Black Primer for Use with Gravity-Fed Water Filter Systems Equipped with Black Berkey Elements

My sink faucet does not have a smooth surface (it's a spray head) so it could not make good contact with the priming button. So, I ordered this primer. It worked beautifully. Both filters were primed and ready to go in about 15 minutes. Another advantage to having this on hand is it will work without running water (in case of an emergency, etc.). Putting the primer together can be tricky, and the instructions are not very good. I watched a YouTube video that explained how to put it together (link at end of this review). Here are the things you'll want to know while assembling the primer. The parts consist of: 1 bulb with different size holes on each end, 2 identical plastic tubes, 2 identical "valves", 1 hexnut and 1 one "angle piece" (this is where the water exits the primer). The little "valve" parts (2) have a smooth side, and a ribbed side. They have to be attached in a certain way so the pump works correctly. Working left to right, this is how the pieces all fit together. I laid them out in order then assembled the tube sections first and connected them to the bulb last:: Hexnut > tube > smooth end of valve A into tube > ribbed end of valve A into LARGER hole in the bulb > smooth end of valve B into smaller hole in bulb > ribbed end of valve B into 2nd tube > angle piece into 2nd tube. Get a container that is deep enough to where the filter can be completely submerged, and fill it with water. Screw the hexnut into the filter and place the filter into the water (it will try and float initially as it's full of air). Don't worry about it being fully submerged while you're pumping as it will gradually sink as it fills with water. Begin pumping. It took me about five or six minutes to fully prime. A bit of water came out at first, and then just air for quite a while. Part way though I did notice there was a suction issue (it took a long time for the bulb to "re-inflate" so I made sure a little bit of the filter was above water and loosened the hextnut just a bit, and that worked. It was not creating 100% vacuum at that point but it worked and I was able to prime the filters. My only gripe about this is that the rubber bulb STINKS like nasty rubber. It's getting stored at the back of a closet because I am very sensitive to chemical smells. However, the filter functioned perfectly so I'm still giving it five stars. I did not have a problem inserting the pieces into one another like other reviewers mentioned (just remember the bulb has two different sized holes). I think the hardest part was inserting the hexnut into the tubing, but that just took a few moments. The primer comes unassembled because you can reverse the direction of the valves if you want to purge water from the filter. Here is the link to the assembly video on YouTube that helped me: [...] If the link does not appear in this review, you can search YouTube for the video titled: Using a Black Berkey Primer, Part 2

I bought this to clean my Black Berkey Filters and just used it the other day. It cleaned the "junk" off of them, by taking it off the filters, not scraping it off with a vegetable peeler like is suggested by Berkey. It pushes the junk out of the filter, so it washes away, while priming it for the next go round with filtering water. Our water is "city water" and full of so much stuff it is amazing when you first take the filters out, how much, what appears to be mud, is on them. I washed them off, then used this to push the other mud out of the filters that was being sucked into the filters as I used it to clean my water. I know that when I refill my Berkey, it sure does filter faster and that is good for me. I only have a small Berkey, as there is only two of us, but sometimes I find I need more water than usual and since cleaning out my filters, I can get it filtered again, in about an hour I would estimate. Well worth the cost and so easy to use. Glad I saw a video on Youtube on this, as I feel it will save me a lot of money in the long run, by not Peeling the filters as is directed by Berkey and the filters will last a lot longer.

It is important to read all of the multiple sheets of instructions for all of the individual parts. When done well the system is installed correctly, it works great. It is important to prime the filters and remove all shipping plugs from the white fluoride, etc. I neglected to remove the bottom plugs and the water couldn’t flow through the filter. I reread the instructions, re-primed the filters and realized that I had overlooked removing two blue plugs! I’m really happy with the unit now and plan to take it with me on an annual 2 week vacation so I don’t have to buy bottled water in glass bottles to get healthy water to drink.

I was going to give this a max rating of 2 before my husband solved the problems. There are two problems: 1. It came with bare instructions without adequate diagram of the valve placements and it is easy to get it wrong without that. 2 The product isn't well designed because the tube insert on the input side is loose enough for air to get in ending up in priming pump not working well. After I struggled with it for 30-40 minutes, both these issues were thankfully solved by my husband so it worked really well and really fast. Two things he had to do: 1. Put a tourniquet like contraption on the input side of the "tube & valve overlap" to make the connection tight enough to not let air in so that the pump would work efficiently without sucking in extra air. 2. Keep the filter element COMPLETELY submerged under water to make it work without wasting time on pumping air in and out for a long time before water could come out. We thought we'll record it so other people could benefit from our experience. Please watch the video to know what I am talking about and make it easier on yourself to use this priming tool. We recorded 2 videos of different problematic parts but Amazon only lets us upload one video per review.

This worked great to purge and prime our Berkey filter once I figured out how to use it. It's a little difficult to figure out how to put it together to purge and then flip pieces to prime but I finally figured it out. It seems very pricey for what it is ... but it did work well.

I bought this back in Jan of this year and finally got to use it when installing 2 new Black Berkey filters. That's when I realized how overpriced this item was. Thank goodness I am pretty good at fixing things and devising solutions to problems. Basically, fixing other people's/companies' poor/cheap designs. After figuring out the right way to assemble this pump, I used it on the first new filter. All I got was a lot of air mixed with some water. I thought at first that this was just the air contained in the new filter element that was being "expelled" and replaced by water. After a time, I realized this was not right and looked for the problem. About this time, the plastic tube between the plastic filter adapter and the one-way inlet valve came off of the valve and would not reseal. To fix this, I resorted to a small spring clamp, that you operate with pliers, to fit around and seal the tube to the valve. On the next try, I was still sucking air, so I looked for another problem. This time, after completely submerging the filter in water past the plastic adapter, I discovered that it was the adapter leaking air around the threads. No matter how tight I got the fitting, It still sucked air. I solved this by wrapping some teflon tape around the threads on the filter and the problem was solved. My take away....this is a high priced, poorly designed device and Berkey should redesign and upgrade it. How??? Pre-assemble these using longer tubes and spring clamps on the one-way valves. OUT of space to continue!!!

I've had my Travel Berkey for 5 years and the worst thing about it has always been purging and cleaning the black Berkey filters. I never had a sink that was quite big enough and I always ended up getting water all over the place. This very easily solves that issue! Now I can easily clean my filters for optimal purification. I am very happy to have this and absolutely recommend it to everyone who uses the black Berkey filters. A note on assembling the primer- since this apparatus is used to force water into tiny places the pieces have to fit super tightly together. I Stubed my fingers several times during the assembly and I cannot seem to totally disassemble the whole primer for storage. I dried it out by pimping air through it until the air came out dry. Yes it took a while, butnim not looking to grow mold! Even with the pain of assembling and storing the primer it's absolutely worth the hassle to be able to clean and prime new filters with SUCH ease

It's not because the instructions are not good. It's because most of the instructions are good, and part of it is really bad, so you think it'll be easy enough because they look like decent instructions...until you try and use the same amount of attention for every aspect of it. The tiny valve pieces are very easy to get confused because there are little black floating dots inside that can disorient you. The key is to find the long lines on those tiny pieces and get them lined up on the right end, and the small end goes in the small hole of the pump, and large end of the other one goes in the large hole of the pump. Drawing attention to those lines and distinguishing which ends go into which holes of the pump would save so much stress trying to figure out what the heck is going on. If you can get through it without losing your mind, the primer does work...except they don't tell you it will take about 20 pumps before you start seeing water.