Effective ways to filter lead from water?

We are on city water in Iowa. Our town has already been fined for high water particles and higher lead levels. The stuff from the tap smells like a pool. Our family uses 6 gallons just for drinking water every day. Not to mention cooking water and the animals. Right now we are drinking water from refillable bottles at 69¢ a gallon. Its a pain in the rear to go to town every few days for water. Budget is tighter then normal right now so I was curious if there's a reliable way to diy it. I will mention plenty of people in town drink the water but there's been 3 boil warnings this summer. I will not drink the water round these parts sadly.

Look into installing a multi-stage filter that you can set up beneath your kitchen sink. You can set up a charcoal, sand and reverse-osmosis (RO) filter that will remove most contaminants.

You can even buy a "filter" that will remineralise your water for you - as the filters will remove everything, even the good stuff - but I would just rely on good quality food to fulfil that role, personally.

An example, available in the UK, is https://www.finest-filters.co.uk/50gpd-4-stage-complete-ro-reverse-osmosis-unit/

If your water is likely to contain bacteria or viruses, you'll want an inline UV filter too.

I'm not certain that the above will remove all of the lead but it will certainly help with chlorine levels (the pool smell) and it should remove dissolved solids and at least some of the heavy metals.

You will have to replace the charcoal filter semi-regularly (they are cheap) and rinse the mesh/resin one (read instructions for a specific set up).

From; https://www.espwaterproducts.com
The CDC suggests two ways to remove lead from drinking water:
- Reverse Osmosis or Distillation.
Reverse osmosis is a simple and economical way to protect your household drinking water by filtering out contaminants like lead,
and can remove 99.1% of lead in water.
- Distillation is a very slow process and requires a lot of energy from a heat source, so it's not the optimal process.

RO units cost from $2600

We didn't have a problem with the lead.

I want to say that the reverse osmosis unit that we installed was well worth the $200.00 or $300.00 that we paid for the unit and installed ourselves.

If a person has any plumbing skills they are not that hard to install.

What's the filtration process of the reverse osmosis systems? Could I make one effectively. Could a distillation system be hooked up to a rocket heater to speed it up and have a holding tank with a basic filter to finish it before it is used? We have become pretty handy around here to make up for what we can't afford. 150$ is the max amount of money I could put into this right now. ( Hours were cut at work.)

Hi Sam,
You ought to be able to setup rain catchment fairly easily and cheaply (up to a certain level, the big tanks can get expensive once you start storing a lot of water). I would not personally be drinking this water without additional filtration, but it would be fine for anything cooked to a boiling temperature and would be fine for garden and animals. This would reduce the amount you need to filter or buy for human consumption. This water is much less likely to have the sort of contaminates you are talking about. Depending on how you collect it, it could be more likely to have bird poop or algae in it.

I know my next suggestion is out of your budget right now. I am simply mentioning it for the future or for other people who may have a similar problem, but a higher budget. A Berkey water filter. They are good at removing contaminates, use gravity, not electricity, and start at over $300. They would help solve the safe drinking water problem. https://www.berkeyfilters.com/ https://www.usaberkeyfilters.com/

***Edit*** I know you said you were not as worried about the lead, but the Berkey filters do claim to remove lead without a reverse osmosis system or distillation.

Matt McSpadden wrote:Hi Sam,
You ought to be able to setup rain catchment fairly easily and cheaply (up to a certain level, the big tanks can get expensive once you start storing a lot of water). I would not personally be drinking this water without additional filtration, but it would be fine for anything cooked to a boiling temperature and would be fine for garden and animals. This would reduce the amount you need to filter or buy for human consumption. This water is much less likely to have the sort of contaminates you are talking about. Depending on how you collect it, it could be more likely to have bird poop or algae in it.

I know my next suggestion is out of your budget right now. I am simply mentioning it for the future or for other people who may have a similar problem, but a higher budget. A Berkey water filter. They are good at removing contaminates, use gravity, not electricity, and start at over $300. They would help solve the safe drinking water problem. https://www.berkeyfilters.com/

***Edit*** I know you said you were not as worried about the lead, but the Berkey filters do claim to remove lead without a reverse osmosis system or distillation.

That link didn't go anywhere, and I think that berkey dealer went out of business. I bought from this dealer https://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/

Denise Lacara wrote:That link didn't go anywhere, and I think that berkey dealer went out of business. I bought from this dealer https://www.bigberkeywaterfilters.com/

Thanks for catching that. I have edited to give a different link that works.