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Home Made Water Purifier: Good Idea?

by: TrentBarrett
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A home made water purifier can be as simple as cloth tied around a water faucet, or as complex as a series of chemical filters put together for a large quantity of water to be run through them. Historically, the cloth was a typical solution, and even today in Africa, some tribeswomen are taught to pour fresh-drawn water through layers of cloth before using it to remove contaminants. The water at the end looks cleaner, and it does prevent some water-borne contaminants, like amoeba, it is very far from a good solution.

You'll find many types of home made water purifier instructions online, from simple filters to systems that involve distillation of water. The truth is, there are some serious problems with the do-it-yourself approach when it comes to purification of water. That's not good; improperly purified drinking water can harm your health and even kill you. While it's laudable to want to save a little money by creating your own filters, you could be putting yourself and your family at risk by doing it.

First, home made water purifiers generally don't tell you when they can no longer remove contaminants. Most professional grade water purifiers have some system whereby they will tell you to change filters or clean the purifier. Except for distilled water, you should assume that your home made water filter will need to be replaced, so you have to determine what the maximum safe use time for it is yourself. If you don't change the filter when it's saturated with contaminants, the result could be worse than if you used no filter, as fresh water running through will dissolve some of the contaminants already in the filter and give you a double dose.

If you use a home made water purifier system that you know removes all the contaminants, like a distillation system, you're still not going to get it right; if you take out everything, you're removing healthy minerals like fluoride, iron, copper, and calcium. While the levels of these are trace in most water supplies, they do make your water taste better and improve your health when you drink them. In addition, water that has been distilled tastes flat and lifeless, and most distillation systems add their own contaminants. And then there's chlorine; if the water supply you're using has chlorine in it, your distillation system is unlikely to get rid of that, while commercial filters will.

For those who are still planning to build a home made water purifier, make sure that your filtration system has several layers: sand or diatomaceous earth, a layer of fiber or mesh, activated carbon, another layer of mesh, and then a third layer of diatomaceous earth. These filters work best if water is put through at pressure, after being allowed to settle. Once you've filtered your water, test it by letting a glass sit for a day or so to see if anything settles in the bottom or if the water gets cloudy. You can also send out samples to biological laboratories to have a thorough test done for microbes if you do not get your water from a municipal supply. Unless you're doing something very large scale, it's likely to be cheaper and easier to buy a premade filtration system.

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About the Author

This article was written by Trent Barrett, a writer for Best-Home-Water-Purifiers.com. You can visit their homepage to learn more about Home Water Purifiers.  

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