Firing Sawyer

Water is important.

If the Platy system is what you would rather use, then simply find a way to cut the 9 oz weight difference between it and the Sawyersi elsewhere in your pack.

I am sure if you go over your kit, you will find those 9 ounces :)

Sean, the Sawyer can get slow after drying out after a trip. This has happened to me too. You can search for threads on this. Try back flushing with vinegar and leave it full of vinegar for some time and see if that helps, then flush with distilled water.

Thanks, Stephen. How many minutes does it take you to filter a liter?

The platy system weighs so much because of the long tubing and 2 big bladders.
Maybe just replace your current setup with the Platy filter instead?

I can confirm the platy filter is much faster, and not much heavier…maybe an ounce difference?
However there's no threading….so you need to use it inline.

Hrm…now that you mention it, my sawyer mini has been driving me nuts….maybe I should make the switch back to platy ….hrm…..

I am not sure if you use the regular ~3oz sawyer squeeze or the ~1.5oz mini, but if it's the latter then try the former. It's supposed to be considerably faster. Or you can do what I did and get a platypus/camelback style hose and connect it to the sawyer mini and let gravity do the work while you set up your tent, enjoy the scenery, eat, rest, fiddle with your gear, or whatever else you enjoy out on the trail.

"How many minutes does it take you to filter a liter?"
Minutes?
When I "tested" my Sawyers as a result of this question being asked here before, I did it as fast as possible four separate times, and filtered 16oz in ~9 seconds with the Squeeze each time. In normal use it probably takes at least twice that.
The Mini took about 2.5 times as long as the Squeeze, as I recall.

Sean, Yeah, that was about my experience, too. It worked fine the first few days, then got progressively slower, despite back flushing. I gave it away and went back to the Opti.

At about 3.5oz, the Opti is comparable in weight. It is a lot less fiddling. Just fill a bottle, zap and go. Seldom is the need to filter junk out of the water. However, I also carry about 1.5oz of AM drops (about 4-5 days supply) so if it breaks, or gets lost, I can still make water to drink. Cooking water doesn't matter, it gets boiled. So, at about 5oz for the total (not counting bottles) it works great for a solo or two hikers.

A Bandana is a good prefilter. It seems to get the worst of any junk in the water. Though they do include a fine mesh with the Opti.

Using AM is a back up, only. This means you need to carry extra water (about a liter) as it treats. It takes about 3-4 hours to work. This is pretty good, but still far heavier than just using the Opti as needed.

The field weight of the Sawyer is not quite correct. After use, you need to flush it with the syringe. You almost always carry the filter wet. It will "absorb" about an ounce of water so the actual carry weight is higher than the advertised 3oz…closer to 4oz. And, you have to carry the syringe or another flush device for another half ounce or so. For three nights you can likely skip it, though.

If your use is infrequent you need to backwash and bleach before storage, and "prime" before heading out.

Who has done these three and still had problems?

(Just asking, not preaching.)

I take 45 seconds to filter 1 pint

9 seconds? that seems too quick. Maybe your filter is broken? Did it ever freeze? If you try to blow through it can you detect any flow? If so, it's probably broken

I use a 1 liter soda bottle to squeeze. After 1/4, I unscrew filter a little to let in air. That's included in my 45 seconds. Easier to put pressure on Squeeze. The bottle won't break like some bags. (and it's almost free).

I only filter 4 or 5 pints each day. I drink another 4 pints that I heat up so I don't treat that. I never filter more than 1 pint at a time, so an occasional 45 seconds is no hassle.

I use mine on 4 or 5 day trips. Backflush when I get home. One thing is, I use it about once per month so it never dries out, which seems to be it's Achilles heal. I've used mine for a couple years.

Nothings perfect, except drinking water from tap at home.

Steripen is good solution too. There's a reliability risk because it's electronic and because it has batteries. Make sure and bring spares. I tried one but returned it because it kept failing. I suspect it would have worked perfectly if I removed batteries between trips and always carried a spare set. Or get the USB charge version and charge it before trip.

