How To Filter Water Without Losing Minerals

Water is the most essential thing to survival in disaster situations.

Consider that 50-75% of our bodies are comprised of water. We unremarkably don't experience thirsty until we have lost almost 2-3% of our water, merely at only 1% dehydration our operation and mental function volition already outset to suffer.

For these reasons, I always go along a h2o filter with me in my survival bag ( run into how to cull the best survival water filter). But, in example I am always in a survival situation without a filter, I am glad to know these h2o purification methods.

Why Practise You Need to Purify Water?

Always purify water from an outdoor or unsure source before yous potable it!

It may not seem similar such a big deal to drink a bit of dingy water (or even water that appears clean) if yous are lost in the wilderness. Simply, sadly, almost natural water sources are grossly contaminated.

Unpurified water – fifty-fifty from water that appears clean – ofttimes contains contaminants like:

Giardi intestinalis
Cryptosporidium
Campylobacter
Salmonella
E. coli
Shigella
Enterovirus
Hepatitis A

The CDC lists some of the possible effects of drinking these contaminants, the chief ones being diarrhea and airsickness.

Diarrhea and vomiting tin Impale You lot when you are in a survival situation! They volition cause you to further dehydrate, and tin besides limit your mobility (not to mention that they aren't very fun to deal with).

When the water is from sources near urban or agricultural environments, there are also risks of pesticides, herbicides, feces, chemical runoff, and much more than.

The bottom line? Don't drink unpurified water if you tin can avoid information technology!

And so what do you practise if you don't have a h2o filter, UV handling system, or other water purification method? Apply one of these methods!

Boiling H2o

This is the best way to purify h2o if yous don't take a camping ground water filter. But eddy the water for a minimum of 5 minutes, though it is even safer to boil the h2o for most 20 minutes.

The trouble is that this will require yous to take some sort of fire-proof vessel. If you don't, and so you can try rock humid.

Create a vessel to hold your water (such as out of pine bark)
Make a burn down
Estrus rocks in the burn down
Put hot rocks in the vessel with the water
The rocks will cause the water to eddy
Continue adding hot rocks to keep the water humid

Solar Yet

I wrote about solar stills in my mail service well-nigh uses for a plastic tarp. A solar still is great considering it doubles as a h2o drove method (great for situations where at that place aren't whatever streams, creeks, etc, such as in the desert) and likewise a purification method.

You will need to have a plastic tarp, merely a clear rain poncho would work too.

Here is how you make a solar still:

Dig a hole
Put grass, leaves, cacti, urine, or other moisture-containing things into the hole
Put a h2o collection vessel into the middle of the hole
Cover the hole with your plastic tarp
Put a rock in the center of the plastic tarp so the tarp angles downwards towards the water drove vessel

The idea backside the solar still is that, as the lord's day shines through the tarp, it will crusade wet to evaporate from the hole and the things in it.

The water vapor will become up, hitting the tarp, and cool down.

This will create a greenhouse issue and cause condensation to form on the bottom of the tarp. The drops of condensation will baste downward into the collection vessel.

Since the drops are from water vapor, the water should exist (mostly) clean.

solar still — Prototype credit: "Puits Solaire" by Solar_still.svg. Licensed under CC BY-SA 3.0 via Commons

Build a Grass-Gravel-Charcoal Water Filter

At that place are a few unlike ways to build these DIY water filters. They all work on the same basic principle though: the water goes through various layers of grass, gravel/sand, and charcoal. During each step, impurities in the water are removed.

Information technology is actually important that you lot use charcoal as this is what will absorb the harmful bacteria, protozoa, and viruses. The other materials are more for filtering out big pieces of dirt.

Learn how to brand DIY activated charcoal

If you have spare textile, then yous tin build the water filter this way.

diy water filter

If you lot don't have spare cloth, then yous can brand a water filter in a plant plastic bottle (luckily, there is usually trash around). If y'all tin can't find a plastic bottle, then y'all can brand a cone out of birch bark for the filter.

Bleach for Purifying H2o

In urban emergency situations where you are without clean water, bleach volition probable be the all-time way to purify water. The EPA says bleach will kill most disease-causing microorganisms (though it will not remove chemical contaminants). They give these instructions:

If the water is cloudy, permit information technology sit down so particles settle on the bottom. Only filter the clearer water on the top. Or, you can filter the h2o through a cheesecloth or a java filter.
Locate some bleach with eight.25% sodium hypochlorite. It should exist unscented and accept no additional cleaners added to it!
Add half-dozen drops to each gallon of water (2 drops per quart)
Let the water and bleach sit for thirty minutes. The water should slightly smell of chlorine. If information technology doesn't so repeat the dosage and let it stand up for another fifteen minutes earlier drinking.

Become printable instructions on how to care for water with bleach. I recommend keeping the instructions on your fridge in instance you lot need them!

Using the Ground to Filter H2o

With this method, you lot are basically digging a well side by side to a water source. The thought is that the ground will filter out most of the contaminants which are at the surface of the water or in the water source.

About 2 feet from a h2o source like a swimming, start digging. You lot will have to dig DEEP until you lot hit water and keep excavation. The deeper you go, the cleaner the water will be. I honestly tin't imagine ever using this method for purifying water, but it is still useful to know in case you always problems out in the same location for a long time.

Have y'all e'er used any of these methods for purifying water? Permit us know your experiences in the comments beneath.