Well, finally I am writing about something that is a consumer product and not beating the scientific horse to death.  My father was nice enough to purchase one of these units for me about 1 year ago.  At the time I was dating the daughter of the mayor of a city in Shandong province China and I was getting ready to relocate my life there.  Water is an essential (of course) and all of the water I’ve ever had in China is horrible.  So my intention was to use this unit to purify water for my personal use.  In any event, the racism so prevalent in China surfaced its head and through a series of what appeared as misfortunes (which in reality could turn into blessings), many which arose because I’m a white male, I decided to not move.  So there was a delay in using the unit as I was drinking water filtered through a refrigerator (which was potable but not much more).  Finally in 2012 I broke this bad boy out (see above) and after discarding the first couple aliquots of water was pleasantly surprised to see just how good it tasted.  It turned the crappy city water that tastes almost like swimming pool water into high quality water (the type you actually want to drink over other beverages like pop or event bottle water).

According to Berkey^® this unit can purify stagnant pond water.  I fit my unit with the alumina columns to remove fluoride as it is something your body simply doesn’t need (another poison) although they do potentially add soluble alumina to your water (in very minute quantities though).  At the time the only complaint I could possibly have had was that filtration is slow (especially on one filter).  If you drink a lot of water fill the top reservoir with water all the way to the top (if using one filter set) because by the time night rolls around you will find you’ve drank the bulk of that.  With two filters I suggest you fill the reservoir half way in the morning and half way at night.  One other thing to keep note of is for non-chemists hydration of alumina is an exothermic process.  I recall seeing some mention of this in the literature that came with the unit but you do not want the initial first 10-25 mL of effluent water coming out of the end of the alumina column to contact you as it is quite hot (yes I accidently {just barely} got a little taste of that while trying to charge the filter).  That might be the only other drawback, priming filters; however, with time they self-prime themselves if you place a column of water on top of them in the top chamber.

Unfortunately, the black filters (which are some sort of microporous {in actuality maybe in the Angstrom region pore size wise} ceramic) of my unit had some issues.  My guess is it is not an isolated incident because I noticed Berkey^® implemented new return instructions not long after the first of two black filters delaminated from its plastic base (see below).  I sent it back and got a replacement which worked fine; however, when I installed it the second (of the two original) black filter decided to laminate.  So that got sent back and the replacement is on its way.  It would appear that the adhesive (which looks to be a hot melt type) was out of spec and just didn’t have sufficient tack to do its job.  I covered the empty filter slot with clear packaging tape which allowed me to use one filter.  One thing I do have to say on the behalf of Berkey^® is that they seemed to acknowledge the defects were their fault and they even cut me slack on the warranty seeing that I had the unit in my possession for ½ a year and never started using it until 2012.

So right now I would definitely suggest this unit to people.  It makes absolutely great tasting water, free of all sorts of heavy metals, toxic halides (e.g. F^–), pathogens and so forth.  This water is a good start to making great coffee and in critical food applications I would highly suggest it as well.  Should anything change my outlook on this product I will alert the reader in future posts.

Manufacturer Made a Boo Boo