*Gravity Filter Recommendations* *1. Best Overall: Big Berkey* → Buy Here: bigberkeywaterfilters.com/affiliates/aff_tools/boswater/tool/text_links/3 - Use code “BOS5” for 5% off! *2. Best for Nitrate + Best Budget Pick: Purewell* → Buy Here: amzn.to/4bNmXyM *3. Possibly the Best for Waterborne Pathogens (Aside from Berkey): British Berkefeld* → Buy Here: amzn.to/48JG4Yo
This video is rigorous with solid logic and explanations. And the fact that you took a controversial stance and argued it well is beyond commendable. You should be proud.
We also cover the Purewell in detail. Reviewing all 7 products would have taken hours, and most people wouldn't be interested in watching a video that long. I'm not saying that I don't see your point, but we're trying to keep our videos short so that they appeal to a broader audience. And you can always check our Google Sheet with the full analysis including lab data!
Been waiting for this so creating it! I currently have the waterdrop g3 ro under the sink but am afraid that it is putting nanoplastics in the water. Will probably now go with Berkey.
Did you run a test at the end of life for the filters? What good is a filter if it stops filtering after a day or week? It would be harder to do, but seems essential to ensure the filters continue working as advertised.
I agree. But unfortunately our resources are limited, and if you think about how long it takes to filter hundreds of gallons with even a single gravity water filter, it would have taken months with 7 different models. So again, I agree with what you're saying, but it's just not possible for us right now.
Is it just me or are there other people wondering why there are seven filtration devices on here when all she does is talk about Berkey? It’s like a big berkey ad.
The Berkey did best in our lab testing and there were so many things to address. We also cover the Purewell after the Berkey. And we quickly talk about the Doulton (British Berkefeld) towards the end of the video. That said, I understand where you are coming from, but if you check the lab data you will find that the other systems really didn't do a great job. I guess we should have explained that in the video.
Hey guys could you please give a review to a more recent RO filter? It’s called the Bluevua RO100ROPOT-Lite(UV). It’s the cheapest one I’ve seen anywhere ($200) and I bet there’s gonna be a ton of people who buy it. Love the work you guys do, thanks!
We've been filtering water for about 20 years. For those complaining of Aluminum in their water w/flouride removal filters, and still want a gravity system there is a workaround we used back when we were on city water. Expensive but you can diy it at a discount. It's a 2 tier system, 1st system (atop fridge, or somewhere above and over 2nd lower system) is standard 2 chambers w/ black to flouride filters Rather than drinking that de-fluoridated water with Aluminum in bottom chamber, drain it directly into the upper chamber of the 2nd system that contains Berk black filters only. The lower chamber of your 2nd system ahould now be relatively flouride and aluminum free. For decent flow this works with a total of 4black filters and 2 flouride filters. The first system's chambers (or both) can be diy'd with food grade buckets if $ is an issue. Great channel. Thanks for your vids.
@@boswater6065Good Q. Did not test. I deep researched what ever was available online at the time, including others discussing their own test results but this was about 15 years ago and dont recall whether I found definitive info on Aluminum clearence on the black Berk filter. We stopped that method long ago as we were then no longer exposed to purposefully flouridated water as we then lived outside the US, a few years ago returned and on well water now. Look forward to more of your work. Appreciate your attention to detail.
Thank you for the thorough video. I am curious if you've heard of the Nikken gravity water filter. I inherited one and am curious how it compares to other gravity and RO systems. Thanks!
Yeah I found out about this after watching a Project Farm video years ago, absolutely shocked the first time, and Im shocked again they havent fixed/amended it STILL 🤯
I have a Berkey and switched to Epic Pure's Nanofilter pitcher for convenience and they seemed to have similar claims. I know most water pitchers don't have the same claims as the Epic Pure nano filter but I would like to see it compared to a bigger system like the Berkey
Hi! Love your informative videos…have you ever looked at The Water Machine gravity water purifier? They claim their filters filter fluoride without the need of additional filters like the Berkey. Thank you in advance for any help.
