Clean Water via Clay Pottery

In a true SHTF situation the lack of clean drinking water almost always be the cause of more deaths than anything thing else. When your tap produces nothing and you haven't had anything to drink in a day or two you will resort to drinking dirty water wherever you can find it. And that WILL be the largest cause of death when society breaks down locally or internationally.

Luckily for you there are multiple ways to turn bad water into good. One of those ways is to use clay to make a filter for your water.

Clay is used to make pottery. And supposedly one of the drawbacks or pottery is that it is porous and will leak water slowly. Negating it from use as a storage vessel unless other steps are taken to seal the clay first.

Well, let's take one of these so-called negatives and turn it into a positive. Make a clay pot and you have more than a pot your have a highly effective water filter.

I am not going to cover everything about making pottery in this article as it has already been covered elsewhere on this site. (Link to making pottery: Pottery)

What I will add is the temper used to make clay which might normally be sand or grog should be augmented with charcoal or rice hulls or some other similar organic matter. I prefer finely ground charcoal (Make Charcoal). How much will vary and I can't tell you exactly how much. It will vary depending on your source of clay. Start on the low side and add more if you pots consistently break during the firing process.

Another consideration is to be extra diligent with grinding your collected clay (see link above) and grinding your charcoal into a very fine material. This finer it is the better the filter will be at filtering out things that will make you sick.

When done properly this filter can even filter out bacteria. If your pottery is still causing sickness due to it being to porous then boil it afterwards will solve the problem until you make a better filter.

If you don't have anything to filter the water into you can seal the pottery. Check out how in this link. (Seal Your Pottery)

Tips!
Discard the first couple of quarts of water that you filter to remove any clay taste. Also, to make the process faster make multiple pot shaped filters and make the filter tall and small diameter instead of short and wide. The higher water level will push the water through faster as the pressure will be higher. Also, there is no need to wait for all of the water to filter through. Simply add more water as the water level drops.

I would also suggest a good way to keep your pottery filter producing longer would be to first filter the water through a sand or sand and charcoal filter first. Not necessary just a sand filter will prolong the usefulness and efficiency of your clay pottery filter.

Also periodically cleaning the pot will be needed. Do not use anything beside elbow grease and water. No soap! Wiping stirring is all that is required.

If the clay pot filter develops cracks, then it should not be used as a filter anymore as much of the water will leak through the crack and not be suitable to drink.