Producing Drinking Water from Rain Water

It is possible to produce pure drinking water from rain water using a combination of devices costing around $300 total.

Here’s how to do it:

1. Install a roof washer and a rain barrel ($200). A roof washes diverts the first ten gallons or so of rain water away from your barrel — it contains such things as dust and bird dropping from the roof.
2. Put the water caught in the barrel into a counter-top gravity drip filter. The water will be filtered free of cysts, bacteria, metals, pollutants and pollen. (The Red Cross use this type of filter in the field to purify questionable water for drinking.)
3. Come back an hour later and drink the pure, highly-filtered, rain water from the filter’s faucet.

The water than comes out of this system will be purer than commercial bottled water, faucet filtered or tap water. It will retain the taste of rain water because the drip filter does not flatten the taste of the water. You can produce up to four gallons a day.

For extra protection, you can use an ozonator to kill viruses in water smaller than .02 microns. Ozonators use less energy than UV Light, Reverse Osmosis or Distillation.

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3. Ovopur: The Art Of The Water Filter
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6. Reduce Your Household Water Use Efficiently