I am looking for information as to what kind of water purification package is best for a family of (4) trying to drink from a dirty river....with unknow chemicals.... a survial type kit... to be used ....when the city water is off....

The question depends on many variables, including person preference.
- Storing water is good, but takes up lots of space and needs to be rotated. With at least a gallon per Peron, per day. You are looking at 12 gallons minimum for 3 days. (only for cooking and drinking, no showers!) You also need to add chlorine or other things to keep the water good during storage. Also there is a risk of leakage during storage.

- Waterpurification equipment is much easier to store and you don’t need a lot of time to maintain it. It does require a lot of effort to use and you need to transport the water from a source to your home. (really no fun to drag 4 gallons of water and pump it through the filer/purifier each day). Keep extra containers handy. (make sure the purifier will work without electric power). The filter quality can be a issue. Normal filters will not remove chemicals or petrochemical products. Some have carbon element to absorb the chemicals, but they are ineffective for petrochemical products.

In general I would suggest both.

I tried the reply and noticed your question was a bit different from what I thought it was.

Things to look at for are:
- Pumprate or gravity fed (with the amount of water involved you need to be efficient in time and energy).
- Carbon filter to remove chemicals, filters with replaceable carbon granulate can be a nice feature if you want to make sure you are not using ‘used’ carbon, when filtering possible contaminated water.
- I prefer ceramic filters, because they can be cleaned. Some prefer the fiberglass versions, because they have a higher flowrate.
- Use a good prefilter to get all the debris out first, gravity fed is best.
- Make sure you have enough water containers to shuttle all the water around.

More on the filters them selfs: http://www.equipped.org/watrfood.htm#WaterFilters

Salesguy,

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-Blast

What I am looking for is a backup to my existing stored water (1gallon per person per day) in basement. Where we live there is 2 rivers near our house..but there is a lot of farm land also that feeds into those rivers. Planning on the worst..and living for the best. Your thoughts and suggestions are very welcomed.

> but there is a lot of farm land also that feeds into those rivers.

Depending on what's on the farm, you have more or fewer problems. If the farm has farm animals, you have biological waste - manure and urine - in the water. If it's farmland, you have fertilizer run-off in your water.

Biologically contaminated water can be made drinkable by boiling or by chemical purification (generally iodine or chlorine) or by filtering. I'd suggest googling
water purification
and reading through the search results for a great deal of in depth information. Louise and I bought a ceramic filtration system, and we'll use that and Britta carbon filters for the water we plan on getting from a stream.

Chemical toxins cannot be removed by any of those means. I'd suggest finding the department in your city or county that deals with water quality of the surface water and asking them specifically about your rivers. Often the people who work there chose that job because it's their passion, and they're often very happy to have someone ask about it so they can discuss it. Ask them what is in the water (if they know specifically) and what you should do to treat it. I'll bet they know.

Based on my own experiences, I would go with nothng less than a high quality reverse osmosis system.

I second the RO idea based in part on almost 30 years of experience in designing aspects of water treatment systems (but not drinking water systems).

The undersink models from Home Depot are quite adequate for most purposes, but do require some pressure to get any significant flow out of them.

I would follow the treatment steps generally used in municipal water treatment. Step 1, gravity settling; 2) primary filtration (silk handkerchief or the like; 3) secondary filtration (something like an outdoors water filter); 4) advanced filtration by Granular Activated Carbon or Charcoal (GAC); 5) addition advanced filtration by reverse osmosis; 6) UV disinfection. If you conform to flow rate to treatment time, you should be good to go. Most of this stuff is something you should be able to obtain in a residential capacity module or make yourself. Be aware that water pressure, preferably by manual pumping, will be required for a small upflow GAC tower and reverse osmosis. Municipal water treatment also generally involves coagulants and flocculants, oxidants (flocylic acid, potassium permanganate) and pH adjustment. Don't believe you'll want to try those at home.

I was under the impression that "water purifiers" such as the General Ecology, First Need Deluxe and the Katadyn, Exsteam XR, would remove chemicals as well, basically making post Katrina like flood water drinkable. Am I incorrect?