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Posts Tagged ‘Berkey’
A Berkey Customer’s Commentary On Their City Water Report
Tuesday, May 11th, 2010The residents of our city of a little over 60,000 just received their water quality report for last year. If you’re on city water, I recommend you check your own city’s water quality report. The report begins, “The report has been prepared to meet the requirements of the 1996 Safe Drinking Water Act (SDWA) adopted by Congress and to provide our customers with information about their municipal water system.” The report is fairly complete and easy to read.
Our city is on a major river but the water is not drawn from the river. Instead it is supplied through fifteen wells. Of course, ground water will eventually end up in the river, along with other pollutants so perhaps it is easier to control the quality of well water than river water.
The city was required to test seven areas and, and our city water passed all of them without a violation. The areas included disinfection byproducts, inorganic contaminants (including heavy metals), microbiological contaminants (such as E. coli), radioactive contaminants (esp. radium), synthetic organic contaminants (pesticides and herbicides), unregulated contaminants (sulfates, chloroform and the like), and volatile organic contaminants.
The EPA sets standards for about 90 different contaminants but over 2100 different toxins have been identified in drinking water. So it is refreshing to know that the water we trust has been tested and deemed safe according to acceptable standards. A troubling part of the report is this statement: “The state allows us to monitor for certain contaminants less than once per year because the concentrations are not expected to vary significantly from year to year. Some of our data, though representative, is more than one year old.” I wonder, will they know if a sudden surge in the amount of some contaminant occurs?
The chart on the next page of the report includes a list of selected pollutants and the level found in the report. The good news is that all were at a safe level. The bad news is that all were present to some level. These included heavy metals such as copper, lead, and nickel, barium, nitrates, coli bacteria, radium, chloroform, sulfates, and others.
One way to filter my water would be to to distill it, and that would be both expensive and undesirable for it would leave the water tasteless. A certain level of minerals, for example, is needed in our bodies.
The report also promises that chlorine has been added to disinfect the water, and fluoride has been added for dental purposes. Personally I don’t mind the fluoride, and I understand why chlorine must be added to the water. However, enough has been shown about the ill effects of chlorine on the body to make me shutter.
For this reason, I am glad I made the choice I did. Some time ago our family purchased a Berkey water filter which relies on a number of different filtration ingredients to remove contaminants. Most all the areas listed as tested, but present in the water report, are covered in the list of substances removed by the water filter. It also removes the chlorine to an undetectable level. Filtering our water is a double assurance that the water we drink and use for cooking is absolutely safe.
Berkey Water Filters Cannot Be Shipped To California
Tuesday, March 30th, 2010This past November 2009, California signed into law AB 1953 / SB 1334 & 1395 / HSC Section 116875 and as a result directly affected the sales of all water filter and purification systems to the state. This revised “no lead law” as it’s commonly known, went into effect on January 1, 2010. Currently this law prevents any Berkey water filter from being sold to the state of California, and canvasses all Berkey products that comes in contact with water intended for drinking. This would include upper/lower chambers, all filters, and sport bottles.
The law stipulates that any “end-use device intended to convey or dispense water for human consumption through drinking or cooking,” as well as each of their individual components, materials and “pipe, pipe or plumbing fittings, or fixtures,” or flux, must be “lead free” as defined by California law. Under SB 1334, certification MUST be performed by an “independent ANSI-approved third party testing organization.” It appears that even if a product and each component of that product has no metal alloys and if a purification system actually reduces lead, under Section 116875, it must be be certified. An example of this would be the Berkey sport water purification bottle.
The Berkey sport bottle body utilizes LDPE, which must be certified, even though it is common knowledge that LDPE contains no lead, is very commonly used by food and water companies, and is monitored under federal regulations. Further, manufacturers are expected to reveal proprietary information regarding their systems, suppliers and manufacturers, without an absolute guarantee that such proprietary information will be kept confidential. This is of utmost concern due to the fact that if such proprietary information is conveyed to competitors, we would have no recourse. It also worth noting that if Berkey water filters desires to change any of their suppliers after certification, it appears that permission must be obtained by the certifying organization and that re-certification is mandatory, all at the expense of the company. Change of suppliers is a common occurrence as improvement of the Berkey product line is continually occurring.
