- 21 hours ago
A sheet of clear plastic, a hole in the ground, a cup, and a stone can turn dirty water into drinking water when the sun does the work. This Amish water-saving method explains how evaporation leaves salt, silt, and bacteria behind, then condensation drips clean water into a container below. It is a simple survival water distillation idea, but it is not a filter, and it is meant for emergency use only.
Elias Yoder walks through the setup step by step: find a damp spot, dig a bowl-shaped hole, place a clean cup in the center, seal the plastic tightly, and shape it with a rock so the drops run to the cup. He also shows faster versions with a bowl, a dark container, or a pot lid, and explains why the location, the seal, and the sunlight matter so much. The video also warns about limits, including low output, possible chemical contamination, and the need to store water in advance.
Created for viewers searching for Amish survival skills, primitive water purification, solar still instructions, emergency water collection, and off-grid homestead know-how. It is useful for preparedness, homesteading, bushcraft, and anyone learning how to make drinking water from dirty or salty sources with simple tools.
SEO: Amish way to get clean water, solar still tutorial, water distillation from dirty water, emergency drinking water, survival water purification, off-grid water solutions, homestead preparedness, and primitive survival skills.
Elias Yoder walks through the setup step by step: find a damp spot, dig a bowl-shaped hole, place a clean cup in the center, seal the plastic tightly, and shape it with a rock so the drops run to the cup. He also shows faster versions with a bowl, a dark container, or a pot lid, and explains why the location, the seal, and the sunlight matter so much. The video also warns about limits, including low output, possible chemical contamination, and the need to store water in advance.
Created for viewers searching for Amish survival skills, primitive water purification, solar still instructions, emergency water collection, and off-grid homestead know-how. It is useful for preparedness, homesteading, bushcraft, and anyone learning how to make drinking water from dirty or salty sources with simple tools.
SEO: Amish way to get clean water, solar still tutorial, water distillation from dirty water, emergency drinking water, survival water purification, off-grid water solutions, homestead preparedness, and primitive survival skills.
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LifestyleTranscript
00:00You are standing beside water you cannot drink. Maybe it is a pond with a green cast to it.
00:06Maybe it is the creek after a hard rain running brown. Maybe it is salt water, or a puddle in
00:13a
00:13ditch, or a barrel that has been standing open since August with things living in it. Whatever
00:19it is, it is water and you cannot put it in your mouth. Now I am going to tell you
00:25something that
00:25sounds like a riddle and is not. You can take drinking water out of that, and out of ground
00:32that looks bone dry, with no filter, no tablet, no fuel, no fire, and no machine of any kind.
00:41Nothing you have to buy, and nothing that can run out or wear out. A sheet of clear plastic,
00:48a hole, a cup, and a stone. And the whole thing is driven by the sun, and it has been
00:55known for
00:56a very long time, and almost nobody alive has ever done it. I am Elias Yoder. I farm in Lancaster
01:04County, Pennsylvania. Our water comes off a spring and through a cistern, and I have written and spoken
01:11a good deal about keeping it clean. And this is not how we get our water day to day. This
01:17is the
01:18thing you fall back on when everything else has gone, and it is worth knowing for exactly that
01:24reason. I gathered the whole of it into a book at EliasYoder.com. The book is the long version.
01:32If you want it, it is there. I will not mention it again. My grandmother showed me this without
01:39meaning to, with a pot of soup and a lid, when I was small enough to be underfoot in the
01:44kitchen.
01:45She had something simmering with the lid on, and I had my nose over it, and she lifted the lid
01:51off
01:52and tipped it toward me, and the whole underside of it was running with water. I asked her where
01:58that came from, because it was not in the pot before she put the lid on it. She said it
02:04was in
02:04the pot. It came out of the soup, and it went up, and it stopped when it met the cold
02:10of the lid,
02:11and now it is coming back down. Then she said the thing that stayed with me, and she said it
02:17about
02:17soup, and not about anything else. She said, whatever was in that soup is still in that soup.
