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Low-Tech Ceramic Water Filter
- rainworld 2mo agohttp://archive.today/2026.08.13-052756/https://wiki.lowtechlab.org/wiki/Filtre_%C3%A0_eau_c%C3%A9ramique/en http://archive.today/2026.08.13-052756/https://wiki.lowtechl...
- notjes 2mo agoGot hackernewsd
- metalman 2mo agothey are not kidding about the "lowtech" or at least slowtech part, hey it loaded! no wonder it was slow, it's reporting about 1990 from 2020
- rablackburn 2mo agoThey probably could have loaded faster if they shipped less than 80mb(!) for a single page
- Bluestein 2mo agoThat used to be one's entire HDD.- :)
- fastball 2mo agoThere is a company[1] in Indonesia that actually makes very nice versions of this tech. [1] https://www.terrawaterindonesia.com/ https://www.terrawaterindonesia.com/
- com 2mo agoI may have had an early version of this at home in Indonesia as a kid. Given how close we were to both sea level and the equator, the fact that the water was cool, even when site power failed for days, was bliss!
- treetalker 2mo agoFrom https://www.terrawaterindonesia.com/the-filter https://www.terrawaterindonesia.com/the-filter: > A single Terra filter purifies up to 42 liters of safe, pure drinking water a day, equivalent of 2 and a half plastic gallons. Someone should tell them to check their math.
- ssl-3 2mo agoThose are plastic gallons. Plastic gallons are similar to treetalker gallons and ssl-3 gallons, in that all of these units share the property of being different compared to US gallons. (The ssl-3 gallon is particularly strange: It isn't even a measure of volume at all.)
- SoftTalker 2mo agoHeh never heard of a plastic gallon. I was imagining a plastic gallon jug such as a milk jug.
- fastball 2mo agoYeah, in Indonesia (and other parts of the world), the 5-gallon jug you would stick in e.g. a water cooler is called a "water gallon".
- SoftTalker 2mo agoI assume it's a local/informal unit of measure? DDG doesn't know what a "plastic gallon" unit is.
- fastball 2mo agoIt's not really a unit of measurement but rather just what you'd call the container[1], which in turn is 5 gallon / 19L. But nobody says "My 19L water jug", they they just say "My water gallon". Since most people in Indonesia get their drinking water from these jugs, stating this filter's output in "gallon" terms is just the easiest way to communicate potential savings etc (since people pay per jug, so they think in jug terms, not in any other unit of measure). [1] https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61fpdmJYUuL.jpg https://m.media-amazon.com/images/I/61fpdmJYUuL.jpg
- 3eb7988a1663 2mo agoThat ad claims it removes microplastics. I was led to believe there are few easy ways to accomplish such a thing. Is this a, "Well technically, we started at 100ug/mL and ended at 99.8ug/mL => reduction!" or is this a meaningful improvement in water quality? The pot looks to just be clay + charcoal + silver - which is not significantly different from other home water filtration systems.
- gizmo686 2mo agoFiltering out microplastics is not particularly difficult. I just checked the first water filter brand that came to mind, and their independent test results [0] reported no detectable microplastics after filtration [1]. Having said that, the linked website above does not inspire much confidence. They have independent lab testing, which is good. However, that testing appears to only cover bacteria; and even their, only two types. Their lab testing also does not indicate any sort of methodology, and it is not clear if the lab was even attempting to test the filter, or if they were just testing the filtered water. [0] Funded by them, and reported on their website [1] Their sample had a known quantity of microplastics, of which they had a 75% detection rate for their control sample.
- Aboutplants 2mo ago“The pot looks to just be clay + charcoal + silver - which is not significantly different from other home water filtration systems.” Ah, the at home water filtration systems that encapsulated in plastics! Though the benefit of clean water likely makes any potential plastic contamination from the filters moot
- PetitPrince 2mo agoAre microplastic produced predominantly by plastic leaching out of objects, or is it coming from garbage that got mechanically pulverized, UVized, and contaminating water sources ?
- fastball 2mo agoWell the difference is that most home water filtration systems (e.g. Brita et al) are made out of plastic, so even if their filters do reduce microplastic levels, making that claim to consumers ("our plastic filters help reduce plastic in your water") might be a hard sell.
- cassianoleal 2mo agoCeramic filters are very common in Brazil, used in clay recipients which also keep the water cool even in summer without spending energy. https://g1.globo.com/saude/noticia/2026/03/14/filtro-de-barro-brasileiro-e-o-melhor-do-mundo-segundo-especialistas.ghtml https://g1.globo.com/saude/noticia/2026/03/14/filtro-de-barr...