Their product description page says the system uses "black carbon filters" which seems to be regular activated carbon. Based on our lab testing, I highly doubt that you'll achieve a very high fluoride reduction rate using one of those. But I could be wrong and we've never actually tested this water filter model.
I am confused by this: If I get any specialized filter, say fluoride, then wouldn't I have to have all of the filters be fluoride? If so, then what other filtering does a fluoride filter actual filter? If not, how can the non-fluoride filters be helping? Just a bit confused here
I'm not sure if I understand all your questions. So, the fluoride filters are usually addon filters. So you have the regular filters like the Black Berkey filter elements and you add the fluoride filters to them. If a fluoride filter is based on AA, it will remove fluoride, arsenic, and also selenium but that's pretty much it afaik. Hope this helps!
Glysophates removal is important (as well as other). Size is important due to limited space. Most with a stand does not slide under cabinets. Have cats. Do not want to set on edge due to cats and ability to knock over.
Which brand/water filter are you using right now? Btw, not a Berkey commercial. We also cover the Purewell and the British Berkefeld (a bit). But I agree, we should have structured the video differently. The reason why we don't cover the rest is because we weren't exactly blown away by the lab results they could achieve.
@@boswater6065 In the process of choosing now. The problem, is that there is no consistancy between different forms of information. Every form of media shows different.nrand names as being better than the other.
I understand. In our opinion, the main problem is the lack of NSF certifications. Because with all the lab testing that people do nowadays, it always varies based on their water supply and how they test - and that might lead to different results. But if there was a system with NSF certifications, that wouldn't be a problem at all. Maybe look for a different type of filter?
I understand, but there are so many different viruses that you'd had to test for and there is no way that we'd find a water source that would contain them all. Also, we strictly advise against using any of the gravity water filters to remove viruses. With viruses, you have to remove pretty much all of them or you could still get sick, and viruses are extremely small and difficult to remove via size exclusion. Disinfection would be the way to go here.
Filtering tapwater is really not a test! Most tapwater is micro tested before it hit your sink. What everybody really wants to know is how well did it do with water? That’s not from the city, pond creeks, lakes, water that off critters hikers campers are going to be using. What were worried the most about is bacterial viruses, and unless I miss something you didn’t do any kind of testing for bacteria or viruses
I see where you are coming from with your comment. But there are many different types of bacteria, cyst, and viruses that you might stumble upon with microbiologically unsafe water. So unless you know which of them you're facing when sourcing water from a specific pond or creek etc. which I doubt, it would have been required for our testing to include all of them. Also, filtering germs requires pretty much 100% removal or the water is still unsafe. So as explained in the video, the safest method to treat microbiologically unsafe water is disinfection.
Excellent video, although may i ask, could you please test with chlorine and chloramines in the future? They are about the most toxic substances in our water, especially chloramines (chlorine bonded to ammonia - they use this in many states). I am so lost trying to work out what water filter to use in California where they have fluoride, and chloramines, nobody does any tests with chloramines and they are becoming more and more common as cities switch from chlorine to chloramines.
Thank you! We would love to test for chloramines but unfortunately it's incredibly expensive, so we simply cannot afford to test for them right now (same as with microplastics for example). Did you confirm with your water utility that they are indeed using chloramine?
@@boswater6065 Thanks yes i confirmed Chloramines are in use here, i bought a Chloramine test kit from Hanna Instruments that included "free chlorine" and "total chlorine" test kits, and the results from my own testing showed a high total chlorine and a zero free chlorine, which is a 100% positive for chloramine use (as the chlorine molecules are bound to ammonia so not "free"), and from what i read very hard to filter out unlike regular free chlorine.
In that case I'd consider a water filter that uses catalytic carbon. Maybe check out our under sink RO comparison video. It includes 3 systems that use catalytic carbon.
Initially it looked like this would be a thorough review of multiple water filters , however from minute 4 to minute 19 all you talked about Berkey filters. Started looking suspiciously like a Berky advertisement......
That's because the filtration results of the other filters were so bad. But you are not the first person to say this so I guess we should have done a better job explaining this.
