragile and I wouldn't jostle these things around these filters are pretty heavy and this this is just the plastic thread right here and by banging it around you know that could break off and then you'll ruin your filter but what the problems I can have you can see right here is the bottom is this really fine it's almost like a mud right there you can see that around my finger it starts to slow down the water as it filters through there and the nice thing about it is it just simply comes off with water and I don't really have to get in and really aggressively scratch or clean this filter what what brings an end of life to these ceramic filters is how much of the ceramic material that you remove actually when you buy these this particular one it came with a plastic gauge that you kind of snap over this and once you removed enough of that ceramic that the gauge does no longer fits tightly it was time to replace these and it did also come with a scotch brite pad that's those green pads you see oftentimes you'll have them for washing dishes to see kind of a green scratchy pad that they've applied to this but these filters are pretty expensive so running them through a cheap Home Depot style pre-filter to get out all the big things that would come in and foul this I think is a good investment because I think it just really extends the longevity of this filter so let's get this thing cleaned up I'll show you how I do it so when you're cleaning out your filters I want to make sure they're always the outlet right here this is where the fresh water comes out I don't want to fill this up with water you know you who knows what's coming out of the tap or you don't want to give any contaminants in there so I always try to keep this kind of pointed down but just simply using you could do this at the scene for the garden hose just gently wipe this back and forth and you can just see all of that silt coming off of there once we get the filters clean I mean just pretty basic just like we uninstalled them and I really want to reiterate the importance of not over tightening this little plastic wing net just firm it up there you can just kind of feel it and just be gentle and don't I wouldn't overly jostle this with the filters installed the price of these filters these replacements are about I just checked online but whether it's the Berkey or the aqua rain I think they're interchangeable is about a hundred and fifty dollars or so give or take for the set of four now if you are careful with them and really take care of them and clean them gently the QA from aqua rain I was just reading they said you can expect to clean these things on upward of 200 times or better and I think that having a pre-filter you can probably even extend that because just by a very gentle cleaning not using any abrasives not using the scotch brite pad if you can get away with it and just clean them with your fingers is going to be probably the best way you know everybody's conditions are going to be different you know it really depends on what's in your water you know nice thing about these is they're really good in an emergency if you need to drink water out of a river or a lake or hot water heater or swimming pool you know all of that is an option with this filter system you know not requiring any water that's why these things are so popular with missionaries I use them in remote areas as they just don't don't require expensive cartridges and all of that nonsense they're just really simple basic and they just work excellent so if you don't already have one of these gravity style ceramic filters you really need to consider getting one not just for emergency preparedness because it's nice for that or even some smaller virgin versions camping because you just have that peace of mind you know but if you're drinking water from municipal supplies you really need to think about having one of these and and having some control it's a peace of mind what's going into not only your own body but your kids and your family I think that next to shelter this is one of the fundamental things that all of us who are prepared preparedness minded I need to consider having so which one would I buy I would buy I think they're all good quality the three that I mentioned whether it's the aqua rain or the Berkey or the the pure or whatever I can't remember the name of I mentioned it the third one but they're essentially the same technology I would make sure that you get the four filters and not the two because the the four just is so much faster we go through I think this is about a two and a half gallon or so and we go through about two and a half gallons of water a day at peak use that's in the summertime and maybe a little bit less in the wintertime and worried but this is able to maintain that and keep that up but I would be just as happy with the Berkey either one I would buy whichever one I got the best deal with whoever had the best price I would be happy with either one of them one thing that I would add that we added was the sight glass you see right here this one actually I got the wrong one I ordered online and I don't know if I ordered the wrong one but they sent me the wrong one but it's too tall you know what they should really go there but what's nice about this is when you're adding to the water on the top you don't really know what the level is in the bottom without picking this up and looking inside so having the sight glass make sure to go ahead and order that or if you can't spend all that money you can you can always add that later but it just shows you the level so if I see that this is half-full you know I'm not going to fill this all the way up and then have it run over at night and ruin the floor so that is a is worth having it's just nice to kind of to keep an eye on things but and I would not get anything less than tuneup gallon I would go the big berkey I think it's two and a quarter two and a half somewhere around there I would get up into the three and a half three gallon size it you can the filters are all the same so you're not going to pay that much more for the stainless steel cannister but an excellent product and now that I've had a year to test-drive it and we use it every day I just think it's just a must must have item cost overall I don't think I mentioned that you're going to be probably around 175 dollars so I think I said you can buy the four filters for about 150 they can be cleaned 200 times or better so it's a great value so $25 you basically paying for the canister so size it up get the biggest one that you can and if you really wanted to save some money you can obviously you could make your own using some buckets just buying the filters drilling the holes you can do that but you know for the money I don't think that it's a bad deal so I think I gave about 175 for this one and I think that that's more than reasonable so so get one derogate get the equivalent of it it is something that's really important to have for your family so thanks for watching and we'll see you the next video

Channel: Wranglerstar

Views: 427,773

Rating: 4.9054146 out of 5

Keywords: best gravity water filter, berky, propur, aqurain, gravity water fileters, gravity fed water filter, big berky, countertop water filter, water filters review, sink water filter, faucet water filter, water filter, wranglerstar, diy gravity water filter, berkley water filter, water filter bottle, ceramic water filter, aqua pure water filter, alex jones water filter, reverse osmosis water filter, portable water filter, how to clean a water filter

Id: 9mAo7fSVOYs

Length: 11min 46sec (706 seconds)

Published: Tue May 07 2013