FREQUENTLY ASKED QUESTIONS

It is recommended to store purified water for a maximum of three days in the lower tank and a maximum of one week in the refrigerator.

Adding Black Berkey purification elements increases the filtration speed of your Berkey system. This has no impact on 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 litres) or 6'000 gallons (22'710 litres) for a set of two. Usually, replacement is suggested after 7-10 years depending on your consumption. The filters should be cleaned every 12 months with cold or medium hot water, a soft brush and re-primed (10-15 minutes).

Plastic fibres are small pieces of plastic that can penetrate and contaminate drinking water. A survey of microplastics in water revealed that they 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 viruses in the nanometer range suggests that much larger contaminants, such as plastic fibres, should also be removed. However, since tests on plastic fibres have not yet been carried out, Berkey® cannot officially make this claim.

We have no way of knowing exactly what potential contaminants are in the water in each city. We do know that our Black Berkey™ purification elements filter out certain drugs. Please see our most recent test results.

When water is filtered through our system, Black Berkey purification elements increase 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 a variety of factors, including the PH level of the pre-filtered water.

The system purifies up to 13.3 litres per hour with 2 x Black Berkey filters inside (or 26.6 litres per hour with 4 x Black Berkey filters inside). It also depends on the size of your Berkey system, the bigger it is, the higher the pressure will be, so the filtration speed will be faster.