Research indicates that there are at least two different certification standards available, but there seems to be disagreement as to which standards are acceptable to the state of California’s review Department of Toxic Substances Control (DTSC), the agency in charge of reviewing products and their certification. There is further confusion regarding testing protocols. While DTSC has issued an outline, it appears that the final protocols have yet to be settled upon. Throughout Berkey water filters ongoing research on this issue, they were unable to get clarification on the above requirements, instead it was suggested that “lawyers review the wording of the law to determine” how “they interpret the scope of the mandatory certification…”. Unfortunately, many questions were not answered by the January 1st deadline and as such, “strict compliance with the law” was recommended and is now being adhered to.
Here’s an example of one of the requirements:
…Listee shall promptly furnish to CC, in writing, the street address, hours of operation, anticipated dates when plants will be temporarily closed or shut down, anticipated dates when plants will temporarily cease production and all local or state holidays of each plant where the listed product is being manufactured or to be manufactured by or on behalf of Listee, and each location where the listed product is warehoused or stored by or on behalf of Listee. Listee shall also provide the name and telephone number of a contact person for each such plant or storage location, both at the time of application for evaluation and in the event of any changes in this information. Listee shall provide such information for all plants and storage locations, whether foreign or domestic. If the product is imported or to be imported, Listee shall also provide the name, street address, telephone number and contact person of the importer and the consignee…
Note: Berkey Water Filters does not have manufacturing plants or warehouses in the state of CA
This revised law has put the burden of proof on the manufacturer and is understandable, however the great additional expense will be difficult for Berkey water filters to absorb into the cost structure. To be clear, Berkey products do not contain lead and testing results from NSF/ANSI certified labs show that these systems reduce lead in water. If every state were to establish their own specific overarching certification criteria such as CA, small companies like Berkey would not be able to meet these requirements and would be put out of business.
Big Berkey Water Filters will continue to monitor the situation and hopefully gain clarification on the issues for which there are currently no definite answers. While many water purification and water filter companies are ignoring the law due to it’s vagueness, there is no interest on Berkey’s behalf to go this route. Berkey water filters considers it a high priority to support the tens of thousands of current CA customers in addition to potential future customer who have interest in the product and hope to come to a resolution soon.
Help Me Choose a Berkey Water Filter System
Wednesday, August 5th, 2009In this article we’re going to walk you through 4 easy steps to help you choose the perfect Berkey Filter System to fit your needs.
Step 1: Understanding the Berkey Gravity Filtration System
Berkey filter systems take advantage of the extended time each water droplet is in contact with the filters and thus are able to achieve high performance filtration results that many other systems simply cannot match. These are countertop systems only, starting from the smallest 1.5 gallon size housing to the largest at 6 Gallons. The internal filtration elements like the black berkeys and the PF-2’s work in any of the system housing models we sell, allowing you to achieve the same desired filtration results for each size.
There are 6 system sizes in total (below), and all systems come standard with 2 of our newest generation black berkey filters in the upper chamber. Larger systems have the capacity to utilize more filters thus increasing the speed of filtration. See Flow Rate @ Full Expansion)
| System | Holding Capacity | Fully Expanded | Flow Rate @ Full Expansion |
| Travel Berkey | ~ 1.5 Gallons | 2 Elements(Filters) | ~ 2.75 Gallons / Hr |
| Berkey Light | ~ 2.75 Gallons | 2 Elements(Filters) | ~ 4.25 Gallons / Hr |
| Big Berkey | ~ 2.25 Gallons | 4 Elements(Filters) | ~ 7.0 Gallons / Hr |
| Royal Berkey | ~ 3.25 Gallons | 4 Elements(Filters) | ~ 8.0 Gallons / Hr |
| Imperial Berkey | ~ 4.5 Gallons | 6 Elements(Filters) | ~ 16.5 Gallons / Hr |
| Crown Berkey | ~ 6.0 Gallons | 8 Elements(Filters) | ~ 26.0 Gallons / Hr |
Step 2: Choosing a Berkey Water Filter Size
The golden rule for choosing a size is that bigger is usually better if you have the room for it. Put simply, the larger the system, the less often you need to fill it, which ultimately translates into convenience. In addition, the higher water volume in the upper chamber increases the pressure that is placed on the water helping to push it through the filters faster. The differences in cost between the various housing sizes is nominal when you consider that you will be using the same housing for 10-20+ years.
