“Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.”  -Nelson Mandela

When I first became a prepper, I found the idea of water purification, and the expense of the many different purifiers on the market, to be a little overwhelming. When preparing for any disaster or grid-down scenario, it is imperative that each and every one of us know as many ways as possible to purify water. In our BOBs we carry both purification tablets and filters that attach to the end of our Nalgene water bottle straws. But, for mass water purification, it seems like there is no way to get clean water on the cheap except for bleach. In a perfect world we would all be rich enough to afford the best preps available, but this is the real world and I was a little depressed by the expense of water purifiers. But then I accidentally ran across Waves for Water.

Waves for Water is a non-profit organization, spear-headed by professional surfers and supported by the surf company Hurley International, that provides water filters to those in need. Their goal is to bring clean drinking water (filters) to as many people as possible, primarily distributed by surfers bringing the filters to the third world nations in which they are surfing. It is a rather unique grass roots effort and I applaud them for it. The extra cool thing (in my opinion) is that they sell these filters to anyone, hoping that you will take some with you as a donation on your next vacation to a third world county.

Waves for Water’s primary “family sized” filter is a silver-impregnated ceramic filter, meeting NSF standards (they also have a “community size” filter). I will not go into the specific statistics of its filtration such as microns and gallons and such (please see their website). But I will say that I was satisfied enough that I bought my filter for the low price of $25 (I think the shipping was like $12-15 though)! At this point I only have the one, but will be adding more as I balance out my preps (since we all know that building up our resources takes time and money).

The filter itself is designed for the two bucket stacking method that many people use with the Berkey filters. It comes with the filter, a pre-filter sock, the spigot for the bottom bucket, and directions. There are also extensive directions and a video on the website. Like the other setups of this kind, it only took a couple of drill bits, two food safe buckets with lids, and I was in the water filtering business.

This method is a slow filtering method designed for at home use. It is NOT an emergency style filtering device for use on the go. It was an inexpensive opportunity for my family to be able to have clean drinking water while also contributing to a grass-roots effort to bring water to those in need. I recognize that there are many other water filtration methods available out there, some that might not be generally heard of. If you know of others, I would love to learn more.

What filtration method do you use?

(Friday: What We Did This Week To Prep)

Leah writes as ‘Momma Bear‘ from the perspective of the woman in the family being the main prepper (her husband is active-duty USMC and frequently gone). She is a regular contributer with her posts appearing the third Wednesday of each month. See her other post: Momma Bear Is The Prepper.