This project goes over the building of a cheap bio-sand water filtration system. This can filter out polluted water from your stream or lake or gutter. Bio sand filters are good for filtering parasites, bacteria, protozoa virus, and fine sediments from well water.
FOUR STAGES OF PURIFICATION
These work by doing four stages of purification. First is the biological zone where bacteria eat your parasites and pathogens viruses. That happens on the surface of the biozone. The second is mechanical trapping where sediment can be attracted to porous rock, and it will filter out sediment absorption, the third one is absorption where the electrostatic charge will attract small particles and viruses down to virus level and get attracted to this sand and the last stage is natural death from nutrient depletion when there won’t be anything for bacteria or virus to eat or thrive on when they start to go through the sand dairy of the filter.
STEP 1 : STACKING THE BUCKETS
There are two five-gallon buckets, one stacked on top of the other. These are black food storage buckets. These buckets don’t tend to promote the growth of algae as much as the opaque buckets do. The top bucket is the water storage bucket, the bottom one is the filter.
STEP 2 : MAKING HOLES ON THE LID AND AT THE BOTTOM
There is an eighth-inch hole on the lid at the top bucket that allows water to flow freely without creating a vacuum. There is a 16th of an inch hole at the bottom of the bucket that slowly let the water drip out onto the top of the bottom bucket.
STEP 3 : PROTECTING THE BIOZONE
The bottom bucket has 8 one quarter inch holes along the sides. This allows the water to disperse over the top, they drip down to these holes along the side of the bucket such that they don’t disturb the biozone underneath. It’ll take about three weeks to establish a biozone. And during that three-week period, you’re going to have to continually feed some polluted water in there with bacteria in it to feed the biozone to make it develop and grow.
It would put a large circular ring in the center of your biofilter and distribute the bacteria off to the side. Now, this filter relies upon bacteria that form on the top of the sand to eat the other bacteria like Giardia and Cryptosporidium.
STEP 4 : ADDING THE CENTER PIPE
A pipe at the center will prevent the sand from coming up into the faucet and getting into the drinking water.
STEP 5 : TWO LAYERS OF SAND
We here have two layers of sand. The biozone is going to have a couple of inches of fine sand on it to promote the growth of the bacteria. The course sand underneath will filter out sediment and other bacteria. The bottom layer is an inch of fine pea gravel.
STEP 6 : ADDING A FOUR WAY DISTRIBUTION PIPE
The second stage of this filter starts with the build of a 4-way distribution pipe made of PVC pipes and a four-way coupler. We cut holes in this pipe, one towards the end and the other towards the center. This will distribute the water over the top of the bucket so that the water isn’t just going in one spot and trickling down one side or down the center and not evenly distributing it over the top of the sand
Drill a hole at the bottom of the 2nd bucket and put a quarter-inch brass drain plug. This can be used to drain water out of the barrels if I want to store them or flush them out.
STEP 7 : STARTING THE SECOND STAGE
We put 3 levels of gravel and 3 levels of sand in the second stage. Put two to three inches of each layer of gravel. Add an inch of activated carbon on top of this fine gravel. Treat both the filter with chlorinated water and fresh water and let it sit for a few minutes. Stack the second stage filter on top of the first stage. Make sure the whole setup is tightly sealed.
Further, purify the water by letting it sit under the sun. The ultraviolet ray purifies the remaining bacteria that might be in there.