Here are some sizing guidelines:
Travel Berkey ~ 1-3 ppl
Big Berkey ~ 1-4 ppl
Berkey Light ~ 2-5 ppl
Royal Berkey ~ 2-6 ppl
Imperial Berkey ~ 4-8+ ppl
Crown Berkey ~ 6-12+ ppl
Step 3: Choosing Your Berkey Filters
Upper Chamber Filters
As mentioned above, all Berkey Water Filter systems require 2 upper chamber filters to operate and these come standard with each system purchase. Increasing the amount of filters utilized in the upper chamber will not improve filtration quality, but will increase filtration speed and the volume of water that can be filtered. For example, increasing from 2 black berkey elements to 4 black berkey elements will approximately double your filtration speed and double the amount of volume that can be filtered; 6000 total gallons to 12000 total gallons.
You can choose either Black Berkey Elements or Super Sterasyl Ceramic Filters for your upper chamber filters. These filters are comparable in terms of cleaning, volume of water they filter, and price. However the Black Berkeys, being a newer design, are able to filter everything the ceramics do in addition to removing Lead and MTBE’s that the ceramics do not remove, and chlorine and bacteria (giardia, e-coli, etc) to higher degrees. The Black Berkey’s also meet high ANSI/NSF log 7 standards as water purifiers and show off their prowess by being able to remove food coloring from water. Read this article for more information on the differences between the black berkey elements and ceramic filters.
* Black Berkey and SS Ceramic Filters last approx 6000 gallons for a set of 2
Lower Chamber Filters
The lower chamber filters are referred to as PF filters. PF = Post Filtration. There are 2 types of PF filters. The PF-2’s are specifically designed to work with the black berkeys, and the PF-4’s are designed specifically to work with the ceramic filters. The PF filters are easily installed by screwing them onto the stem of upper chamber elements so that they hang upside down in the lower chamber of any multi-filter Berkey Water Filter system.
PF filters are optional. If your municipality adds fluoride to your water, or you are concerned about arsenic seepage into your well, then the PF-2 Filters as an add-on to your black berkeys are what you’re looking for. PF-4 Filters also remove fluoride and arsenic in addition to other chemicals that the upper chamber SS ceramics do not remove.
* PF-2 Fiters last 1000 Gallons or 2 Years, whichever comes first
* PF-4 Filters last 6 months
Step 4: Understanding the Berkey Assembly
Watch this video of the Big Berkey
Begin Choosing Your Berkey Filter System HERE
High Levels of Phosphates Affecting Chesapeake Bay
Sunday, December 14th, 2008True wisdom teaches us that life is all about balance. When we stop and take a moment to appreciate nature, we recognize that we are surrounded by this wisdom. Unfortunately, the human species has played a significant role in disrupting this balance in ways that we are still continuing to discover. The following news story provides an example of how a common item we use in our kitchen everyday is contributing to this disruption.
Berkey Water Filters vs Berkey Water Purifiers
Sunday, November 23rd, 2008Interest in home water treatment products such as Berkey filters has grown tremendously over the past 15 years. Unfortunately, it isn’t always easy for consumers to know whether or not a particular product will actually be as safe and effective as the manufacturer claims at reducing various contaminants from your water supply. This is where the NSF, a international public health and safety company, plays a critical role.
The NSF (National Sanitation Foundation), headquartered in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is an independent testing laboratory that performs comprehensive testing and certification of filtration products. In order for a product to earn “certification” for reduction of a contaminant, it must be able to reduce a specific amount of that contaminant. Certification is voluntary, so it is important that the consumer ensures that the product they are considering purchasing has attained certification.
One critical filter feature that sometimes gets overlooked is the level to which the filter removes contaminants from the water. For carbon filters, focusing on the pore size has some value, but the most important statistic is at what degree this filtering occurs. For instance, there is a significant distinction between water filters and water purifiers. A water filter like the ceramic berkey filters must remove pathogenic bacteria at the 99.99% level, also known as log 4. On the other hand, a water purifier like the black berkey elements, must be able to demonstrate a 99.99999% reduction in pathogenic bacteria, known as log 7. This is a much stricter standard and NSF certification in this regard gives confidence to the consumer that they are getting a high quality water purifier. If you are interested in water purification, double check to make sure the manufacturer and/or seller is not just throwing the word “purifier” around as it does have technical significance.