- weinzierl 2mo agoThis and the low-tech electrical shower-head are the two everyday Brazilian things that never cease to amaze me.
- mlinhares 2mo agoBeing poor sucks but at the same time being poor also makes you find alternative solutions to the incredibly expensive solutions first world countries use today. I really wish Brazil can invest heavily into renewables and free itself from oil and electrify even more of everything we do.
- m463 2mo ago> electrical shower-head Is that for electrically heated water? I know that in the US on-demand electric water heater uses an enormous amount of electricity, like 100 amps.
- kawera 2mo agoBrazilian electrical shower-heads use 20 to 30 amps max.
- dtgriscom 2mo agoAt what voltage? (I understand Brazil has districts with both 127V and 220V mains.) https://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plug-voltage-by-country/brazil/ https://www.worldstandards.eu/electricity/plug-voltage-by-co...
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- ChrisMarshallNY 2mo agoWhen I was a kid, we'd go camping, and we had these water filters that you would pump water through, and they would filter it. It was ceramic, and I think it was the same idea, but we used a pump to force the water through (like a bicycle pump).
- bilsbie 2mo ago[flagged]
- Laurel1234 2mo ago[flagged]
- RobotCaleb 2mo agoWhy should I trust an AI generated encyclopedia?
- peddling-brink 2mo agoI look at it as gender affirming care, for bigots.
- geokon 2mo agoI wonder if you could achieve the same effect more easily/consistently using cement. It's basically how aquifers "filter" water. Limestone is naturally permeable unlike fired clay.. were you need to control the porosity. I'd imagine cement mixtures are much easier to handle and you can make arbitrary shapes (higher surface area and higher hydraulic pressure to increase the flow rate)
- ks2048 2mo agoI'm in Antigua, Guatemala where the embedded video is from. As the video says, it may be "low tech", but it's not like something you can do very easily for yourself. Ecofiltro is everywhere here. But, it is more expensive then I would have thought - maybe $30 for a clay pot and $50 for it's container.
- londons_explore 2mo agoFor far less money than that you can buy a regular particle filter...
- SwtCyber 2mo agoThere is something very satisfying about sawdust being a feature rather than an impurity
- Animats 2mo agoNice. It's like a mini version of a slow sand filter.[1] [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_sand_filter https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slow_sand_filter
- zahlman 2mo agoIt took me a while to realize that this is not from "lowtechmagazine".
- brador 2mo agoThat guidance comic is a disaster. The dirty water is the same color as the clean water. Very confusing.
- seer 2mo agoHmm just shared this with someone who works in this space in India, they got angry. > It doesn’t work for 3rd world contaminants. > White people have been making these for years. Doesn’t work > We need hard TDS removal also And the ceramic ones apparently are also bad: > we had one of these for many years while growing up. the ceramic candles got fungus on them Viruses are the bigger threat I think and just a filter like this will not stop them HepC and the like would be easily transmittable. Not really “safe”, maybe at best “better than nothing”
- graemep 2mo agoI do not know whether this is what they meant, but in many places the biggest threat is now industrial pollutants not infectious diseases.
- 8by3 2mo agoWould would want to chlorinate the resulting water, these filters are only going to remove large particulates. Clay/sand water filters have been in use for a long time, some from the roman period are still in use.
- redeeman 2mo agoseems like he or she might have an anger and racism problem? "white people have been making these for years?" PERHAPS instead of being angry at white people, they should look a bit into what they do in their own backyard. yeah, downvote away :) but it doesnt make it not true, and thats why the downvotes will sting the downvoters so hard
- seer 2mo agoShe is leading some orgs in rural India, targeting empowering and helping women and has seen countless examples of Europeans / Americans coming over with noble ideas, making a mess, leaving, and sometimes things getting worse not better in response. Took her a lot of empathy and understanding on what the situation is like on the ground really, second / third order effects, etc - to get to solutions that _actually_ help people there. For example how do you do fair lending to people (rural Indian women) who have no bank account, no credit history, almost no financial history at all, and they want to star an enterprise? How do you “bootstrap financial trust?” And with proper and inventive organising she managed to lend to women and proved with data that they are 5x better borrowers than the equivalent male population, but were starved of accessible credit cause banks would not lend to them.
- Transformanshen 2mo ago61 factories in 39 countries is impressive. But I'm always curious about the real world failure rate. How many of these filters get installed and then crack, or clog, or just get used as flower pots?