02:25Only the water left. Only the water leaves. Everything else stays behind.
02:31Now let me tell you why that one sentence is the whole of this video. When water evaporates,
02:39it goes up as vapor, and it goes up alone. It does not carry things with it. The salt stays.
02:46The mud
02:47and the silt stay. The things that make you sick, the bacteria and the rest of it, all stay, because
02:54they are far too heavy to lift into the air. So if you can get water to evaporate off dirty
03:01water,
03:02and then catch it again somewhere else, and let it come back to liquid, what you have caught is water,
03:09and very nearly nothing else. And here is why that matters more than it sounds. This is not filtering.
03:17A filter is a strainer. The water goes through a barrier, the barrier catches what you do not want,
03:25and the barrier fills up and has to be cleaned or replaced. Everything you own that filters water
03:32will eventually stop. This goes the other way about. Nothing passes through anything. The water simply
03:41leaves, and the dirt does not follow it. Which means there is nothing to clog, nothing to
03:47replace, and nothing to run out. That is the whole reason I want you to know it. Now, how to
03:55build one,
03:55and I will give you the proper version, and then the quick one. You want a piece of clear plastic
04:01sheeting. Clear, not black, because the sun has to get through it. Four or five feet square is about right.
04:10Find the dampest ground you have, the low corner of a field, a dry creek bed, the shaded
04:17side of a bank, the place where the grass stays green longest. You want ground that still holds water,
04:25even if there is none standing on it. Dig a hole, bowl shaped, perhaps three feet across and two feet
04:32deep. Keep the sides sloping rather than straight. Set a clean container in the very bottom, in the middle,
04:40hole. A cup, a tin, a jar. Now, if you have dirty water, rather than damp ground, this is where
04:48it goes.
04:49Pour it into the bottom of the hole, all around the container, taking care not to get any of it
04:55in the
04:56cup. Pond water, creek water, salt water, anything at all. It does not matter how bad it is, and if
05:03you
05:03have no water but plenty of green material, pack the sides of the hole with cut green vegetation.
05:10Leaves, grass, cactus, whatever grows there. Every green thing is mostly water, and the sun will take
05:18it out of them. Now lay the plastic over the hole and seal the edges all the way round with
05:24the soil
05:24you dug out. Right round. Every gap is vapor getting away. Then set a stone in the middle of the
05:31sheet,
05:32the size of your fist, directly over the container, so the sheet pulls down into a cone with the lowest
05:39point hanging right above the cup. And that is the whole machine. The sun comes through the plastic
05:46and warms the ground and the water underneath. That water evaporates and goes up as vapor,
05:52leaving everything else behind. It meets the underside of the plastic, which is cooler because
05:58the open air is on the other side of it. It condenses there into drops, exactly the way it did
06:04on my
06:05grandmother's lid. The drops run down the slope of the sheet to the lowest point, which is under your
06:11stone, and they fall off into the cup. No parts. Nothing to wear out. It will work tomorrow, and it
06:19will work in ten years. One more thing to build in while you are there, and it costs you nothing.