I've used the Sawyers a fair amount , both in the water bottle, the squeeze and gravity systems.
My personal experience is as follows:
– The drinking bottle, is too much effort. I find I just don't drink enough with it. It is fine to augment. I have spoken to a few others and they all mentioned they felt they were not getting enough.
– The squeeze is ok but slow and I dislike the Sawyer bags. On a recent trip I was with some people using the squeeze and they spent a lot more time on water than I did and ended up using AquaMira tabs a fair amount.
– As a gravity system , it is ok, but slow. I weighed my "gravity" system after a trip last year and found it weighed almost as much as the Platy system which is far easier and faster.

I have since moved to an AquaMira / Frontier Green Line as my day drinker , mixed with tabs or drops if you want. The Green Line is fine for most stuff in the US and I find I drink 60 -80 ounces a day pretty reliably without excess effort. Mix that with some tabs or boiling and I am fine. I know the life span of the filter is not 1000000 gallons, but I suspect I would never get any where near 1,000,000 gallons in the real word. I figure if the lifespan is 100 gallons , that is at least 3 months continuous usage.

I used a Steripen a few years ago, it was ok. It may be better now, but I didn't care for the requirement of a large mouth bottle.

You can make the GravityWorks a lot lighter (and cheaper). All you really need is the filter cartridge, which you can buy separately for $50. Then you need to rig up a way to connect it to two water containers using hose. A decent way to do this is to grab the spare hose kit ($20?) which comes with a hose that screws to standard bottle fittings (i.e. Platypus bottle, 1L water bottle). On the other end just toss 24" of hose. You need a bit of hose on the far end so you can back flush the air bubbles out of the filter. With this you could quickly fill your pot or another water bottle. It's quick enough that it's not annoying to wait while a 1L bottle fills.

With that said, I only use the GravityWorks for work, where I get 300-400L of moderately gross lake water per filter. I just AquaTabs for personal use.

"9 seconds? that seems too quick. Maybe your filter is broken? Did it ever freeze? If you try to blow through it can you detect any flow? If so, it's probably broken"

Nothing wrong with the filter. I matched that time with my newer one(I *have* frozen both a Squeeze and a Mini, btw, but immediately replaced them).
The only reason I tried it was a thread about Sawyer flow rates here awhile back, and a youtube video showing a guy filtering a liter in 19 seconds that I found while searching as a result-a time I also matched.
That was at home in the kitchen, doing it as fast as possible out of curiosity. In real use, I tend to just sit on a log or rock with the bag under my leg and a Platy or Smartwater bottle attached to the Squeeze with a "water tornado", and let it go however fast it goes.

You can see why I think the "10 minutes per liter seems normal" claim in the OP is more than a little bit of exaggeration, but that freaking Mini really can make it seem like an eternity sometimes. I used one for a 7 day trip last fall, and it started needing constant backflushing to get any kind of decent flow, which made it frustrating to use.

My 45 seconds for one pint was just at a normal rate. I didn't try to rush it.

9 seconds for one pint is really good.

I think that if you filter just one pint, either 9 seconds or 45 would be fine, 10 minutes for a liter would be unacceptably slow

I think the Sawyer has a role, in certain circumstances – especially where there's a high risk of Giardia making tabs less effiective.

I used to use the regular Sawyer a lot before I switched (mainly) to tabs, and I was fairly happy with it. I didn't experience the splittling of squeeze pouch that some reported.

I used the then-new Mini just once, last year on the JMT, and I it was terrible. Water quality is generally great on the JMT, and there's virtually no sediment, yet is seemed to clog up after a few uses, and became quite nasty-smelling, presumably from residual bacteria trapped on the dirty side. I expected to have to clean it with bleach after each outing, but not DURING a short trip.

My main concern, however, is that the filter becomes completely ineffective if it freezes – and since it's completely enclosed there's not way that I'm aware of to inspect it and detect if it has frozen. To my mind, this limits its safe use to circumstances where temperatures get nowhere near freezing overnight.

