Cloth filters are better than nothing, but not much. If the pathogens are bound to particulates there will be some removal. Unfortunately, bacteria, viruses and most protozoa are much too small and will pass thru the cloth. Would you trust your life to a cloth filter on a contaminated water source? So, use the cloth filter to reduce turbidity somewhat, then chlorinate with bleach. You probably do not need much after the initial shock treatment, probably less than 1 ppm, unless the water has organic carbon that will react with the chlorine. You would want to leave enough residual chlorine in the water so that it will continue to be safe during pipe transport and storage.

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Cloth filters are better than nothing, but not much. If the pathogens are bound to particulates there will be some removal. Unfortunately, bacteria, viruses and most protozoa are much too small and will pass thru the cloth. Would you trust your life to a cloth filter on a contaminated water source? So, use the cloth filter to reduce turbidity somewhat, then chlorinate with bleach. You probably do not need much after the initial shock treatment, probably less than 1 ppm, unless the water has organic carbon that will react with the chlorine. You would want to leave enough residual chlorine in the water so that it will continue to be safe during pipe transport and storage.

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 I appreciate you following protocol Joseph. Sometimes a point of clarification is in order. Are you aware cheese cloth is and has been used in the scientific community for decades.  (filtering of cows milk and others).  As you correctly pointed out that some microbes are too small (even for micro fine cheese cloth). This is why the second choice is to devise a 2 cheese cloth and Archaea membrane. As most microbiologists know nothing survives in an Archaea matrix.  At .5 to .005 microns it can out compete for the food source and other microbes will die off. Then they become food for the Archaea.

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