06:25Run a length of tubing from the cup up and out under the edge of the plastic, with the end
06:31of it sealed
06:31or pinched. Then you can drink out of it without lifting the sheet at all. That matters more than it
06:38sounds. Every time you break that seal to get the cup out, you lose the vapor that is in there,
06:44and you lose the heat, and the thing has to start again from the beginning. A hole that is open
06:50three
06:50times a day gives you far less than one that is left alone. Now, four things that decide whether yours
06:57works well or hardly at all. The plastic must be clear, and it must be clean. Any dirt on it
07:05is shade,
07:05and shade is water you did not get. The seal must be complete. The commonest failure by a long way
07:13is a gap at the edge, and you will not see the vapor leaving. The drip point must sit exactly
07:20over the
07:20cup. Set the stone, then look at it from the side, and move it until the low point is directly
07:27above the
07:28container. An inch out, and you are watering the dirt. And keep the drop short. The distance from
07:35the underside of the sheet down to the cup wants to be small. A drop that has far to fall,
07:41or far to run,
07:43can gather and slide back down into the dirty water instead, and then you have done all that work for
07:50nothing. Pull the sheet down close. And a word on where to dig, because it decides more than the
07:56building does. You want sun on that hole for the whole of the day, so not under a tree, and
08:03not on
08:03the north side of anything. But you want the dampest ground you can find, and damp ground is usually in
08:10the shade. So you are looking for the compromise, which is generally a low spot that the sun reaches by
08:17the
08:17middle of the morning. A dry hole in full sun gives you almost nothing. Damp ground in deep shade gives
08:25you almost nothing. Find the place that has some of both, and you will do far better than a man
08:31who
08:31built his beautifully in the wrong spot. Now, before I give you the limits of this, and there are serious
08:38ones, let me say one thing. Every home has leaks. Food, heat, water, electricity, laundry, repairs,
08:49and waste. Inside our Amish home savings system and community, Esther and I help you find those leaks
08:56and start fixing them one by one. The link is in the description. Now, the plain truth of it, and
09:03I want
09:03you to hear all of it, because people teach this as though it were a water supply, and it is
09:09not.
09:09It gives you very little. A hole like the one I described, in good sun, on damp ground, gives you
09:17something in the order of a quart in a day. A quart. That is a fraction of what one person
09:23needs to drink,
09:24let alone a family. That number is not a failing in how you built it. That is what the sun
09:29will do
09:30through that much plastic in that much time, and no amount of care changes it much. So this is not
09:38a
09:38water plan. If you need water for a household, you need rain off a roof, a cistern, a well, a
09:46spring,
09:47things I have talked about elsewhere and will again. What this is, is the thing that stands between a
09:54person and nothing at all. One cup of clean water a day out of mud is a very great deal
10:03when the
10:04alternative is a dry mouth, and it is worth knowing for that alone. Second, it does not remove everything.
10:14Anything that evaporates along with the water comes over with it. Fuel, solvents, some chemicals. So this is
10:23superb against salt and silt and bacteria and the things that make water filthy, and it is not an
10:30answer to ground that has had something industrial spilled on it. If you have reason to think there is
10:37fuel or chemicals in the ground where you are, do not do this there. Put the hole somewhere else.
10:46Third, water made this way is flat and dead. Everything that is in good water is left behind
10:55in the hole, including all the mineral that gives water its taste and that your body expects. For a few
11:04days that is of no consequence whatever. As the only water somebody drinks for months, it is not right,
11:11and the people who study water say so plainly. So it is an emergency measure. Use it as one.
11:21Fourth, and this is one people never think of. You will lose more water digging the hole than the
11:30hole gives back the first day. Sweating through two feet of earth in hot sun costs you a great deal.
11:39So dig in
11:40the cool of the morning or in the evening, and if you are already short of water and weak, think
11:47hard
11:48before you spend what you have on a shovel. Fifth, and this is the one I would have you take
11:55most
11:56seriously of all. Do not let this make you confident. The worst thing a method like this can do is
12:05persuade
12:06somebody that water is a solved problem, and they need not have stored any. A quart a day from a
12:14hole in the ground
12:15is not a supply. It is what you do when you have failed to plan, and the planning is cheaper,
12:24easier, and a great
12:25deal more reliable. Store water. Catch rain. Know where your nearest spring or creek is. This is the thing at
12:37the bottom of the list, not the top of it. And a word on what this does not deal with
12:45at all, since somebody
12:47will ask. It does nothing about water that is simply low. If the ground where you are is dry and
12:56has been dry
12:57for weeks, there is nothing in it for the sun to lift, and no amount of plastic makes water out
13:04of nothing.
13:05This takes water that is already there and separates it from what is in it. It does not create any.
13:14That is why the sighting matters so much, and why a man who digs in the wrong place and gets
13:21a teaspoon
13:22concludes the whole thing is a myth. It is not a myth. He dug in dry ground.
