Hello, just wanted to tell you that this is very close to the system my grandpa put in place in our chalet in the mountains of valencia, Spain, in order to filter the rain water that we drank. It was the best water I ever had

Thank you Robert for teaching these important skills to those of us that have become a little detached from what really matters!

Thank you for the English explanation. So many creators try to avoid this by using captions or robot voice over. It is so much more of a real and authentic creation when the creator explains with their own voice. It is appreciated.

Great job, Robert! People do this in some rural areas in Brazil where the water supply provided by the government does not reach, and it works very well.

Sir Robert thank you for showing the flaws and not deleting them. You are awesome sir.

Robert, this is exactly what I need in our homestead! Thank you for sharing your knowledge in a very clear manner.

I like such installations! For a biofilter in my optionion the system needs oxigen. I installed a similar system to clean a garden pond. I take some water from the pond flush it over a filter system like yours an give the system oxigen 50l/min. One cycle lasts 2 hours and the water get back in the pond after that time. The next cycle is starting. The principle is similar - seperate biological and chemical dirt or simple dust to clean it with bacteria and oxigen. The result is impressive a murky and musty pond become clear in three month.

Washing and rinsing the sand, rocks and charcoal several times is a must do before adding to the barrels. Good job.

Good job. May I suggest you rinse ALL of the filtering material before you put in the barrels. That will cut down on a lot of the dirt in the second rinse you do in the barrels. Again really good idea. Like the misquote netting.

Great video! I love the detail. I use a rain barrel to water my raised bed garden. I prevent debris from entering the water by using a Gutter Helmet to catch rain from my roof. As a result, I never need to remove debris from my rain barrel!

Only change I would consider is a cut of valve between the 2 barrels & an easy disconnect so you can clean or replace the 2nd barrel with the charcoal with a fresh barrel. This would make it so you didn't have the wait time to recharge the carbon filter half. Just swap the barrels & you're good. Clean the now dirty one & repeat as needed.

I watched this entire thing from beginning to end, no pause. You're great at making get to the point videos and a genius with the other things. Thank you for the video. I appreciate it.

Put faucet to open and close in the bottom of the barrels. Then you can flush out your filter system. And back flush each barrel for cleaning your filter materials. This is very similar to setting up a filter system for fish ponds.

I think the flow pipes should enter at the bottom of the barrel not at the top and drop to the bottom. The vertical drop in the pipes in this example are a route for water to bypass the filtration medium. As the gravels and rocks would not form a good seal with the vertical pipe area and lots of water would flow up through this gap route to overflow.

I love that you showed the curious cat what you were doing 😻 and that curiosity wasn't its demise 👍

Really cool natural system and doesn’t look very expensive. Thank you for sharing!

Congratulations, you have the best video (than even an old lady can follow). Better by far than the instructions by the US state of Minnesota, who used a person who has probably never even seen an rainbarrel in her life.

Excellent. I'm doing this soon for my off grid cabin. Thank you!

You just won me over with showing the cat what you were doing!

If you put in a verticle divider in the barrels you could increase the effeciency of each barrel by 50-70%. The inlet pipe would then discharge near the top of the inlet side. From the top you would start with several inches of large gravel, with several layers of smaller and smaller gravel, each several inches deep. The bottom layer would be small-medium sized gravel, filled in to a depth of about 4 inches above the partition. On the outlet side, would be 1 layer of small gravel, then several layers of sand, getting smaller as you get near the top. Optionally, the top layer of the outlet side could be layered foam. The top layer would be fine foam, then medium foam, then coarse foam, them a layer of "lava rock". This would enhance the filtering by providing a biologic layer. The lava rock has very high surface area (great both as a mechanical filter and biologic filter). The foam also has very high surface area. The lava rock layer should never be replaced. The foam can be removed and cleaned or replaced as needed.

You could use a gravity double filter instead with the same filter ingredients. Saves the pump electricity as well as prevents spillage/leakage.

Nice vid mate i like the detailed time lapse , this system is probably good enough to filter most tap waters in the world

This is the exact system I was looking to set up . Thank you for the detailed video.