I don't know if the freezing issue is a concern with other types of filter, of if Sawyer are just the only ones being honest about it?

yeah, freezing is a problem

I think since Sawyer filters are hollow tubes with pores in them, if the tube fills with water and freezes, it expands, and ruptures the tube. Or if the whole filter is full of water it will expand and rupture the housing, but that would be easy to see

Except when you backflush it expands the tubes so they should be able to withstand expansion from freezing? Maybe when they're cold they're not as flexible. I think Sawyer doesn't want to deal with this so they just say don't freeze. I wish they'de do some testing.

If it might freeze, I shake out as much water as possible. I put the filter in its plastic bag overnight. Maybe put it on ground under some insulation. Or in my sleeping bag. Or in my pocket. Depending on how cold it will be.

I did that once when it was 16 F. There were still water drops on the outside of filter, but frozen drops on the inside of plastic bag.

Nothings perfect. This will disqualify it for some people.

I rigged mine up to be gravity fed like an old ULA Amigo Pro, I dont worry about how fast or slow it goes now because I'm usually taking care of other camp chores while it filters.

I don't think I spend more than 60 seconds on a liter of water. I would spend $20 and try a new one.

I rejected the old blue/grey sawyer for exactly this reason. Would slow to the trickle after very little use, even with very clear water. The Mini is still working for me. Probably takes me a minute or so to filter a liter. Not exactly what I'd call quick, but not bad enough to be annoying (yet).

I used a platypus in line gravity filter and then bought a couple Sawyer's because they were much cheaper. They use a 0.1 micron pore size where as platypus uses a 0.2 pore size.

I like the price and philosophy of Sawyer but don't like the slow filter time so have gone back to a platypus.

As was already mentioned, get adapters to use the platypus and you won't have they long wait.

Using soft platypus bottles and short hose sections, the weight is not much beyond what I would have with just the bottles and the Sawyer mini. About 2oz additional with hose added.

Geez. Ten minutes would drive me crazy. The Mini takes me probably 1-2 mins for 20oz and probably half that for the Squeeze. I've had great luck with both models. If I was going to switch, I would get a Steripen.

Ryan

Prior to back flushing it takes me 1 min 45 sec to filter a liter of water using the old sawyer as a gravity filter. I have filtered about 100 gallons through it and it does not show any signs of slowing. I can filter a liter closer to 1 min just after back flushing.

Prior to back flushing (sorry, it's not edited):

Joshua,

While you said you don't notice how fast or slow it goes, I think you'll find reduced filtration times if you change your setup so the filter is at the bottom of the hose instead of the top. I found this to be the case when I made that change recently, and wondered why it took me so long.

I hadn't timed it one way or the other, and these were on separate trips, so things like hour thoroughly I back flushed between trips and the quality of the water could also have made a difference. However, it makes sense when you think about water pressure and potential energy.

On another note: What are you using as your dirty water bag? It looks interesting.

Didn't read the entire thread, just first few posts… that said, you may want to look into the Sawyer 3-Way filter. It's slightly larger and heavier than the Mini / Squeeze, but it backflushes much better. You can use it in gravity or rig it for squeez I guess (mine was always used in gravity mode, but that isn't always convenient when you're on the go).

I've found the Mini to not backflush well and over time the flow rate begins to get pretty unbearable. I'm on my second Mini and thinking about switching back to my reliable Sawyer 3-Way. I know a few other people in the same boat, you're not alone.

So were you using the Mini or the Regular Squeeze?I may have missed it. It takes about 2 minutes 30 from the time I stop at a water source to the time I get back on trail. As in; stop, get out the bag and filter, fill bag, attach filter, filter 700ml into my bottle and the remainder into my mouth, unscrew filter and put away with bag. It takes about thirty seconds longer when I have to scoop water into the bag from a shallow source. That's with the regular size squeeze.

Cool trick I read about on here for back flushing without the syringe is using the cap that comes on the 700ml Smart Water bottles. It's the only bottle I use for my daily drinking. But the squirt cap is the perfect size to mate with the Sawyer. After filtering into the bottle, just mate the squirt cap to the nipple on the filter and squeeze the clean water back through it. Works pretty nice.

I've heard/read the Mini's can be a real PITA when it comes to flow rates. I've heard/read the same about the regular Squeeze, but far less than that of the Mini.

Obviously, YFRMV (Your Flow Rate May Vary :))