I picked up a berkey about 15 years ago. it survived divorce...around that same time i picked it up, I bought an extra set of black filters for $100 at the time. fast forward to moving in to an apartment, meeting my wife and now living in a house with well water...last month that well pump (and underground pressure tank failed) so glad I've been using the berkey for all this time and only cleaned the filters with green scrubbies a few times over the years. So we get the drilling guys to come out, re-drill the old well pump to the bottom, install new lines to the house -and a new pump control unit for 3 phase pump inside...for the first day of running water it's brown, a little dirty -second day mostly clear, third day clean...the berkey gets clogged up with brown dirt. so I break out the green scrubbies, and prepare to clean them, and I drop them down side accidently in the empty sink...ok- maybe I didn't kill them (I'm thinking), I pull them out, clean them. put them back in...ask my wife...honey where is the food coloring? 5 drops of blue. a few glasses of well water in...and blue water comes out...at that point I'm pulling those damaged filters out..and I run through the pour water into the new ones slow until they sweat water...then try out the new (10 year old never used in storage) filters... thankfully they work fine!
and the reason I'm even typing this up- is I found another company that offers filters - those berkey filters are now like almost $200 for 2. I can go on here and pickup 4 for like $89. NSF certified tested by 3rd party...only down side -made in China. Weirdly sold out of UK like Berkey. Think I'll be reading more reviews before making the purchase to replace what I broke... but I need to get some spares just in case at this point.
https://www.purewell.com/collections/filter-elements-1/products/replacement-black-filter-elements-4-pcs-Fitzy111 (Mike)
