When I was a child, my grandmother tied several layers of cloth over her kitchen water faucet to filter out sediments.
That was our water filter, a home made water purifier, and thinking back, it's a wonder that we never were sickened by the spring water supply she used in her home, which was often contaminated by floods and upstream polluting by her dairy-farm neighbors.
It used to be very common for people to make such home made water purifiers, and though the water at least looked cleaner, the method was very ineffective indeed.
You'll find many types of home made water purifier instructions online, from simple filters to systems that involve distillation of water.
The truth is, there are some serious problems with the do-it-yourself approach when it comes to purification of water.
That's not good; improperly purified drinking water can harm your health and even kill you.
While it's laudable to want to save a little money by creating your own filters, you could be putting yourself and your family at risk by doing it.
One of the problems with home made water purifiers is that they don't tell you when they are saturated with contaminants; on the other hand, commercial water filters usually do.
If you keep using saturated filters without knowing it, you're not only getting un-decontaminated water; you're actually dissolving some of the previously-removed contaminants and getting a double dose.
Unless you're using a distilled water system, you should assume that your home made water filter needs replacing, and that means you have to figure out your own saturation period.
Even if you use a distillation system or something else that supposedly removes all the contaminants from your water, you are likely to have a problem.
For one thing, distillation removes even good minerals like iron, copper, and calcium, but it does not always remove chlorine, as chlorine is naturally a gas and will evaporate - and condense - right along with the water.
In addition, distilled water that is not subsequently aerated will taste flat and lifeless, and your distillation system may add its own contaminants to your newly-purified water.
You really need to know what you're doing.
If you're determined to do it yourself,a home made water purifier needs to have several layers of filtration in order to work effectively: sand or diatomatious earth, activated carbon, and layers of gauze or mesh to hold the filters in place.
Water needs to be put through this filter at pressure.
Then, at the end, you need to test the water yourself; the best way is to allow a glass of water to sit for a day or two and see what settles at the bottom or whether the water gets cloudy, and also test the water at biological laboratories for microbes and other things that can sicken you.
It is likely to be cheaper and easier to just purchase a commercial system.