I’ve been having a hell of a time with this myself and have tried multiple different setups, all of which have failed or performed far below my needs and even my expectations. The next idea I have that I’m relatively certain will work is to buy a large 10 gallon water bottle (big blue ones water delivery services drop off at peoples homes) cut the top off. Attach a short length of hose and seal it to the small opening opposite of the side you cut off. I usually seal this end with silicone, a lot of silicone, and then add a couple layers of protection around the hose that’s sticking up into the bottle all filled with silicone so that the bottoms is level and it’s absolutely airtight. Then this is the part that I’m hoping will work, starting with rocks about an inch or two in diameter I will put progressively smaller layers of filtering media until I get to sand. All of this media I will wash in a solution of bleach first then rinse and wash with sulfuric acid solution, about 1M, then rinse and layer all of it in the “percolator”. I forgot to mention that I also usually put one of those steel pan scrubbers in the section that levels off the bottom of the bottle in between the final level and the opening of the hose that sticks into the bottle as a final filter that I know won’t get easily clogged unless every single layer before it fails which I really don’t think is likely. I’ve tried increasingly more complex setups similar to this starting with just cat litter in a bottle topped off with whatever herb I’m extracting to my most recent which was a layer of river rocks about a couple of mm in diameter then the herbal media, then another layer of river rocks that I kept adding to to increase the downward pressure on the media being filtered. None of them really worked that great and left a big mess and something I had absolutely no desire to keep afterwards. The latest incarnation I really hope works, I’m hopeful because the last one was almost perfect but not quite. I also am going to add some type of a Büchner funnel type quality to the next one by attaching some kind of a chamber onto the end of the attached hose, probably an empty gallon water bottle made of thick plastic then extending an empty Bic pen off of that, then attaching my collection flask to the opening of the water bottle and a vacuum pump to the empty bic pen. All of this is sealed with silicone and made absolutely water and air tight of course.Anyway, I’ll let you guys know if it works. I know this was 7 years ago that this was posted but I figured now is a good time to experiment what with everything that’s going on. Happy Holidays
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