Why not run your water filters through with 500 gallons, or more, then send the samples to get tested. That would be more relevant. Your recommendation to change the filter at around 500 gallons is just a guess-timation. No disrespect intended.
You are right - 500 gal is only a guess. The reason why we didn't run 500 gallons through each system before testing was that, based on our speed test, this would have taken around 80 days of continuous filtration per system. Also, every water supply differs. So while our lab-testing can give us a basic idea of a filter's capabilities to remove contamination, you will see different results with a different water supply - even if there are the same contaminants, because they probably exist at different levels. And removing a contaminant at 10 mg/L for 500 gallons is totally different than removing it at 1 mg/L for 500 gallons. Hope this makes sense!
Berkey's fluoride filters are optional, though. Based on our lab testing, filtration performance is pretty similar - although keep in mind that we can only test for a limited number of contaminants. The Berkey is much more costly upfront. In the long run, I'd say they are quite similar provided that you would replace the Berkey filters much sooner than every 3,000 gallons. But the Black Berkey filters are often out of stock.
Is the benzene leaching from the ProOne filter a concern? That's pretty carcinogenic stuff isn't it? How the heck did benzene leach out of a water filter? That's very disappointing as i am currently using ProOne filters in my Berkey and they were very expensive, i wanted filters that would do fluroride without the risk of aluminum leeching, but benzene is much much worse. It feels like you really can't win with these water filters.
Please keep in mind that we did not repeat the lab testing to confirm our findings and that the benzene leaching might be a false positive. That said, we saw similar results testing the ProOne pitcher. So based on our lab results, both ProOne models had apparently leached benzene into the filtered water, and these were the only 2 cases out of all 39 water filters we've tested so far with this issue. Could still be coincidence but personally I highly doubt it. Now, is this a concern? As usual, we used the strictest public health goal we could find and for benzene that was defined by the OEHHA: 0.15 ppb or µm/l. The OEHHA lists the following health risk category: "Carcinogenicity (leukemia)". However, they also say that the actual cancer risk level at 0.15 ppb is "10^-6 from lifetime exposure". 10 to the power of -6 = 0.0001%. In other words, if you'd consume benzene in drinking water at 0.15 ppb throughout your life, you'd still only have a cancer risk of 0.0001% according to the OEHHA. The lab report for the ProOne gravity system said 0.72 ppb so much higher than 0.15 ppb. But we assume that this leaching only happens while the filter element is still new. We know of one other lab test for the ProOne gravity filter done by the Water Filter Guru, and he didn't find any benzene, and he had primed the filters to 100 gallons before testing so any benzene might have been flushed out by then. In the end you need to decide for yourself what you make out of this. Hope this helps!
I've concluded all gravity feed filters are over-rated. The filters simply do not last nearly as long as claimed. The fact Berkey uses aluminum to remove fluoride is sad. I have ditched my gravity feed for a multi-stage RO system then remineralize.
Good question. For the British Berkefeld (Doulton) the concentration was 3% higher than before. I think this is just natural fluctuation. As we said, this type of before vs after testing is not an exact science. As for the Purewell with a 47% higher fluoride concentration compared to the unfiltered water, I really don't know. Might be fluctuation. The thing is, I don't know of any filter media that uses fluoride. Maybe you have an answer?
I strongly disagree. The Berkey did best in our lab testing but there was a lot that needed to be discussed about it. Besides, we also covered the Purewell. And at almost 23 minutes we felt that the video was already too long to also cover the other systems. That said, you can check our Google sheet for the full analysis of each of them.
Yes, several people have said this. But really, it wasn't supposed to be one. I guess we should have done a better job explaining the filtration results of the other gravity water filters which really weren't great.
I just watched a video that seemed to make that claim too. I noticed they used alot of hearsay instead of lab results as they gave their recommendations
To be fair, we also cover the Purewell and the British Berkefeld (a bit). But I agree, we should have structured the video differently. The reason why we don't cover the rest is because we weren't exactly blown away by the lab results they could achieve.
