Homemade water filter

CAUTION! This water filter design idea is not for drinking water.

In general everyday people are using water and most of people are in off grids. Like others are using from a river or swamp and some are using from collected rain water.

For us we use to get water in a shallow wheel (sometimes flooded with rain water), the water is manually pumped to overhead tank and the water is muddy (the tank was maintained and clean yearly).

I design and used this water filter for a long time for washing our clothes, washing dishes and taking a bath. The mechanics is so simple a recycled empty plastic container with threaded cap (for easy access when cleaning), some scrap PVC pipe, PVC pipe fittings and hose clamps.

My 3D printed object are 2 pcs - Barb to unthreaded end fitting (for 1/2ӯ)

Assembly is pretty straight forward, by simply drill two holes ½”Ø on the cap of container, insert the two elbows with one has a shorter PVC pipe connected (mark as inlet) and the other with longer PVC pipe (mark as Outlet) and fixed with epoxy. The longer PVC pipe was pre-drilled with small holes on sides and wrap with cloth (I use socks and tie with rubber band), on other end of elbow connect each end with Barb Fitting for hose (because this fittings are not available in our area I make my own 3D object to fit what I needed, I was also lazy enough to buy from hardware for hose clamp so I 3D print a hose clamp seen on attached images). Then replace the container by threading to the cap and connect the hose, the marked inlet will connect to the water source.

Maintenance:

                Unthread the container from the cap and remove the cloth then wash (In our case, everyday we clean the container and wash the cloth).

CAUTION! This water filter design idea is not for drinking water.

I can say that this design idea meets the five things principle of IKEA Democratic Design.

1)      Form – Simplicity.

2)      Function – Clean water for everyday use.

3)      Quality – Recycled and recyclable materials.

4)      Sustainability – by using recycled materials is fun and interesting that will lead to clean environment.

5)      Low price – Very low compare to the commercial item and maintenance is almost zero.