As a general rule, look for filters labeled as meeting NSF/ANSI standard 53. This standard applies to point-of-use (POU) and point-of-entry (POE) systems with a focus on removing bad tastes, odors, and chlorine. Standard 53 certified filters substantially reduce many hazardous contaminants, including heavy metals such as copper, lead and mercury, disinfection byproducts, parasites such as Giardia and Cryptosporidium, pesticides, radon, and volatile organic chemicals such as methyl-tert-butyl ether (MTBE), dichlorobenzene and trichloroethylene (TCE). For those interested, Berkey also has a separate class of filters called pf-2’s that filter out arsenic and fluoride.
Don’t forget that no filter will give you good performance over the long term unless it receives regular maintenance. As contaminants build up, a filter can become less effective and actually can make your water worse by starting to release harmful bacteria or chemicals back into your filtered water. The more contaminated the water, the more often you should clean the filters. Happy filter shopping!
The Thirsty Berkey - For the Love of Clean Water
Emergency Preparedness - Berkey Water Filters to the Rescue
Wednesday, November 12th, 2008For the majority of suburbanites and city dwellers, the food supply rests solely of the effectiveness of large scale farming, transport supply chain systems, and local supermarkets. Rarely nowadays, do we find self sufficient households with the ability to live off the land via their crops, gardens, livestock, and local water sources. Compare this to 100 years ago when self sufficiency was much more prevalent, neighbor could rely upon neighbor to barter and trade for essentials, and the local town store filled in the gaps. Today, our idea of bartering with our neighbors lies more along the lines of borrowing the snow blower for the power washer.
The more our current model of food supply evolves, the more dependent our population becomes. This is a dangerous road we’ve been traveling down for a very long time. The dilemma can be compared to that of raising an animal in the zoo for 10 years and then releasing it into the wild and expecting it to be able to fend for itself. Under those circumstances that animal will not survive, and on many levels the majority of the US population is just as vulnerable. If a natural disaster does strike and our zookeeper can’t tend to us for a few days, where’s our food and water come from? We can’t expect relief organizations to pick up immediately where the zookeeper left off as it takes days and weeks to address those in need.
The percentage of the population that is prepared and has a backup plan is sorely low and is only trending lower due to the nature of our technological pursuits and progression. Due to the fact that you can go weeks without food but only days without water, emergency preparedness begins with potable water. The popularity of Berkey Water Filters stem from the fact that they filter and clean the dirtiest of water using gravity, without the need for electricity. This fact alone speaks volumes as to the inherent value that these systems possess, not to mention the piece of mind it brings to the owner. There’s an argument to be made that a water filter such as the Big Berkey is considered the most, if not one of the most important forms of emergency preparation. Stop and adjust your perspective for a moment and this reality becomes abundantly clear. If we spent just a tenth of the time preparing for a potential emergency that we do preparing for a economic downturn, we’d have a garage stocked full of food, water, supplies, and equipment. Unfortunately, I feel as though we’ve been hypnotized by our own technological advances into a false sense of security. New Orleans residents had the wake up call of a lifetime, and my hope is that the rest of the population is still not sleeping.
Click here for more information on how many berkey filters are needed.
The Thirsty Berkey - For the Love of Clean Water
Indianapolis - Polluted River Water, Pt’s 1 & 2
Wednesday, November 5th, 2008A water treatment plant in Indianapolis has been dumping sewage overflow into the White River for over 40 years now. This is a river that people swim and fish in…even though there are warning signs posted. Pay attention to the amount of E-Coli they find from a river sample.
It makes you wonder how much of this contaminated water made it into the water supply of the downstream popuation over these 40 years. What seeped into the well water systems? Was it filtered out in some way? I’d be real interested to see illness or cancer rates across this potentially affected population to look for correlations. Environmentally speaking, this is just sad.
How Many Berkey Water Filters Are Needed?
Thursday, October 30th, 2008This seems to be one of the questions I receive the most. And, it makes sense because there are many ways in which Berkey Water Filters can be set up. The more you read, the more confusing it can get, and the information out in cyberspace doesn’t always clear things up. Below, I’ve assembled 7 basic facts and guidelines that will help you understand the world of Berkey.
- Basic systems all start out with 2 filtration elements in the upper chamber. You then build upon the system from there depending on your needs and system capacity.
- The larger the system, the more elements you can fit into the upper chamber. It ranges from 2 elements in a system like the Travel Berkey or Berkey Light, to 8 elements in the Crown Berkey.
