FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

What is Berkey? How does it work? Here we try to answer all the most common questions about Berkey purification products. Can't find the answer to your question? We'll be happy to answer it. Send us an email!

Frequently Asked Questions

It is recommended to keep the purified water in the lower tank for a maximum of three days and in the refrigerator for a maximum of one week.
Adding Black Berkey purification elements increases the filtration rate of your Berkey system. This does not impact the quality of the purification process.
The washers are made of waterproof neoprene rubber. However, the washers never touch the purified water
Each element has an expected life of 3,000 gallons (11,355 liters) or 6,000 gallons (22,710 liters) for a set of two. Usually, replacement is suggested after 7-10 years depending on your consumption. Filters should be cleaned every 12 months with cold or medium hot water, a soft brush and re-primed (10-15 minutes duration).
Plastic fibers are small pieces of plastic that can enter and contaminate drinking water. A survey of microplastics in water found that these tests captured particles larger than 2.5 microns.
Black Berkey® purification elements can reduce viruses down to the nanoscale, in the tested range of 24-26 nanometers is 0.024 to 0.026 microns....in other words, much smaller than the plastic particles found in water
So yes, they should remove these particles from any water source.
The fact that Black Berkey® purification elements have been tested to remove nanometer-sized viruses suggests that much larger contaminants, such as plastic fibers, should also be removed.
However, since testing on plastic fibers has not yet been completed, Berkey® cannot officially make this claim.
We have no way of knowing exactly what potential contaminants are in each city's water. We do know that our Black Berkey™ purification elements filter out certain medications. Please see our most recent test results.
When water is filtered through our system, the Black Berkey purification elements raise the PH level of the water. This is a good thing because pathogenic bacteria and viruses thrive in acidic environments and have difficulty surviving in alkaline environments. An environment with more alkalinity has a higher PH level. The PH level will depend on various factors, including the PH level of the pre-filtered water.
The system purifies up to 13.3 liters per hour with 2 x Black Berkey filters inside (or 26.6 liters per hour with 4 x Black Berkey filters inside). It also depends on the size of your Berkey system, the larger it is the higher the pressure, so the filtration speed will be faster.