TivaWater Home Water Filter 2.0 Reviewed

Marketing from TivaWater

The TivaWater Filter is an easy to use, low maintenance water treatment product that could be a valuable device for your home in the United States under emergency water circumstances. Users can pour up to 30 liters of surface or groundwater through the filter everyday to produce water that is effective for drinking, personal hygiene and sanitation. Experience and research tell us that TivaWater is the best water filter in the world because of the patented design that prevents clogging so often seen in every other emergency filter.

TivaWater strives to deliver the worlds best home water filter to people that do not have access to safe water. The ease-of-use, attractive appearance, durability and reliability of the TivaWater filter have impressed thousands of users already.

TivaWater is now poised to impact millions of people. Consider taking the Caldwell Clean Water Challenge. A campaign to raise $500,000 for 10,000 TivaWater filters to end waterborne diseases and share the Gospel with 100,000 people who live in the Kaberamaido District. What a wonderful way to celebrate and provide life!

 

TivaWater Filter

$100.00

Manufacturer: TivaWater, tivawater.com

Power Source: Gravity (no electricity, plumbing or pumping required)
Materials: FDA approved materials, UV resistant, medical-grade plastic

Capacity: Cleans 2-3 liters per hour, up to 30 liters per day
Weight Empty: 29 lbs
Weight Full: 51 lbs with 10 liters of water
Height: 23.7 inches with stand
Width: 13.3 inches

MSRP: $100.00
 

The Review

One of the most important considerations when bugging-in is drinking water. What will you do when your water store runs dry? Water filtration is the only viable solution to this problem. However, there are literally hundreds of filters on the market. Some practical, and some not so much. Enter TivaWater. Today we’ll be looking at TivaWater’s Home Water Filter 2.0.

TivaWater filters were initially designed for one simple purpose… To be a constant and affordable source of safe drinkable water for families in developing nations around the world where access to clean water is limited or nonexistent. TivaWater has been able to achieve their goal by having developed an easy to use, self-contained biosand filtration system that does not contain any moving parts or expensive filter cartridges that continually need to be replaced.

TivaWater filters utilize advanced biosand filtration technology based on the ancient slow sand filtration technology still in use worldwide today. Biosand filters employ three fundamental processes to make safe, drinkable water:

• Biological Action where useful bacteria trapped in the filter media feed on pathogens in the water.
• Mechanical Action / Adsorption where granite particles attract bacteria to itself using its ionic properties.
• Starvation and Suffocation by pulling bacteria deep into the granite where pathogens are starved and suffocated to death.

Biosand filtration technology is currently recommended by many international organizations including WHO and USAID and adopted by charitable organizations around the world due to its affordability and maintainability. TivaWater filters have been tested and certified by Uganda National Bureau of Standards (UNBS). It is estimated that as many as 100,000 people in Africa, Guatemala, and Haiti are drinking clean water from the tap of a TivaWater filter on a daily basis and that number is constantly rising.

The TivaWater filter is a medium-sized, easy to use and low maintenance point-of-use water filtration system capable of purifying up to 30 liters of water per day. The TivaWater’s integrated upper and lower storage wells each have a maximum capacity of 10 liters providing the filter with a total capacity of 20 liters. This integrated two-compartment design keeps filtered water isolated and safe from recontamination.

The TivaWater filter can purify up to 3 liters of drinking water per hour. In most cases, the filter will process 10 liters of water in about 3 to 4 hours. It is this slow rate of filtration that allow the purification processes to effectively kill the bacteria and waterborne pathogens.

The TivaWater filter utilizes a sediment tray and a patented cloth filter tray to trap sediment before it has a chance to enter the granite filter media. A slow flow rate is likely caused by buildup of sediment on the filter cloth. The quality of your input water will determine how often you will need to gently remove, rinse and replace the cloth filter into the filter.

How to maintain the cloth filter tray:

• The cloth filter tray should be cleaned at least once a month or when you notice significant buildup of sediment.
• To clean, simply use a brush or soft fabric to rub away the sediment/dirt in a bowl of water or under the filter tap.
• Do not use any sharp edged tools like knives, spoons, forks, etc.
• The cloth filter may change color with use over time, due to quality of input water. However, a change in color does not impact the ability to trap the smallest particles of sediment in the water.
• Prefiltering excessive sediment from the water prior to pouring it into the TivaWater filter will help minimize the amount of sediment buildup in the cloth filter tray.

When properly cleaned and maintained, the TivaWater filter should last for at least ten years under normal use without the need to replace any parts. However, if at some point the filter tray or any other parts must be replaced to ensure the continued operation of your filter, all replaceable filter parts are easy to obtain directly from TivaWater.

