How to Quench Your Thirst

What to Do When the Well Runs Dry

- Frank Phillips

1. THE DIYER’S NATURAL WATER FILTER 

Regardless of how well stocked you may be with water filters, chemical tablets and other means of water purification, all might be lost and you’ll end up needing to purify some water with just the things found in nature. All is not lost, however, as the wilderness is full of materials you can use to make a DIY water filter that works much like the one you have in your emergency kit or B.O.B.

1.1. Cut off the bottom of a plastic 1 or 2-liter drink bottle to serve as a catch basin for your filtered water. You can also use another bottle or container as your storage vessel that you will fill from your catch basin. The advantage of this approach is that you can filter the water more than once if needed to get it as clear as possible.

1.2. Bore a hole in the center of the bottle cap for the water to drain through. You may need to experiment to find the right size hole, but start with a quarter-inch hole and make it bigger if you need to.

1.3. Place a layer of clean fabric at the neck of the bottle to serve as a final filter and to keep everything else in place. Hold it in place with the cap or a piece of string or rubber band.

1.4. If you have some kind of packing material, like grass or straw, put it in at this time to prevent the charcoal (step 1.5.) from falling out.

1.5. Next, add a 1-inch-thick layer of charcoal. This is where the majority of the filtration takes place, and it is also where some purification happens. Charcoal is the black outer layer on a burnt log in your campfire. Scrape it off of the burnt logs and grind it up until it is as fine as you can make it. A word of caution, though: Ashes do not have the same properties as charcoal, so do not use them in your water filter. All that will do is give you gray water that tastes horrible.