Help me lighten/refine my approach to water treatment (FirstNeed vs. filter+tabs vs. steripen vs. ??)

Hi Diane,

You've already identified both the problem and the resolution. Absolutely, the water needs to be relatively clear for UV to work. To do this, pre-filtering, settling, flocculation or some combination are needed. For glacier silt (going from memory as it's been a long time since I last backpacked Rainier Park) several layers of cloth or a coffee filter do a decent job, although really fine particles seem to still get through.

My caution about relying on a regular filter is they can clog quickly without similar pre-filtering or settling, so the routine shouldn't be terribly different from UV. Same goes for chemical treatment.

Cheers,

Rick

Diane:

IMO, that's the one significant limitation of our current UV technology. I tried the Steripen about 4 or 5 years ago and was faced with brown river water churned up after an overnight rainstorm. Luckily, my hiking partner had a traditional filter! One can, of course, wait for the sediments to settle, then draw and treat the cleared up water — but that takes time — and an extra container of sorts.

But when the water is clear (or reasonably clear) — the Steripen is a joy to use! I no longer use it when hiking — but I always carry it when traveling (hosteling). Tap water may be biologically dicey in many parts of the world, but it's reasonably clear and OK tasting most of the time.

Glacial silt is pretty fine, pre-filter won't do much, and it takes a long time to settle out.

From what I understand, the water has to be pretty murky to be a problem for UV treatment.
It is important to swish the water around and you may have double blast it if you think it needs it.

Although glacier water has that slight white tint, I don't think it is bad enough to defeat UV in swirling water.
Again, if you want to play it safe double blast it. It won't hurt anything except your battery life.

ACtually i may be able to ditch my filter all together if I can obtain this material:

http://www.buyactivatedcharcoal.com/activated_carbon_fiber_cloth

Right now i use a prefilter made out of 1-micron material that i just pour my water into, aligning it over the dirty bag and letting it fall right in. Works good. Well if i can use this material, I can sew 1-2 layers of it onto my current prefilter and maybe ditch my GAC filter all together. Without a doubt it would be the lightest 1 micron removing carbon filter ever. The weight penalty would be practically nothing to sew on a few layers of that stuff. Only problem is i cant find a distributor that will sell it in small amounts. This is would significantly lighten my filtering setup.

Ike,

I didn't follow your link yet, but you can buy filters with charcoal (embedded in the fabric? Sandwiched between layers?) at any pet store that has stuff for fish tanks. Maybe I'll be a few and cut them open to check 'em out. The only problem I have found is that most/many of the filter "foams" in sheets, blocks, etc do not list pore size.

It might be worth buying one at a time before searching out online vendors where you can buy in bulk.

I'll post a pic in a minute with the latest AC filter I'm putting together.

One thing to note, the link that i mentioned, the material is 100% activated carbon. The whole sheet is all activated carbon itself, i think this is fairly unique from speaking with John @ buyactivatedcharcoal.com. I dont think you would find that in the pet store one.

Also they appear to offer samples instead of large sheets. I'll have to get some samples. If i could get some and it worked. Would i even need to have a clean bag since it would just be a dirty bag then a hose then a clean bag with no filter in between? I'll have to think about it.

That activated carbon cloth looks interesting.

Could be great layered to get rid of possible chemical bad stuff in water. You would still need chemical or UV to kill the organisms.

Of course it should improve the taste of the water, especially if you do use chemical treatments.

Ive been trying to refine my filtering methods for a long time now, and something I've been thinking about recently is using one of those 1 micron biodiesel screens to filter water into my platypus, and then putting a few drops of bleach in there and waiting a while. The 1 micron should filter anything big, and then the bleach will kill off any tiny things. The filter plus a small dirty container would only weigh like 2 ounces.
Thoughts?

The AC fabric is a bit pricey, but doable.

I also notice that they have activated carbon clothing.
I'll bet you wouldn't get synthetic funk from wearing those:-)