13:31Now, two better versions of the same idea if you have anything at all to hand. If you have a
13:38container,
13:39you do not need a hole. Set a wide pan of dirty water in the sun with a smaller cup
13:47standing in the
13:47middle of it. Lay the plastic over the top, seal it round the rim, and wait the middle. Same machine,
13:56no digging, and you can move it. And a third, for anybody near the sea or near water they cannot
14:05drink.
14:06Float or stand a dark pan of that water in the sun. Put a clear bowl or cone over it
14:14with a channel
14:15round the rim, and you have the same thing again. The darker the pan the better, because a dark surface
14:23takes in the sun's heat and a pale one throws it back, which I have said before about other things,
14:31and it holds here too. And if you have a pot with a lid and anything to burn, you can
14:38do it far faster.
14:41Boil the dirty water with the lid on upside down, collect what runs down to the handle,
14:48and that is distilled water in minutes rather than in a day. That is simply my grandmother's soup pot
14:56used on purpose. One more practical word on the plastic itself, because that is the one piece
15:05you cannot improvise. Keep a roll of clear sheeting somewhere dry and do not use it for anything else.
15:12It costs very little, it stores flat for years, and it is the whole of the equipment. A painter's drop
15:20sheet will do. A cut up clear bag will do at a pinch if you can get it flat and
15:26sealed, though a sheet is
15:27far better. And put a length of tubing and a tin cup in with it, and tie the lot together,
15:34and then you
15:34have a thing that is actually ready rather than a method you half remember. Now, the reason I think
15:41this is worth a whole video rather than a line in a survival book. Somebody did try to turn this
15:47into a
15:48proper article. A designer in Germany made a clear cone that sat over a black pan, worked exactly on
15:55the principle I have described, had no filter and no parts, and would run for years. It won awards,
16:02it went into museums, and it failed because the thing cost around $70 by the time it reached a shop,
16:10and the people it was meant for do not have $70. The tooling to make it cheaply was never paid
16:17for,
16:17and the whole thing quietly disappeared. So the physics was right, and the article was good,
16:23and it still never reached one person who needed it. Which is rather the point of this channel. The
16:29version that reaches people is the one made of a sheet of plastic and a stone, because that version
16:35does not need anybody's permission, and nobody has to fund it. There is no scheme in any of this,
16:41and nobody arranged anything. The money simply runs the other way. There are filters and tablets
16:48and purifiers sold for this, and they are good things, and I would have some in the house. It is
16:54only that nobody can sell you a hole in the ground, so nobody teaches it, and a thing nobody has
16:59a reason
17:00to say gets forgotten inside of one generation. What got lost was not a product. It was a woman tipping
17:07a
17:08pot lid toward a child and telling him that only the water left. So here is what I would have
17:14you
17:14do this week, and it costs almost nothing. Do not wait until you need this. Go and build one in
17:21the
17:21garden on an ordinary afternoon with a piece of plastic and a cup in the dampest spot you have.
17:27Make a mess of it. Find out what a bad seal does. Find out how far out you can put
17:32the stone before the
17:34drops miss the cup. Then look at what is in that cup at the end of the day and understand
17:39exactly
17:40how much it is, because the moment you want this for real is the worst possible moment to be learning
17:46it. So tell me in the comments how much water you got in a day and where you put the
17:51hole, because the
17:52spot matters more than anything else, and I would like to see the spread. And if you have told me
17:57your
17:57county before, tell me this instead. Where does your water actually come from? A town main, a well,
18:05a spring. Most people have never had to think about it, and that is worth knowing about your own place.
18:11Next time I want to stay with water, because a well with no power in it is not a dead
18:16well. There is a
18:18way to draw water out of a cased well with a length of pipe, a cap, and a rope, and
18:23it costs very little,
18:24and it works the day the pump stops. Only the water leaves. Everything else stays behind.
18:31The people who built this country with their hands knew that, and we are only just starting to remember it.