It's the water!
We have used local tap water that has run thru a Brita filter for decades. We use it for drinking water, for brewing coffee and for cooking. One of those 'basics' I have taken for granted since my parents bought their first one sometime in the late 1970s. At that time my father didn't think Angels Camp had good tasting water. Redwood City where I lived had ok water but I tried one anyway and when I realized the Brita removed all that chlorine taste I was sold for life.
Fast forward to 2017. C started having problems with her gut which got worse by the day. She struggled for months of gradually worsening discomfort and finally went to the doctor. She struggled another couple weeks waiting for lab results that came back positive for giardia. A few weeks later I started showing similar symptoms and went through the same treatment: 5 days of metronidazole then as many probiotics as I could choke down every day to get my gut back in working order. C took about 6 months to get back to 'normal', but it took me about 18 months and what seemed a huge number of probiotics. We always knew Brita filters improve the taste of city tap water by removing chlorine and that unfortunately they aren't fine enough to remove parasites. When we were cruising we had a reverse osmosis water treatment system that took care of that sort of thing, but the versions I've seen for RVs are wanna-be pretenders that just don't have the capacity.
We think we got the parasite from an RV park in Santa Fe where they were working on the sewer during our stay. The park had city water, but we suspect the contamination came during that repair. Can't be sure, but that's our suspicion. If that's true then I guess the chlorine in the water doesn't kill the parasites.
You don't just go on-line and order a Berkey. You have to get on a list to be notified when they're available- they are perpetually out of stock. Even then it's first-come-first-served. I don't know if it's just because of the pandemic or if it's always this way or maybe they supply dealers first. Dunno.
After giving it some thought and reading reviews, I decided one of their 'scratch & dent' specials ought to serve fine. And if I got one that wasn't the most popular size (the Big Berkey would have been about right, but it's the biggest seller), that might reduce our wait time. Turned out to be correct and within a week I got an e-Mail saying they had a couple scratch & dent Royal Berkey filters available. The Royal has 3.25 gal capacity vs. 2.25 gal for the Big and that would have been a better choice, but we'd still be waiting for a Big Berkey to become available. And we saved about $60 buying the scratch & dent (for the life of me I can't see any cosmetic damage).
It was a breeze assembling. Priming the water filters, however, was a total pain in the ass! It's a gravity feed system (like the Brita) but it's s-l-o-o-o-o-w. If you want to get rid of the really little stuff, you have to have a really fine filter.
And yes, the water tastes great. But...
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