It is recommended to store the 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 rate of your Berkey system. It 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 5-10 years depending on your consumption. Filters should be cleaned every 12 months with cold or medium hot water, a soft brush and reprimed (duration 10-15 minutes).

Plastic fibers are small pieces of plastic that can enter and contaminate drinking water. A survey of microplastics in water found that these scans captured particles larger than 2.5 microns. Black Berkey® Purification Elements can reduce viruses down to the nanometer scale, within the tested range of 24-26 nanometers is 0.024-0.026 microns....in other words, much smaller than particles of plastic found in water So yes, they should remove these particles from any water source. much larger contaminants, such as plastic fibers, should also be removed. However, since testing on plastic fibers has not yet been performed, Berkey® cannot officially make this claim.

We have no way of knowing exactly what potential contaminants are in each city's water. We know that our Black Berkey™ Purification Elements filter certain drugs. Please see our most recent test results.

As 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 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 bigger it is, the greater the pressure, so the filtration speed will be faster.