Prepper Water Purification (PortaWell Review)

[@JohnSmith-gz5pm]

Long time no see! Where have you been?! Keep up the great content! Keep the videos coming.

[@DownGridSurvival]

Thank you, getting back in the saddle. Been prepping :-)

[@DownGridSurvival]

I have to say, this is an impressive water filtration solution. Stay tuned for our second video where we test it out at the river. In the meantime, get more info here: myportawell.com/?ref=cf0OhpF8b_AvfT

[@andyfunke9484]

Hey look your Harvest Right isn't sitting on the floor. Lol. Is that all new cabinetry? When you pulled that out of the bucket I recognised it right away, well the components that is. I have those types of filters installed everywhere. In my house, the shop, the other houses, even in the livestock barn. In the house we also have reverse osmosis, the water is so filtered you darn near have to eat a handful of gravel to get your daily minerals. As for the pump, I have lots of them. One is on a pesticide sprayer that I use to spray degreaser on equipment that I'm about to power wash, there's another in my truck camper, one in the camper that I built at the front end of my tool trailer, and a bank eight of them running the different circuits in our hydroponic set up. The ones I have are all the same, 12v, 40w, 5amp fuse, 1.1gpm, with a 40psi pressure switch. But I'd never thought of marrying the two together as a portable water filtration system,...until now. It's a solid idea, but after looking it up, it comes with a pretty solid price tag. After the cost of the unit, shipping, exchange, duty, and taxes, I'd be looking at $600 cdn, $477 US. I watched this video about three hours after it was posted, and then looked it up. That's when I got sticker shock. But I thought it was such a good idea, I decided "Hey I could build one of these". That's when the OCD/ADHD kicked in. Lol. If I had to buy everything, from the bucket to the SAE connectors, it would have cost me $228 cdn, $179 US. As it turned out the only thing I had to purchase was the 12v male plug in for the cord to be able to plug the unit into a generator. Everything else I already had. Because I like to keep spares of things, and that could be anything. There's a lot of moving part around here on the farm. The way I look at it is, if I have it when I need it, ie, like belts or filters etc, I can replace it at my leisure, instead of making an emergency trip to town to pick up a replacement. At the end of the day I spent $3 cdn, Pennies US. Actually that's a bit of a lie. I spent nine bucks, bought two more 12v plug in as spares. Lol. A far cry from buying a Portawell new. Plus I spent an evening in my shop putting the whole thing together, which in itself was fun to do. It was kind of like a MacGyver adventure. Raiding the stores of bits and bobs, and creating something useful. We're in spring run off here, so I did a real world test, in very turbid creek water. It almost looked like boiling chocolate milk. I'm using a fine mesh stainless steel intake strainer, similar to the one that I could see being used on the companies web site. It didn't take long because of the small amount of surface area of the strainer under those conditions, that it started to clog up after about ten minutes. Along with the sediment filter took quite the beating too. So I came up with a new strainer. I took two pvc 1 1/2" end caps, and a 4" section of 1 1/2" pvc pipe. I glued one end caps to the pipe, and drilled a hole to accommodate a barbed fitting and epoxied the fitting to the cap. I then slid the other cap onto the other end of the pipe, and drilled a series of holes, lots of holes, with a 3/8 drill bit, in the straight length of pipe. After I removed the end cap, cut a piece of fine 500 mesh stainless steel screen to fit the inside diameter of the pipe. The basic strainer was now complete, and has much more surface area than the smaller strainer that I was using. Hence it's pretty much eliminated the strainer from clogging. As an added bonus I can fill the strainer with a filtering media prior to the water hitting the sediment filter. I tried ordinary moss, that's usually within arms reach, as a prefiltering media in the strainer. Moss, charcoal, and sand have been used forever to filter water. I can honestly say that using a moss filled strainer reduced the turbidity of the water reaching the sediment filter by 60-70%, therefore increasing the life of the sediment filter exponentially. Moss is free, filters I have to pay for. In a clear water situation, or lightly turbid water the smaller strainer would be more than adequate. Don't get me wrong, I really like the idea of the Portawell, except for the price. When the sum of the parts, new at retail not wholesale, is less than half of the price of the finished product. Someone who doesn't have that sort of money but feels the need for this type of preparedness equipment, with basic skills, could build their own. I can see using this even if it's not a SHTF situation. Camping comes to mind. Instead of lugging a hundred pound of water with you, the unit even with a small 12v battery weighs less than one five gallon jug of water. If you throw in a Coleman trickle charger solar panel, for around forty bucks, you can keep the battery charged when it's not in use. My grandson said something poignantly funny when we were testing the "portafilter", out, lol. He said, "Opa when you think about it, camping is a practice run for when SHTF". He's not wrong. Well Richard, I enjoyed this video, because it gave me inspiration to build something, one: I didn't know existed, two: I didn't know I needed, and three: I didn't know I wanted. But I know is going to see use. My kids have already said, "Hey dad, can we borrow it when we going camping?". It nice that they ask, even if it's just a formality. Lol. Richard I hope you had a productive winter, and achieved the goals you set out. Judging by the number of videos coming out lately, I'm guessing that's a yes. We've had a long winter snow wise. But I'm glad we're at the backside of it. Completed quite a few goals, and set a few new ones. I did a lot of fabricating this winter, my welding skills have improved. My two neighbours, and my friend Dan an I managed to build four working wood gasifiers. Dan's already pressed his into service, and it's working as intended. So ya, that was my adventure spawned by the video you posted. I ended up building a nifty bit of kit that's probably going to see quite a bit use. Cheers. 👋🇨🇦

[@DownGridSurvival]

Andy, see your posts always brings a smile. Glad you liked the video and that it inspired you to build your own. I too recognized the parts are off the shelf and could have been assembled. I don't have the brain cells to figure it out, so I was happy to spend the money as soon as I had found it. What a great gadget. I heard a rumor that a new model was coming out soon that will hold all three filters. I can only image the price that one will be. But hey, business need to make a profit. I have another more expensive unit coming in this week from another manufacturer. Be sure to look for the video in a couple of weeks. It way over priced from what I can tell, but I received this one for free. As for my projects, most sit undone. Can't get much done these days, when I prioritize my to-do list, I find each day I have to re prioritize again. Its frustrating. But, in the end, there's just a few things that will matter, so I'm trying to just let all the "small" things go.

[@andyfunke9484]

It's funny Richard that you mention that the fine folks at Portawell were coming out with a version that uses all three filters. While I was building this one, I was already envisioning a version 2.0. An all in one system contained in a plastic Pelican case. Making it even backpackable. It would have all three filters, spare filters, a small 12v gel battery, and a solar panel. So all that has to be done when at your water source is pull out the hoses, set up the solar panel if you have to, and throw the switch. Maybe I'll put that on my list of projects for next winter. Cheers. 👋🇨🇦

[@DownGridSurvival]

@@andyfunke9484 You build them, I'll sell them. :-) An all in one solution would be ideal.