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  • From: Gene GeRue <genegerue AT ruralize.com>
  • To: homestead AT lists.ibiblio.org
  • Subject: Re: [Homestead] Sand water filters
  • Date: Thu, 11 Nov 2004 06:55:03 -0700


If you use a spring for your water supply, it is a good idea to use a sand prefilter to take out mud, maybe crawdads, pollywogs, killer-whales. If there is risk of giardia or coliform bacteria, install a separate valve plenum and commercial activated-carbon cartridges in your drinking water faucet. Here is a schematic of the pipes and valves for a three-tank sand filter.

Sand Filter Piping <http://www.mermade.com/sandfilters/sand_filter_piping.htm>

You engineer types are occasionally useful, but you sure do like to complicate things. The sink faucet at Heartwood ran clear even before I installed an under-sink ceramic cartridge filter to eliminated the bugs. It receives so little particulate that I need brush off its exterior only about once each year. I pump directly from the stream and it teems with life good and bad, not to mention lots of particulates. At the edge of the stream I dug down to bedrock, set and braced upright an eight-foot piece of 18-inch galvanized culvert pipe with some holes busted in with the pick axe. Then I hand washed the biggest stones in the stream and tossed them against the pipe. Kept doing that one hot summer day. By the time I got down to about fist-size stones, the pyramid around the pipe was about four feet high. Then I dumped gravel around the whole thing to within six inches of the top and capped it with a plastic garbage can lid, which fits perfectly. Ran the water pipe in about eighteen inches down for frost protection. The crude filter has worked well for many years. The ceramic filter cost about a hundred dollars including piping. Chris doesn't like the flavor so I will add a charcoal filter when I go home. As for back flushing, I don't. Apparently the large size of the filter does the job; the water flows into the check valve so slowly that particulates don't migrate inward much. Perhaps microscopic critters eat the particulates. Pretty plants also grow there. A living filter maybe, like the designs of John Todd, of Living Machine fame.






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