Pond Water Sediment Prefilter

[MaverickNH]

So I have 3x55gal water stored and a Katadyn Camp and Syphon filter. The nearest water source is a pond that is not too clear. I'd like to rig a prefilter to clear sediment from the pond water before filtering to avoid clogging my filters.

If anyone knows of a design, let me know. I'm looking into lever-actuated water pumps with a 10micron sediment filter, but would have to assemble my own. The idea is to pump from pond, though prefilter, into buckets, the filter for drinking.

 

[matt]

You can get a pre-filter at the hardware store. These designs can take a variety of filters to suit your needs.

 

[Madball13]

Not sure how elaborate you want to get but you could heat it up just to move the water not sterilize and then filter.

 

[Prepper]

Would coffee filters get out most of the gunk? I on purposely bought 1000 filters at BJ's so I could filter murky water if necessary. (And drink coffee... but 1000 will take me a while!)

The nearest water to me is a stagnant canal. It looks nasty, not sure if I'd want to drink it no matter how filtered. There's a river but that is about 1.5 miles away.

 

[~kev~]

If the water is really dirty, how about something like a slow sand filter? You could use a 35 or 55 gallon plastic drum, install some PVC 1 inch pipe going from a couple of inches from the bottom, up and where ever you want the water level at.

There are several diagrams out on the net, just doa google search for slow sand filter and you should be able to find something.

 

[Plural of Mongoose]

Im thinking a filter could be made with a couple PVC fittings, a 5 gallon bucket with holes drilled into it ,some sort of synthetic filter material like the woolly stuff used to upholster furniture and a few pounds of activated carbon.
Just keep it off the bottom so you are not sucking up any sand or gunk.
Kind of a wet version of a homemade carbon air filter.

 

[MaverickNH]

Following up on the sand filter concept, I found plans for a so-called "roughing filter" designed to pre-filter the sediment down to a lower turbidity level. While normally consisting of a sizable structure with a ton of grvel, a smaller unit can be made of a large diameter PVC drain pipe segment 30cm dia x 1.5m long. It's packed with 4mm polystyrene beadbag beads (of all things).