Community portable water filtration systems

Robert Clements - April 15, 2022

Gear

Hello,

I am a member of my local Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) and we are looking to replace our portable emergency water filters.

Does anyone have any recommendations for a company that produces portable, self-contained emergency water filter systems?

Our CERT currently has an Emergency Potable Water Program where, if our local water supplier was unable to provide potable water to the community, we would step in and supply potable water through several distribution sites.

The manufacturer of our current units (Global Pure Water) has gone out of business.

Thank you for any thoughts.

Bob Clements

Milwaukie, Oregon

6  

That is so wonderful that you are trying to provide a service of clean water to the community after a disaster. 

I’ve only ever looked into personal or family sized water filtration systems so thinking about how to upscale that to handle a small community was something I’ve never done before. Here are just a few thoughts and possible ideas to toss around with your CERT team.

• The Crown Berkey is the biggest brother of the line of Berkey water filters as recommended in the Best home water filter article. It is quite expensive at nearly $1000, but is able to fit in 8 of the black element filters and provide 26GPH.
• The Lifestraw Family can only produce 3GPH, but is only $70. So if you had that same $1000 budget you could buy 14 of them and create multiple filling stations that combined would give you 42GPH.
• The Pressurized jerry can from Hydroblu can produce 1 gallon every 3 minutes which equals out to 20GPH. That’s $180/unit.
• The Survivor water filter Pro-X is USB/AA battery operated and can produce 8GPH. $125

From the few I found, it looks like the Hydroblu is the clear winner being batteryless, having a large tank that can hold water, not too expensive, and has a high gallons per hour filtration capability. 

I would consider throwing in a few 5 gallon water containers that can be filled up prior to the disaster and quickly deployed to the site for immediate relief. Once you empty one, you can use it to contain the clean water that the filters produce. I can see you being very busy during the day providing water to victims, but at night when everyone is sleeping they won’t be used as much. If you had some of those gravity filters working for you all night then you would have a fresh abundant source for the morning.

Tell me more about your current setup. How many gallons per hour are they able to filter? Will you use those until you have a need to purchase more?

 

Hello and thank you for those suggestions.

The  current units that we are The Hurricane. It was being produced by GlobalPureWater which has ceased business. Global Pure Water website does provide some possible resources for replacement filters but other support is no longer provided.

Our Community Emergency Response Team (CERT) has five or more of these units which are self-contained, portable, battery powered with the ability to produce 135 gallons of filtered water per hour. The water filtration units are being housed throughout across our CERT area close to a large river that is one of our area borders.

Our goal is to be able to provide water to our local community after a catastrophic event incapacitates our Water Service District’s operations and interrupts water service. While the CERT is leading this effort, we are developing a partnership with our Water District.

One water filtration unit that we are looking at is the FirstWater FW-300-M. This unit weighs 105 lbs, is contained in a case with wheels, has a 5 gallon/minute purification rate, is powered by a 120volt source, and is effective against viruses, bacteria, and cysts. It can filter down to 0.019 microns.

Other considerations include:

RainFresh AquaResponse System

This unit clears water of Bacteria, viruses, and cysts and removes sediment down to 1 micron and can filter 3 to 24 gallons of water per minute (depending on the model). It utilizes a 12 to 120 volt power source (depending on the model) and remains portable.

Aquamira DIVVY .

This is still a portable, though a larger unit, and is human powered by a hand pump.

I hope that this is helpful to any others looking into providing water to a smaller community. If anyone finds an interesting product, I would really like to hear about it.

Thank you,

Bob

 

Wow! That GlobalPureWater system is impressive at 134GPH and makes my recommendations of 26GPH look bad. Now that I know the about size, budget, and filtration capability of what you are looking for, I will keep my eye out for better suggestions. 

 

That is an awesome thing to do for the community! I was going to recommend the Lifestraw Community but that is way less than the system you currently have or are looking for. We have the family one that Gideon mentioned, but I’ve been contemplating adding the community version recently. 

 

Your link brought me to the Lifestraw Max, but still that only filters 0.6 gallons per minute.

Faster than anyone in my family can drink, but probably too slow for the community approach Robert’s looking for.

 

Oops! Thanks for letting me know. I fixed it. 

 

Oh sorry! Guess my communication was off there. Your link was just fine and did bring me to the right Lifestraw Community, but I went further down the rabbit hole because of your recommendation and came across the Lifestraw max. 

You’re all good and thank you for sharing your recommendation and furthering my research.