The single most essential element to life is water. In this country, we’ve become accustomed to this resource being easily accessible and potable. This means that most of us wouldn’t really know how to get safe drinking water if the utilities were shut off and the stores ran out of the bottled stuff. The length of time a person can survive without water is about three days to a week depending on what situation you’re in. The amount of time a person can live without food? Forty days! There’s no way to get around this need our body has for water so everyone should know how to make water, from virtually any source, safe.

A basic water filter, that can be made any size, involves sand and charcoal. Sand is a natural filter and charcoal (which is carbon) attracts heavy metals. Carbon is an element of most filters, whether for water or air, for exactly this reason. Layer the sand and the crushed charcoal a few times, creating decent sized layers. It would be best to have sand on the bottom and on the top, then pour the water over the top. The sand and charcoal filter heavy metals, algae and debris. For this filter, the sand and charcoal can be put in almost any container, just poke holes in the bottom. For a portable filter, cut off the leg of a pair of jeans. Tie off the bottom and layer the sand and charcoal inside. The weave of the jeans also act as a secondary filter.

After you’ve run the water through the filter, there’s still going to be some bacteria in it. For this you can boil for at least five minutes. Boiling water isn’t always an option, however. There’s a toxic algae whose poisons are released if heated (either blue green algae or red algae). Other times boiling isn’t possible because of lack of time or fuel. If you can’t boil the water for some reason, you can use about 12 drops of iodine per gallon or even 8 drops of chlorine bleach per gallon. With a bucket, a bag of charcoal, a $3 bag of sand that you can pick up at a home improvement store, and a bottle of iodine or chlorine bleach, you’ll have the peace of mind knowing that you’ll be able to make potable water from almost any source.

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