- Traditionally, filter / purifying elements are designed for either the upper or the lower chamber. Ceramic filters & Black Berkey filters are upper chamber. PF-2 Fluoride / Arsenic and PF-4 Arsenic / Lead / MTBE / Fluoride filters are lower chamber. In theory, if you wanted to pimp out your Berkey, 16 filtration elements could fit into the Crown Berkey (8 up / 8 down).
- Black Berkey’s only match up with PF-2’s, and Ceramics only match up with PF-4’s. This is because the PF-2’s are designed to complement the improved filtering abilities of the Black Berkey elements. Similarly, PF-4 filter technology is designed to complement and fit with the Ceramic filtration elements. So, if you buy 4 BB’s up top, you’ll need 2 sets of PF-2’s down below…not a PF-4 set.
- The amount of lower chamber elements in any given system must match the amount of upper chamber elements. i.e. 2 BB’s up top must equal 1 set of PF-2’s down below, 4 Ceramic’s up top must equal a set of PF-4’s below…etc. Keep in mind, lower chamber(pf) filters are not required. A system can function with only upper chamber elements, like 2 BB’s, but not the other way around.
- You cannot combine different types of filtration elements in one chamber. In other words, if you have 2 Black Berkey purification filters in the upper chamber and you’d like to expand to 4, you cannot add two Ceramic filters to the mix. You would need to add 2 addt’l Black Berkey filters.
- More Filters = Faster filtration; not better filtering. If you’re buying a larger system, you most likely have a requirement for water to be available quicker and in larger volumes. In this case, you would want to opt for 4, 6, or 8 upper chamber filter elements.
Hope this gives everyone a good foundation. Couple this information with your filtering intentions and you’ll be able to select the right system and elements combination that will meet your health needs. Please feel free to contact me with any other questions that I can help you with - Dan@Bigberkeywaterfilters.com.
The Thristy Berkey - For the Love of Clean Water
Arsenic in Your Well Water?
Sunday, October 26th, 2008I remember when someone first told me that arsenic can be found in the drinking water coming from the taps of many homes in the United States. I took it as one of those scare statistics at first, until I came across a newspaper article on the subject a couple months later. It’s at that point that I decided to do a little research. I’ve written an article posted on ezine that gets into the details, but let me cover some of it here.
Arsenic is deadly, period. It is known for causing all sorts of cancers including bladder, lung and skin and possibly kidney and liver cancer. In 2006, the EPA set the arsenic standard for drinking water at .010 parts per million (10 parts per billion) to protect consumers served by public water systems from the effects of long-term, chronic exposure to arsenic. However, the limit was set at 50 ppb up until that time and the EPA readily admits that it reduced the maximum in part due to studies revealing health deterioration at these levels.
It’s a step in the right direction that public water systems are required to stay below 10ppb, but if you get your water from a well, you may be drinking water with much higher levels of arsenic contamination. Many areas of the country, particularly the western United States are known for naturally high levels of arsenic in the ground and well water. Being an element found in the earth’s sediment, arsenic has the ability to leech into your well water source and you may be none the wiser. Hopefully, if you live in a particularly vulnerable area, your town and/or state officials require arsenic testing as part of a home inspection or house transfer. Unfortunately there are also many towns that do not require this, or are simply not aware of new studies highlighting the need for more stringent arsenic thresholds.
State and federal governments do not require regular testing of well water for arsenic, so what develops is a gap in public safety. The public water officials must report their arsenic levels on a regular basis to state and federal officials, but many homeowners have been drinking from wells that haven’t been tested in decades. The distress of researchers pushing this issue is that even at levels lower than 10ppb, the continuous consumption of low doses may result in cancer 15-30 years down the road.
Fortunately, arsenic testing can be done for as little as $50 and it may be well worth your while to get it checked out. You can also invest in a full home filtration system, but these installations can cost upwards of $4000, with additional annual costs of $300. I recommend point of use water filters as an inexpensive and highly effective option. I’m partial to Berkey water filters since they are distinguished for their arsenic removing filter technology and the systems last for many years without needing regular filter replacements typical of others on the market. Regardless of your choice, if you drink well water, please take a few moments to learn if you may be affected by this chemical and explore your options.
The Thirsty Berkey – For the Love of Clean Water
Contaminants in our Bottled Water? - The Video
Wednesday, October 22nd, 2008For those of you still interested in this story, ABC news picked it up. Check it out.
