Existing potable water cistern

Water is highly politicized these days!
I am surprised to hear you have the situation you describe in the Fraser River Valley, but 🤷🏻‍♀️.  You did get that heat dome, and droughts.

I’m in the North Fork Valley.  I am pretty familiar with Rifle, DeBeque region.😊, lived many years in Collbran, get my honey in Parachute.

I oppose the extraction going on over there, but I think it would be a luxury not all can afford, to refuse to work in a particular industry… economic community as coercive as it is!

I use a Berkey.  Prices have gone up it’s true, but the bigger problem here is that the EPA ddclared their filtering system illegal some how.  I can’t remember the details, I think it was the EPA, and someyabout using silver as a biocide or something.  We can’t buy replacement filters from Berkey any more.

We live quite a ways north of the Fraser Valley, fortunately, very rural.

The 'illegality' of Berkey water filtration was a gross overreach of EPA authority in interpreting their own rules and bizarrely classifying a Berkey system as a 'PESTICIDE???'

I'm not sure what was really happening or their reasoning, but I do know that the recent Supreme Court ruling overturning the 'Chevron Doctrine' whereby federal agencies get to make, interpret, and enforce their own rules, makes the outcome of Berkey's lawsuit against the EPA look pretty promising.

Berkey no longer sells consumer direct, but authorized dealers still stock the filters.

FWIW - here is a list of scam artists Berkey has identified as selling counterfeit replacements. Not surprisingly Amazon, EBay, and WalMart, the three biggest chinese shills host a huge variety of these types.

https://support.berkeywater.com/buyer-beware/unauthorized-dealers-on-amazon/

Thekla, Tommy, and anyone else who is using the Berkey elements:

Are you using the Black Berkey filters, the ceramic Super Sterasyl filters, or both?  Or, are you using an alternate brand/type?

What hazards/challenges are you mitigating?

Most of my experience with water filtration has been when backpacking and canoeing.  Depending on whose filter we were using, those were either ceramic or charcoal elements (that's an XOR - I don't think there was a backpacking grade system which used both technologies in series).  Generally, under those circumstances, it was only biological contaminants that were of serious concern.  I never ended up contracting amoebic dysentery or beaver fever, so I guess the methods were sufficient for the situation (and maybe the water would have been OK without filtration, who can say?).  "Off" tastes were less of a concern, and sometimes we treated water with iodine tablets, so adding some sort of "bev base" to cover any weird tastes was just standard operating procedure.  Tang (some sort of synthetic "orange" flavor, for those unacquainted) would hide almost anything!

However, for longer term domestic use, mitigating other hazards would also be important, hence my query.

Reverse osmosis systems (surplus hand pumped "water makers" from life boats, for example) are also available, but the membranes tend to deteriorate, even in storage, from what I've read, and certainly once put into service the clock is ticking.  Replacement membranes are in the same price range as a new Big Berkey.  Might be just the ticket for a small passage maker, but probably not worth of consideration for general domestic use unless desalination is required.  As far as I am aware, Berkey and similar filter elements are shelf stable for any reasonable storage duration (years to decades).  Definitely a lot less to go wrong with a gravity filter system.

Kevin

P.S.  I do vaguely recall hearing of some kerfuffle with Berkey, but didn't realize that the US EPA, in it's infinite wisdom/hubris, had deemed silver to be a pesticide.  Silver (often a coin) has been used, time out of mind, to keep stored water "sweet".  Heck, I am pretty sure NASA still uses silver to keep their stored water drinkable, up where they've "slipped the surly bonds of earth".

Hi Kevin, I began using the Berkey system because I was on city water that was chlorinated and fluoridated and who knows what else…?  Now, I have this Domestic Water supply and I don’t know how it’s treated. There was some lead detected in the system probably from old pipes in old houses, not from the supply lines, and I already have the Berkey, so why not use it?  From time to time I do drink the water out of the tap. Most people do, but once you stop trusting whoever it is, that’s in charge, it is hard to go back!

It’s probably the ceramic filter, the black Berkey filter.  The one that even removes viruses and other particles that size.

Thekla McDaniels wrote:Most people do, but once you stop trusting whoever it is, that’s in charge, it is hard to go back!

Yup, there's a lot of that lost trust thing going around.  (BTW, we have another broken water supply line in our neighborhood, as of Friday - this one appears to be a service lateral - which is yet another indicator of a failing system, and gives further impetus to get a potable water treatment system of my own set up.)

Thekla McDaniels wrote:It’s probably the ceramic filter, the black Berkey filter.  The one that even removes viruses and other particles that size.

Here's what Berkey offers:  Black Berkey filter elements (probably significantly consisting of carbon or activated charcoal, since the Black Berkeys are specified to deal with a bunch of nasty chemical contaminants); Fluoride and Arsenic Reduction elements; and Super Sterasyl ceramic elements.

Presumably, a dealer would be able to clarify (perhaps even quantify) the relative performance of the two main types (Black and Super Sterasyl).  I can't see a nice tabular comparison of them on the Berkey website, though I may just be missing it.  Much of the website info regarding their filters is a catechism, of sorts - question and short form answer.

And, for any who care, here's a link to Berkey's filing against the US EPA:
https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-03/berkey-international-puerto-rico-complaint.pdf
Though I haven't read it in its entirety, Berkey's assertion is just as Tommy stated.  The silver is used in the filter elements to kill the captured organisms, presumably preventing the filter from being colonized by critters and so impairing the performance due to accumulated biofilm.

From paragraph 39 of the filing:
"Berkey filters containing silver are properly classified as treated articles because the
silver is part of a registered pesticide that is used to preserve the mechanical filtration maze itself.
The silver does not act a pesticide for purposes of killing waterborne pathogens within the water,
nor does Berkey make any such claim."

What would have been next - classifying my copper farmhouse sink as a pesticide?  But I digress...

Re my NASA comment
A puff piece on commercialization/technology transfer of NASA's silver ion water treatment methods:
https://web.archive.org/web/20210717054937/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20020080111/downloads/20020080111.pdf
And a more detailed technical article on the technology, with two embodiments given, and a discussion of some of the challenges faced for long term (space flight) use:
https://web.archive.org/web/20240716082039/https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20160007509/downloads/20160007509.pdf
I posted the versions from Archive, because NASA's website was slow to respond.

We use the black Berkey filters. Because of cost, I give them a light scrub from time to time and a good rinse to dislodge the minimal sediment/algae we get sometimes in the north lake water.

FWIW - California bans most Berkey products because they require all water 'purification systems' to be NSF certified. Berkey will apparently not allow NSF labs to certify their filters because of the risk of exposing their proprietary construction. Berkey's stance.
Others have tested Berkey filters apparently, and they perform quite well.

So, beware the shrieking of terror parrots, use your own sound judgement.

Off topic - we use a silver/honey treatment for wounds on our animals. Lil'B has an electrical outfit for making colloidal silver apparently. Haven't yet messed with it. It was a silver compound used historically in many places as preventative treatment for infant blindness due to possible STD exposure during childbirth.

Tommy -

Thanks for the elucidation - and especially that the Black Berkey filters can be cleaned.  This is common practice with ceramic filters, in my experience (limited though it is, and largely camping-related).

It sounds like the Black Berkey filter elements would probably do everything I need.

Kevin