While the TivaWater filter is made from durable materials, it is best to keep the filter out of direct sunlight to minimize the negative effect that ultraviolet radiation can have on plastic, further increasing its longevity.

The TivaWater filter was designed for years of daily use. It has been rigorously tested and proven effective for producing clean, safe drinkable water free of harmful bacteria, protozoa, parasites, and viruses from potentially contaminated water sources including rivers, streams, lakes, rainwater, grey water and springs.

Studies show TivaWater filters effectively remove up to 99.6% of harmful bacteria to prevent waterborne illnesses without the use of any chemicals. In most cases, this is enough. However, it is recommended by the CDC to add 1/2 teaspoon of 5.25% chlorine (household bleach) per 10 liters of filtered water to further purify the water, just as you typically would prepare water for long-term storage in containers. In fact, most municipal water systems regularly add chlorine to drinking water for the very same reason.

As TivaWater cannot guarantee 100% effectiveness, the TivaWater filter is not approved by the US Environmental Protection Agency for drinking water in the US. Nevertheless, TivaWater’s filtering technology has been providing safe drinking water to thousands of homes, businesses and communities around the world for years.

Note: While the TivaWater filter can make water free of harmful bacteria, it cannot remove dissolved solids or brackishness/saltiness from water. If you mistakenly added saltwater to your filter, the final result would be microbiologically safe saltwater. But still unsafe to drink.

Assembly of the TivaWater filter is relatively simple and straightforward. To start, it is important to remove all of the plastic parts from the primary container and thoroughly clean everything with soap and hot water to prevent any filter contamination. Once everything has been cleaned, it is time to put it all together. The embedded video demonstrates how to put it all together.

The tap will repeatedly come in contact with hands, bottles, cups, pots, etc. It is important to prevent contamination of the tap by regularly cleaning and disinfecting with bleach or alcohol followed by discarding the first few liters of purified water that flow out of the tap.

So how does the TivaWater filter work? In a nutshell, water flows from the inner filter compartment into the outer clean water reservoir. During the process, heavy sediment is first caught in the sediment tray. As water makes its way through, fine sediment is then caught by the cloth filter tray. Finally, water is purified by trickling through the filter media consisting of of extremely small micro particles before it flows into the clean water reservoir.

It is important to minimize any movement of the filter once it is operational in order to limit the amount of filter media that finds its way into the clean water reservoir. The filter media is completely natural and harmless. However, if necessary you can simply empty and rinse the clean water reservoir to remove any loose particles.

Once the filter is ready, it is time to add some water… However, it is important to add a full 10 liters of water to activate the filtration process for the first time. After adding the full 10 liters of water with a little clay to dirty it up, I let the filter do its thing. After a couple of hours I opened the tap and sure enough, crystal clear water poured out. It can’t get much better than that.

Now I don’t have access to a lab with microscopic equipment to test the output, therefore I can only trust TivaWater’s claim of 99.6% purified water. As a result, I opted not to use any toilet water or the nasty green water from the local duck pond for my test. However, if that was my only water source, with a little boil or bleach I am sure the water would be not only clear, it would be free of any waterborne bugs as well.

Final Thoughts

When your survival plan calls for bugging out, you’ll likely carry a packable ultralight water filter and maybe a backup straw capable of sustaining one or two people at most. But when your survival plan calls for bugging-in for any length of time, you will require an efficient, and easily maintainable water filtration system that will function in both on and off -grid situations. That is where TivaWater’s filter really excels.

Whether the plan is to get your water from a rainwater collection system, or a nearby stream, pond, or swimming pool, it will need to be filtered or boiled before you can drink it. Sure boiling water works, but it is not an efficient solution. Especially for an extended period of time. A TivaWater filter, a water source and a few gallons of bleach can provide a family with up to 30 liters of clean, purified water a day for more than four years. Much longer if you do not take the extra step of purifying the water with bleach.

Every preparedness plan should include a TivaWater filter or comparable filter system. At only $100, the TivaWater is as affordable as they come. Two thumbs up for the TivaWater filter and their clean water campaign.

About TivaWater

TivaWater International is a company of Christian entrepreneurs and experienced businessmen who have developed an innovative, sustainable, and scalable solution to one of the world’s most pressing problems, access to safe drinking water.

In 2008, guided by a passion to help people in the developing world and go “beyond traditional aid”, the founders began working together as a team in Uganda to fund and support young African entrepreneurs to help create new businesses. The results that followed showed many successes and this effort ultimately led to the creation of a patented household water filter. The filter was developed to provide safe accessible drinking water and is currently earning a reputation as a world-class affordable product for the developing world.