How Do You Purify Water?

Among all the necessities for survival, food and efforts to purify drinking water is one of the most critical. You can only survive about three days without water, less if you are trying to survive in a hot climate.

That makes water a very high priority.

So how do you purify the water you wish to drink?

There are several ways you may do this for yourself and your family in the event of a crisis.

• Water Filters
• Chlorination
• Iodine
• Boiling
• Pasteurization
• Distillation
• Bio-Filtering
• Chemical Filtration Tablets

Let Us Talk About Pure Water

When we’re talking about pure water, that’s not the same as clean water.

Do not get fooled into that idea! You can find a lot of clean water around that’s not pure. The cleanliness of water usually refers to how clear it is.

However, when we’re talking about how to purify drinking water, we’re talking about water that does not have anything living in it. (Yikes!)

Bacteria, protozoa and other microorganisms can cause serious health problems. Drinking impure water can literally be deadly.

While drinking water that isn’t properly purified will usually only cause diarrhea and vomiting, even that can be enough to kill you if you get dehydrated.

In a survival situation, all water is suspect; it must be properly purified to ensure that it doesn’t have any of those little critters living in it.

There are many ways to purify drinking water.

The majority of them break down into two basic categories: mechanical filtration and chemical purification. Both are effective for making sure that your drinking water is safe for you.

What are the methods to purify water?

Filtration. Mechanical filters are probably the most common form of water purification used. Not only can they clean out any microorganisms, but they can also get rid of all the sediment that makes the water cloudy.

However, for a mechanical filter to truly provide you with protection from bacteria, it needs to filter down to 2 microns. To filter out viruses as well, it needs to filter down to 0.2 microns.

Most mechanical filters can’t filter that fine.

There are a couple of companies that manufacture high-quality filters which are back-flushable. That means that clean water can be run backward through the filter, under pressure, to clean the filter out.

These types of filters can be used to filter as much as a million gallons of water before they need to be replaced. While expensive, in a survival situation they are priceless. Check out local sources or the net for higher quality type filters.

Chlorination. Can bleach purify drinking water?

Can you purify drinking water with pool shock?

Chlorine is one of the most common ways around of purifying water. This is commonly used in city water systems and swimming pools alike.

Chlorine is uniformly fatal to bacteria, making the water clean. You can easily find chlorine in the grocery store, sold as common household bleach.

Don’t get the “color safe” bleach or the scented kinds, just common bleach.

Eight drops are enough to purify one gallon. Leave it to sit for about a half-hour after adding the bleach to give it enough time to act. The bleach will dissipate after 12 hours leaving clean and drinkable water.

Iodine. Tincture of iodine works the same as bleach, except you need to use a little more of it.

This is usually 2% iodine, along with 47% alcohol. You need to add a minimum of 20 drops to every gallon of water.

If the water is cloudy, you might want to add more, up to double that amount. This is a common method of water purification in many third-world countries.

Boiling. This is one of the most commonly known methods of purifying water, and I feel the best way and safest.

There never seems to be too much time between those ‘boil water’ alerts from the water authority in some part of the county.

While effective in killing all microorganisms, heating water to a boil requires a lot of fuel. However, the method can be well worth it.

Check out our Fire Starting Post for getting a fire started in wet weather.

The water must come to a full boil and stay there for five minutes. Unless you are going to make coffee out of the water or use it for cooking, you’ll probably want to allow it to cool before drinking it.

Pasteurization. It isn’t necessary to boil the water to kill the microorganisms in it; all you need is to get the water up to 158°^F (70°^C).

This is called pasteurization, after Louis Pasteur, a 19th-century chemist, and microbiologist who discovered the need for purifying drinking water and developed this method for doing so.

If you do not have access to a thermometer, no worries, just go a little further and boil it. Lot easier.

Distillation. Of all the survival methods of water purification, distillation provides the surest way of gaining clean, pure water.

However, it is also the hardest and one of the most time-consuming procedures to do, and I feel not very practical.

To distill water, you need an enclosed vessel to heat the water in. The steam coming off the water is then captured and passed through a cooler to condense it back into the water. A coiled copper line is typically used as a condenser. As long as the coil goes downhill all the way, the water will drip down, coming out pure.

You can also use this method to make moonshine! If you are at this emergency process at this point in time, that may not be a bad idea!

A Bio-Filter. Besides commercially available filters, it is possible to make an excellent water filter out of commonly available materials.

This type of filter, called a bio-filter, will remove 99% of the bacteria in the water, as well as many chemicals. The bio-filter can be made in any container, like a five-gallon bucket.

The bio-filter is made in three layers: gravel on top, then sand next and activated charcoal or activated carbon on the bottom. You may purchase the activated carbon from a pet store. They use it for fish aquariums.

The water is poured in from the top and allowed to percolate through the layers, coming out purified at the bottom. Each successive layer removes more impurities.

When a bio-filter is first made, the water coming out of it will be muddy with black flecks. This will clear up after several gallons of water are run through it. This cleaning cycle can be reduced by thoroughly rinsing the ingredients before building the filter.

Chemical Filtration Tablets. Several companies make chemical purification tablets. The most common of these uses the chemical halogen. While effective, the tablets leave a bad taste in the water. They are also only effective as long as your supply of tablets lasts.

You could purchase these in any well equipped outdoor store or the neighborhood Walmart.

Was Purifying Water So Hard?

While there are a large number of ways of purifying water, they aren’t all uniformly effective.

Some are better suited for use at home, while others would be more effective in the wilderness.

After hurricane Wilma passed through my neighborhood several years ago I have not taken clean water for granted.

At that time, Anheuser Busch brewing company went to passing out free cans of clean drinking water because of the havoc good old Wilma did to the infrastructure of the state.

No electricity equals no pumping of water out of the ground.

Simple math…..complicated problem.

Since purified water is such an important part of survival, it is highly recommended that you have more than one method available, both in your at-home survival supply kit and in your bug-out bag.

 

Purification From Around The Net: 

While I am on the subject of clean water, allow me to show you an article that just may make you feel somewhat grateful for your current water situation.

This is from MIT News:

“It’s been a long, hard slog,” says Susan Murcott, a senior lecturer in MIT’s Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, describing her efforts to disseminate water-filtration systems to some three million people in northern Ghana. About half of these people presently lack access to a reliable supply of clean drinking water. But after nine years of efforts by Murcott and her students, the project has begun to make a difference.…..READ ON