Producing Drinking Water from Rain Water

It is possible to produce pure drinking water from rain water using a combination of devices costing around $300 total.

Roof Washerplus Rain Barrel plusDrip Filter

Here’s how to do it:

  1. Install a roof washer and a rain barrel ($200). A roof washes diverts the first ten gallons or so of rain water away from your barrel — it contains such things as dust and bird dropping from the roof.
  2. Put the water caught in the barrel into a counter-top gravity drip filter. The water will be filtered free of cysts, bacteria, metals, pollutants and pollen. (The Red Cross use this type of filter in the field to purify questionable water for drinking.)
  3. Come back an hour later and drink the pure, highly-filtered, rain water from the filter’s faucet.

The water than comes out of this system will be purer than commercial bottled water, faucet filtered or tap water. It will retain the taste of rain water because the drip filter does not flatten the taste of the water. You can produce up to four gallons a day.

For extra protection, you can use an ozonator to kill viruses in water smaller than .02 microns. Ozonators use less energy than UV Light, Reverse Osmosis or Distillation.

13 thoughts on “Producing Drinking Water from Rain Water”

  1. I’m on board and like the idea. The only thing that stands in the logic path is why invest in another system to bring you clean drinking water if you already have it? Make alot of sense if you don’t. Still a great addition to flower and plant life and great in combination with a worm farm from the creators of The Wormfarm Chronicles

  2. I bought the Argenion in-line refrigerator 20,000 gallon filter but it only last a 1-1/2 years & my wife & I are the only user, except for the occasional visitor. What good is a 5 year warranty when you can’t contact the company that made the thing to get a replacement!

  3. I used to buy the Argenion at Home Depot 2-3 yrs ago and it was the 20,000 gallon type and then one day they were all replaced with GE for about the same price but they were only good for 90 days.. Go figure..

  4. I used to buy the Argenion at Home Depot 2-3 yrs ago and it was the 20,000 gallon type and then one day they were all replaced with GE for about the same price but they were only good for 90 days.. Go figure, can you say most folks r getting screwed..

  5. We got a countertop water filter from Argenion with a 20,000 gallon capacity (and 5 year warranty). This was the longest-lived filter I could find and it’s worked quite well for the 1.25 years we’ve had it. It seems much more efficient to me to have a piece of hardware that lasts 5 years instead of 3 months. Here’s the link:
    http://www.argenion.com/

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