WHEN HE SHOWED HIS CAT THE WORK HES DOING OMG THATS SO CUTTTEEEE

Hello! In the Appalachians here. There are many people in my area with old family homes from the 1800s like mine. Mine is 20 feet deep and 8 foot diameter at the bottom and 12 feet at the top. It holds approximately 7000 gallons. I do not have a filter other than a piece of screen covering a barrel at the top to catch leaf litter and the foot valve is 14 inches above the bottom to keep from sucking up the fine silt from the bottom. If I am home when the rain starts I will turn the water out for the first 15 minutes of the rain to clear the roof of debris and bird poop. My family has used the water from it for all household uses including drinking with no additional filtering for 4 generations. I clean and repair the cement lining once a year using a stiff broom to remove the silt from the walls and rinse it with clean water followed by a clorox rinse before patching and refilling it. The roof is tin not shingles. I would never drink water from a roof with shingles as they contain petroleum products which are toxic. I was told it was unsafe to drink the water from my cistern without a filter system in place by the health department so I tried the method described in the video. If you get a rain heavier than a light shower most of the water will back up and overflow the barrel system very quickly wasting most of the water. A filter process after the water enters the cistern wastes much less water. Since my family has drunk the water for generations without getting sick I have opted not to use it. This could be because of acquired tolerances to local pathogens or maybe I'm in a cleaner area where such pathogens do not exist. That being said, if you try drinking water without some kind of filtering you may become ill and infants and small children should not consume such water.

Just a tip, next time you do this, orient the cinderblocks with the holes facing up, they are designed to be used this way and are much stronger.

Thank you so much Robert for all your efforts. Thx 4 sharing

That system is very close to the one my grandfather had for his shallow well water. His cylinders were brick and mortar. His was bigger 24 inches, I think that would about 61cm across and 48 inches deep. Thanks for sharing.

I also watched the video, and i really admire and inspired, by his method of laying the pipes in the tanks. i thought since the water flows from the buttom to the top, he could've adopt the small smaller smallest order of applying the rocks sand and charcoal. This could have make the system operationally effective.

You are so clever Robert, well done. 👏👏👏

This is amazing i was thinking of something like this and you made a video with a way more clear and practical execution thank you for sharing!

You can have my subscribe any day! Love the style and content, and it feels good to see a place with rain again. Phew. Your filter system will find a way to to my place soon.

Excellent work, you show the steps clearly, and it's a great system. Thanks for sharing, from California.

If you rotated the outlets in the barrels to show upwards, no preasure would build up because the water can flow naturally and doesn't have to be pushed through. other than that I liked everything about this filter : )

Thank you, Robert, for sharing your knowledge and experience with to us!

Thank you Mr. Robert

I have suggestion for You ... make a FilterNet/Mosqito Net bag place in Berrel and fill with material and Close it with any rope or Zip tai, So when you want to clean your filter it will lot more easy to Clean , You only have to Pull Net Bag , No Need to Uninstal whole system , and Its easy to Handle all gravel will not get mixed .. I hope you Understand What i want to say .. all The Best 👍👍

Great job. Thanks for sharing this project with us.

Great job Sir! Loved the video. Keep up the great work.

Love how he shows his kitty the tanks.

Outstanding! This is the system I will build. I have watched videos, read, and this is the one.

Very nice setup! Your water will be cleaner than city water lol

Another great project!!! You do such excellent work 👏 Bravo, for a job well done!

Gracias por tomarte el tiempo para hacer y compartir este gran tesoro gracias

You are working really fast ;) Great job

The level of inlet and outlet may have brought more complications. Having the outlet height lower than the inlet would solve the problem. First run you have to give the system time to fill out and eventually run smoothly.

Gonna make one of these when I get home to the new farm!

Very impressive! May be I'll built one later ,but I think I'll make with more barrel with one filtre support in each to allow more simple maintien. May be with just gravitation and no pressure (like koy pond filtrer)🤔 Thanks to show us that it was possible and simple!

Awesome project! I can see that speaking English is not easy for you but I assure you that you did a great job. Got a subscriber!

Thank you for this design and step by step detailed process.

Hello from the States. Well documented and easy to understand and follow your reasoning.

Your English is good. Thank you for making this video.

Thankyou, for your time and effort, to make, and share this video, with all other, like minded individuals. Awesome!! Regards from New Zealand.

Thank you, sir, for the lesson. You may be saving many lives.

You are my friend boss, you are doing a great job. I'm looking forward to doing this kind of projects in my place in Kenya. One love and God bless.

Hi Mr. Robert thank you for your video. very illustrative. But if you allow some observations, there is something important about the use of plastics in pipes and containers. the use of these products generates MICROPLASTIC in the whole water system and ends up being polluting to the environment. One option although it may be more expensive, but you could consider the use of copper in the pipes (maybe in containers it could be very expensive almost unaffordable), and in the tanks, maybe the use of some kind of coating on the inner walls of the tanks, some kind of natural resins or non-petroleum products) And also the mosquito netting you have to ensure the use of non-plastic elements. Another observation is the design of the tanks, think of a system of removable layers because as it is now and thinking about maintenance and cleaning it could be very complicated to service and clean and replace the whole system instead of replacing by layers.

Fantastic job 👏 thank you for sharing! From Florida US .

Wow!! I love learning. You are a good teacher.

