How To Make A Good Water Filter At Home

By | January 26, 2026

How To Make A Good Water Filter At Home – In a previous post I discussed in depth how to maintain a supply of drinking water and the importance of doing so. In that post I discussed various options such as water filtration systems, disinfection methods and how to clean water. I also revealed what we do at home and how we make pure water for less than 3 cents a gallon. In this post, I want to show how easy it is to make a homemade water filtration system.

When finished, this system is actually two 5 gallon buckets stacked on top of each other like this:

How To Make A Good Water Filter At Home

It is important to have food grade cubes. DO NOT use buckets from your local hardware store as they are NOT SAFE for storing food and water due to the chemicals used in the manufacturing process. Food grade buckets are easy to find online from many sources. They are also available for free at your local supermarket chain bakery. just ask They are more than happy to remove them.

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Inside the long bucket are Black Berkey®️ water filters. The unfiltered water is placed inside the upper bucket which is then filtered by the Black Berkey®️ filter elements. It drips into the lower bucket and drains into a storage container with a water spigot.

In the beginning, as you can see, I started with a single filter. However, it is a low-gravity system that filters very slowly. Because of this, I placed a second filter inside the top bucket to speed up the process.

Here is a list of what these filters can do. This is why I recommend this type of filter.

Drill a hole in the bottom of the upper bucket large enough to accommodate the threaded shaft under the filter.

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Remove the nut to the thread but leave the rubber gasket in place. Place the filter inside the upper bucket and place the threaded shaft in the hole. Tighten the wing nut enough to press the rubber gasket enough to prevent leakage. Put some clean water in the bucket to check for leaks.

It appears that the threaded shaft and wing nut of the filter element protrude beyond the bottom of the bucket. Therefore, you need to drill holes in the bottom bucket lid.

Drill a hole in the bottom cover of the bucket wide enough to accommodate the width of the threaded shaft and wing nut.

Drill a hole in the side of the lower bucket, towards the bottom edge, to fit the pin.

Tools And Guides: Make A Sand Water Filter

Note that in order to drain most of the water from the bottom bucket, the spigot must be quite low. As you can see in this picture, the bottom end of the spigot extends beyond the bottom edge of the bucket. Keep this in mind when deciding where to place your final configuration.

Also, it’s important to note that if you drill through these plastic buckets, you’ll often create more plastic spurs, as seen here.

It is easily removed with a knife and the edges are smoothed with a file. Doing this extra step will prevent leaks.

It can be easily ordered online from many sources. It is important to note that when installing the spigot, be sure to orient the beveled edges of the gaskets TOWARDS the hole on the inside and outside edges of the hubs. If not filtered.

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Once everything is in place, simply stack one bucket on top of the other. The bucket containing the filter elements goes on top. Pour 5 liters of water and just wait.

The most expensive part of this project is the cost of the water filters. As of this writing (February 2021), the cost of the Black Berkey®️ filter is $120 for two filters. The filters have a duration of 6000 liters. That means you can get purified water for 2 cents a gallon. At home, we literally filter the raw water from the river and the resulting taste is amazing.

This whole system takes less than an hour to set up. Once done, you have a reliable and inexpensive way to make your own purified water.

If you want more detailed information on Berkey water filters, I highly recommend spending some time on their website. It is full of good quality information as well as other products offered by the company. You can find them at bigberkeywaterfilters.com

Faircap Diy Activated Carbon

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Growing up on a 2-worker family farm, I was active outdoors from an early age. I’ve been living off the grid for over 20 years and still going. I would love to teach you sustainable living skills and everything you need to safely manage your own resources.

If you want to learn more about sustainable living, off the grid and have more control over your own resources…..Not on soap! You need a filter, a device that removes impurities, such as dirt, from the water. The filter you’ll make here, with the help of an adult, is a super strainer and will help you clean up your act.

Ask an adult to cut the bottle in half. Next, turn the top half of the bottle upside down, so the top looks like a funnel. You will build your filter on top.

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Add cotton balls, charcoal, gravel, sand and/or other materials to the layers. You can use one or all of them. Tip: Think about what order to add it. Larger filter materials tend to trap larger contaminants.

Pour a cup of dirty water into the filter. Start the timer as soon as you start pouring.

Time how long it takes all the water to pass through the filter. Then write how long it took.

Carefully remove the filter materials, one layer at a time. What does each layer remove from the water?

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Experiment! Clean the bottle and try again. Place the filter materials in a different order each time and during each experiment. What did you discover?

The slower the better! The longer the water passes through a filter, the cleaner it is. Water passes easily through filter materials, but larger particles, such as dirt, are trapped. Filter materials tend to get better and better, so they can catch anything that wasn’t there before. Activated carbon can be near the end of the water channel, because it uses an electrical charge to remove particles that are too small for us to see.

Photos by Mark Thiessen / NG Staff: Taken from the Nat Geo book How Things Work, by T.J. ResleIn the previous post we discussed how you can filter water using a five liter bucket. Now let’s see how you can make one of these water filters yourself, for an emergency situation, such as a natural disaster. Lack of access to clean water kills 1.6 million children every year according to Unicef.

The water filter we are going to build consists of four five-gallon buckets, which will work to filter smaller particles out of the water, until you have relatively clean and safe drinking water. This is a relatively inexpensive solution and in most circumstances is better than boiling water.

Water Filter Diy

Step Two: Use a two-inch hole saw and drill through the lids of both buckets. Leave only the lid for the upper bucket. The holes do not have to be in the same places as the 1 inch holes.

Step Three: Remove the filter and cut two three-inch squares of screen material for each bucket.

To give it more stability, we use more than one. Use epoxy to place these squares inside the buckets, so they cover the one-inch holes. You may need to use something to hold the screen while the epoxy cures.

Step Four: Place the ceramic tiles on the screen, shiny side up. Use a little epoxy on the corners to secure the tiles in place.

Make A Water Filter

Step Five: Now it’s time to prepare the filter media. Take the activated charcoal you have. If it is not already crushed, grind it first, until you have small pieces of up to a few millimeters.

To clean the filter media, place it in a bucket full of water and see if the water becomes cloudy. Continue washing the filter media until the water is no longer cloudy. Do this for gravel, sand, and activated carbon. When one of the filter media is clean, place it in a bucket, until all the filter media is in another bucket.

Step Six: Put the lids on the coal and sand buckets. The coal bucket must be on the bottom, on top of something so that the hole in the bottom is not covered, the sand bucket

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