Any one own a Berkey Water filter system?

**anna021** · 05-24-2009, 11:25 AM

If so, which one do you have, and what is your opinion on them. We just don't like our water here, and the pur faucet system is very expensive, seems I'm always changing those filters. I'm paying .99 per gallon, not frugal at all. I have city water, which means I pay for every drop I use. In put would be most appreciated.

**savvy_sniper** · 05-24-2009, 11:27 AM

Do a search on this forum for Berkey. I know I saw a thread recently about Berkey and other options.

**Bellaboo** · 05-24-2009, 01:25 PM

I don't have one but my parents do and they LOVE it. I'm not sure which one they have but it's all they drink now. They don't even buy bottled water anymore, just refill their own bottle; and they always have a cold pitcher of Berkey water in the fridge. I'm thinking of getting one myself.

**kitchendiva** · 05-24-2009, 07:48 PM

Hi, Anna, hubby and I have an Imperial Berkey and we love it. Hubby had a smaller one when I met him and then when we got hitched (7 1/2 yrs. ago) we gave that one to some friends and bought the bigger Imperial. Worth every penny! I think we got a discount because ours had a small dent in the upper tank, but I honestly can't see it. The water tastes so good and I can tell when I'm drinking anything else. We cook with it and also put it in the pets' water bowl. They love it, too. It's fairly maintenence free. We just clean the filters occasionally and that's it. I would go for it! We did and have never regretted it. I hope to never be without one.

**Grainlady** · 05-26-2009, 08:24 AM

There is a difference between water filters and water purification systems. A Berkey is only a filter and are limited in what impurities, bacteria and chemicals they can remove from your drinking water.

We've used a 1-gallon counter-top water distiller for 20+ years to purify our drinking water - costing us 21-cents to process a gallon of water when we checked it recently with a Watt A Meter. The last distiller cost us $138, a little over a year ago, and should last 5-6 years.

Distillation removes things like prescription drugs (http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/100038.php), farm chemicals and animal pharmaceuticals prevelent in our area.

Our tap water is treated for bacteria at the water treatment plant, so that isn't our biggest concern with tap water, but the water treatment system doesn't have a method for removeing Rx drugs, farm chemicals and animal pharmaceuticals, so that's why we have distilled water for drinking and cooking.

Reverse osmosis systems only work on filtering out the larger particles (like mineral salts in hard water), but the fine particles of chemicals and drugs will pass on through the filter. Reverse osmosis systems waste a lot of water compared to what it filters.

**Denvergirlie** · 05-26-2009, 10:18 AM

We have a Royal Berkey, was going to order the Big Berkey but it was backordered and the owers offered us a Royal at the same price.

Berkey's are techically a purification system and it does in fact remove pharmaceuticals, although has not been tested for everyone on the market.

We have both the black filters as well as the white filters as the white ones will take out the flouride in the city water as well.

Love it, love that it doesn't take electricity and can be used anywhere their is gravity.

**PepperGavril** · 05-16-2010, 11:28 PM

I'm going to check that out as I only have softening resin at home.

**Grainlady** · 05-17-2010, 08:15 AM

Since I posted on this subject a year ago, we purchased a Travel Berkey and have used it since December 2009. This size doesn't take up much space in our small kitchen and will purify more than enough for our household of two. I can actually purify more water in a day with the Travel Berkey than I could in my 1-gallon distiller. I always have 3- to 6-gallons of purified water ahead in the kitchen.

You can still smell and taste the water purified in the Berkey, even using both the black and white filters. It's just one of those things you get accustomed to. It's not that much improvement over our city water.

The unit came with the black filters and we had to add the white filters. Without the addition of the white filters, the water was just plain NASTY! Distilled water has no flavor or odor or dissolved solids in it. We still have 2 distillers (one electric for general use, and one non-electric in storage for emergency use), but decided to go with a non-electric Berkey method.

We still use distilled water in our steam cleaners. The water from the Berkey is just too full of minerals for use in the steam cleaners.

Something we found "interesting"... We took a TDS (total dissolved solids) Meter (digital water tester) and was rather surprised to see the water filtered in the Berkey ran 528 ppm while our city tap water is 587 ppm. That's not much removal of total dissolved solids....

"Total Dissolved Solids (TDS) are the total amount of mobile charged ions, including minerals, salts or metals dissolved in a given volume of water, expressed in units of mg per unit volume of water (mg/L), also referred to as parts per million (ppm). TDS is directly related to the purity of water and the quality of water purification systems and affects everything that consumes, lives in, or uses water, whether organic or inorganic, whether for better or for worse."

The U.S. EPA sets the maximum contaminant level for TDS at 500 ppm.

We now mix Berkey water and distilled to lower the amount of solids and improve the smell and taste of the drinking/cooking water.

**vigilant20** · 05-17-2010, 01:49 PM

I have a Berkey Light and love it. Since I'm the only one drinking it filters will last many years and it filters pretty quickly. I just wish the spigot was higher, I can only fit the small 8 ounce glasses under it. I've put it up on top of a casserole dish to give it some height