Great job. We all need to learn how to be self suficiente in these times.

Genius ❤!!! Greetings from Gothenburg Sweden. 😊

Very good my friend! I’m now so this to. I look into your video for dis information. Thanknyoj

Excelente! Abraços do Brasil 🇧🇷

Great job and ideas, more people should do such things. 😊

Excelente, Sempre tem água limpa 🚰

really clever and impressive station you have :) keep going friend !!!

An excellent video sir, very helpful info informative thank you 😊

Excellent, thank you so much for sharing may God bless you and yours always

thanks very informative

5Gal Buckets... x15-20 of them... Add to your collection! Fill up once with rock, sand, etc then load all, carry to site and dump! Repeat... Saves effort, keeps loads in safe manageable size and weight, and removes clean up of transport or allows transport with "classy" vehicles!

Very informative Video 🤗👏👏👏 Gr8 thinking !!! Thank you!!!

Good video. Real good information. Have a nice day.

Good job, thank you Robert 👍

Živijo Robi, zelo poučno...hvala. se vidimo kmalu ;)hasta la vitoria siempre

Genius! Thanks for sharing.

Brother, I suggest you to add an additional backwash system to anticipate the sludge trapped among the filter media particles. By adding this backwash system then the filter media arrangement will put in random and the the flow process direction will be downflow filtration.

Awesome!! Maybe a sump tank before the filters? You'd be able to collect all the leaves and smaller particles coming from the roof before they enter the filtration system. I'm really gonna try this collection system soon. Thanks for sharing

Very well done sir!! 👏🏻👏🏻👍🏻👍🏻

small advice, change the angle of leaf catcher to around 45 degrees and keep the mesh filter on the same level as the edges. Saves you the time to remove the leaves every time.

Hello Sir, great job . Take care your self and be safe and healthy.

Great job. I love this I will try this method when I am able to one day

Good even ice is Good to store year out..great work

only one improvement I can see a drain on the filter barrels so you can empty them before working on them, other wise amazing video

So Informative and helpful information. I can make in my home to harvest rain and reduce flow direct into the land

Hello, thanks for showing us this. Please there are many things you need to change for this to work, because even though you didn't show us the final product after running many cycles, I can already tell you that from your design, there will be no improvement to the final quality of the water. 1. The smallest size of particles that a filter can filter out is determined by your finest material, which in your case is the fine sand. This means that even if you use multiple stages of the same design or run many cycles, your filtration will not get any better. With your current design there is really no need for the second drum. 2. Keeping you current design the materials should be as follows from bottom to top: Bigger gravel, big gravel, small gravel, smallest gravel, largest sand grains, larger sand grains, large sand grains, fine sand grains, finer sand grains, a layer of crushed charcoal, a thick layer of cotton,. Then press everything down with the lead. You will now need to put your outlet on top of the lead instead of the side of the drum. With this setup, even if your intake water is from a dirty river, the output will be as clear as bottled water. Your second drum can be your water storage. Just make sure in your water storage you put the appropriate number of drops of bleach(6% concentration) depending on the size of the storage. This setup I just gave you very scalable, meaning you can scale it up by expanding it out into multiple drums(not repeating it), or you can scale it down by using a smaller container and hence smaller amounts of all the materials I described. I tried this on a scale as small as a test tube in my lab using water from a dirty lake, and my result was as clear as bottled water. The water will be drinkable. Just make sure you don't take your sample from a source that has been chemically contaminated, because no amount of filtration will get rid of those contaminants. Rain water is ok, but just be mindful that it may be slightly acidic. Lake or river water that is not close to a factory is actually better.

Thank you! Job well done!😀

Thank you very much

If all you have is galvanized fittings, use them, but if you can get PVC or other safe plastic fittings, this would be preferable. I have seen similar systems in the Caribbean, but it's hard to get people to use them since the water supply is so contaminated. Great concept.

Thank you for sharing! =)

great work

Good 👍. Liked. Will do. Thank you from India.

A great video sir, Regards from South Africa

thank you sir its very good

Brilliant, I really enjoyed this

Thank you very much 😊

Good job! Thanks!

As I watched this video, I became more and more convinced that I need a wheelbarrow with a dual tire setup.

Very nice project. The only observation I would make is that you did not put a pre-filter for leaves and other bigger things that will clog the small holes on the pvc pipes at the bottom of the plastic drums. This pre-filter outside the 2 drums to make it easy to clean.

Solid design. 1 question, what's the plan for silt draining. If you had a hose fitting at the bottom of the barrels, you could flush them fairly readily.

Thank you

nice set up. in case it is potable there are a couple of things that made me cringe a bit (other than plastic to metal threads). Are you using galvanised fittings purely for the tapered thread? what kind of silicone are you using?