I recently purchased a house in upstate NY on Cayuga Lake. Will a berkey be sufficient to make the lake water potable or will I have to boil as well?

The company says yes.

https://www.bigberkeywaterfilt...ke-Water-with-Berkey

Personally I would not rely on it and would boil or use bottled.

I love Cayuga Lake. A life long friend is a professional fishing guide on the Finger Lakes. His "home lake" is Cayuga (he lives in Lansing).

quote:

Originally posted by chbibc:
The company says yes.

https://www.bigberkeywaterfilt...ke-Water-with-Berkey

Personally I would not rely on it and would boil or use bottled.

I love Cayuga Lake. A life long friend is a professional fishing guide on the Finger Lakes. His "home lake" is Cayuga (he lives in Lansing).

I went to school at SUNY Oswego. That is where I met my wife. She is from Seneca Falls so it seemed reasonable to purchase in that area. Due to current events I am trying to do a better job of staging preps. I prefer to catch rainfall but if it doesn't rain, I have all that water right in front of the house. Perhaps boiling and then running through a berkey.

Check NSF/ANSI Standard 53 certification. I don't think Berkey has it.

We have a Berkey; I would trust it to filter lake water, but would definitely pre-filter the lake water first, so the Berkey filters don’t clog up quickly with the large particles.

Prefilter to remove sediment, then treat water with chlorine bleach. I had a professor in school that said a single drop of bleach can treat a gallon of water and kill anything harmful. THEN put it through the Berkey.

An RO system would work.

A sand filter would be an excellent pre-filter. Sand is the standard first step used to filter the municipal water supply. You could make your own system.

When I lived in Africa as a lad, Mother personally boiled (10 minutes @ rolling boil), cooled, and then filtered all our drinking water through a Berkey.

Years and years and zero intestinal illnesses in the family.

As others say, pre-filtering extends cartridge life. Boiling kills the bacteria and viruses. Chlorination just ruins the flavor

Let us know how it works out for you. Water supply companies all have chemists on staff. Apparently it is pretty precise.

quote:

Originally posted by gearhounds:
Prefilter to remove sediment, then treat water with chlorine bleach. I had a professor in school that said a single drop of bleach can treat a gallon of water and kill anything harmful. THEN put it through the Berkey.

A capful yes, tastes like shit but is effective, we used to do it when we didn't have potable water on a jobsite.

quote:

Originally posted by dave7378:
I recently purchased a house in upstate NY on Cayuga Lake. Will a berkey be sufficient to make the lake water potable or will I have to boil as well?

Congrats on the purchase Dave!

Congrats indeed. Wonderful area.

I wouldn't worry too much about the bugs, the Berkey will take care of those. What would concern me is the pollutants. 100 years worth of "acid rain" out there mostly killed all the lakes in NY. They've done a decent job of cleaning most of them up, but you can bet that there's still a bunch of unsavory chemicals floating around that water and leeching into it from the soils. As I recall, they also have an issue with toxic algae blooms on several of the Finger Lakes that they blame on laundry detergents ( ). Not sure what the health risks of those are, but something to look into.

If the SHTF would I drink it? Yep. If there was another alternative, though, I'd go with that first.

Enjoy the wine country.

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
Congrats indeed. Wonderful area.

I wouldn't worry too much about the bugs, the Berkey will take care of those. What would concern me is the pollutants. 100 years worth of "acid rain" out there mostly killed all the lakes in NY. They've done a decent job of cleaning most of them up, but you can bet that there's still a bunch of unsavory chemicals floating around that water and leeching into it from the soils. As I recall, they also have an issue with toxic algae blooms on several of the Finger Lakes that they blame on laundry detergents ( ). Not sure what the health risks of those are, but something to look into.

If the SHTF would I drink it? Yep. If there was another alternative, though, I'd go with that first.

Enjoy the wine country.

Yes, only worrying about a SHTF scenario.

Same thing with NY wines (not very good) unless you like Riesling

quote:

Originally posted by Gustofer:
I wouldn't worry too much about the bugs, the Berkey will take care of those. What would concern me is the pollutants. 100 years worth of "acid rain" out there mostly killed all the lakes in NY. They've done a decent job of cleaning most of them up, but you can bet that there's still a bunch of unsavory chemicals floating around that water and leeching into it from the soils. As I recall, they also have an issue with toxic algae blooms on several of the Finger Lakes that they blame on laundry detergents ( ). Not sure what the health risks of those are, but something to look into.

Acid rain? Really? That should be the least of your concerns if you're going to worry about such things. Let me clue you in on a bigger picture....

Let's talk about the Great Lakes and all the great cities on them - Milwaukee, Chicago, Detroit, Toronto, Cleveland, Buffalo, etc. And other smaller cities like Rochester and Oswego here in NY. Where do you think all those places get their drinking water from? Answer: The Great Lake they are located on. And where did all those places dump their industrial waste and sewage for hundreds of years? Answer: The Great Lake they are located on. All that dumping may have mostly ceased, but....where do you think all the treated sewage from all those cities goes today? All together now: The Great Lake they are located on!

If you're worried about acid rain you're stepping over quarters to pick up pennies. Or something. I try not to think about it. I do think Cayuga is probably cleaner than most lakes in NY.

As for algae blooms, yes they happen in all the Finger Lakes. Canadice and Hemlock (both reservoirs for the City of Rochester) have them. I have read the blooms are thought to be from farm runoff (animal waste and fertilizers), not so much industrial pollution and detergents.

For tomorrow's lesson I can pontificate about zebra mussels and their impact on the Great Lakes and Finger Lakes. If anyone's still around. Is this thing still on?

quote:

Originally posted by chbibc:
...zebra mussels ...

Big problem out this way. So much so that they have mandatory boat check stations along the highways and requirements going to and from bodies of water. Despite this, it's probably inevitable they'll find their way into the waterways west of the divide which will be horrible for the native fish. Too bad they can't find a nonharmful predator for them things.

quote:

Originally posted by chbibc:
For tomorrow's lesson I can pontificate about zebra mussels and their impact on the Great Lakes and Finger Lakes. If anyone's still around. Is this thing still on?

Last I knew it still was.

I learned, the hard way, when applying bottom paint to the sailboat each spring to make sure to get it up into any freshwater intakes in the hull or the damn things would clog them up.

Every time I see this thread I misread "Berkey" as "Bentley". That would be some expensive drinking water.

The daughter has a Berkey as part of her prepping, the plan being to use the river flowing one block from her house. The plan is: grab the water, filter it through sand, boil the water, then filter it through the Berkey. That should maximize the filter life.

quote:

Originally posted by whanson_wi:
Every time I see this thread I misread "Berkey" as "Bentley". That would be some expensive drinking water.

The daughter has a Berkey as part of her prepping, the plan being to use the river flowing one block from her house. The plan is: grab the water, filter it through sand, boil the water, then filter it through the Berkey. That should maximize the filter life.

Plain old sand?