Sawyer Squeeze vs Aquamira Drops. The argument.

[Jake D]

not sure why it's any less reliable than AM. if the water goes through you can be pretty confident it's clean. with AM once you wait a certain amount of time you should be confident it's clean. if anything AM has more variables with mixing, time, water temp.

[Harald Hope]

for very bad water, after filtering it with a sawyer, drops could be useful I suppose to target viruses, then I think you can just use bleach though since all the larger organisms have been removed by the filter.

Also, for trips over 3 days you should probably bring the 60ml syringe for backflushing if you want to actually reach the rated life span of the sawyer. That adds about 35 grams.

Jake D, exactly, aquamira has a lot more room for error and failure, you have to measure it right, mix it right, let it sit right, then pick the right time/temp combination, accurately, every time, so it's odd seeing its weaknesses noted as a strength. The holes in the sawyer are physical, ie, they are I believe 0.1 micron big, period, unless you freeze it, but how hard is it to not freeze something if you are aware? Not very. Put in sock in sleeping bag at night, end of story.

The sawyer is easy, fill bag, attach, let drip into clean water, drink. I'm glad I don't care about a few ounces for stuff like this, heh, makes the choices a lot easier in terms of using good tools.

The strength of poison drops is that if they are used properly they kill everything, which does matter in some cases, none that I've ever come across, but I'm sure it's valid in certain situations.

[Jake D]

Yep, i love mine. i did the coffee filter mod to keep larger stuff out of the main filter.

[Rick Reno]

http://www.thetranscript.com/news/ci_23392994/viral-outbreak-appalachian-trail-hikes-toward-pennsylvania

Im thnking about using both Sawyer AND AquaMira this summer… and if I don't quit Googling "AT norovirus" soon I might even get paranoid to start carrying a little bottle of bleach…

Speaking of AquaMira, I had a bottle cap brteak in my pack last weekend and now everything (except of course my drinking water) smells nicve and bleachy-clean.

[Jake D]

on the AT don't share food, drinks etc. wash hands after using bathroom, shelter logs, shaking hands etc

problem isn't the water.. it's people who aren't as hygienic as they should be.

[Josh Brock]

This crazy thing happened this weekend I went backpacking with these two guys that had sawyer systems and I had aquamira drops. We all stayed hydrated easily with out carrying excessive amounts of water and we were all light. This tells me its a question of preference.

[Stephen Barber]

Sounds like a good argument for a Steripen to me!

[Nick Gatel]

I have been backpacking for almost 50 years and have never used a filter or other mechanical/electronic purification device. I sure see a lot of threads about these gizmos that failed.

I used iodine until 2008. Since then CLO2, mostly tabs. Wonder how much cumulative weight I have saved.

Don't use GPS, cell phones, SPOTs, PLBs, music player or similar ilk. This is BackpackingLight, you know.

What would you folks have done back in the 1960's? Stay at home?

:)

[David Noll]

Nick,
Of course they would have stayed home. The vast majority of these kids weren't even born yet.

[Ian]

I've used iodine until a couple years ago when I realized that it didn't work against cryptosporidium and then changed to chlorine dioxide. What I like about iodine is that I can neutralize the taste with vitamin C. My experiences with CLO2 tablets have been as enjoyable as drinking pool water. I've heard that the drops are better but I haven't tried them yet.

I've had no problems with my Steripen Adventurer Opti but I just purchased the Sawyer a couple weeks ago and I'm officially a convert. I used it last weekend paired up with a PET bottle which I prefer to the squeeze bags. In less than a minute, I filled my son's water bottle, topped off mine, and we were on our way. I just keep the filter on the bottle and drink as I go.

I carry CLO2 tablets for equipment failure. My system is a few ozs heavier than carrying drops but I really like how it functions so I'm willing to take the hit. I travel overseas enough to justify keeping the Steripen.

[Yoyo]

Tony,

I'm glad to hear that you are alive and well and haven't died yet from using your Sawyer filter. What have you been doing all these years to maintain its integrity? I've been using a very similar system since circa 2009, if you look back at my longish thread on the topic back then, you'll recall the discussions we had on the topic.

I too am wondering if there is any benefit (in terms of ease of use or weight) in switching to a Sawyer squeeze. To me, it seems easier to let gravity do the work rather than having to squeeze a bag, which will eventually fail from repeated pressure. My question is: Can the squeeze be incorporated into a more efficient gravity filter than what I currently have? Right now, my system is as follows (from top to bottom):

Platy "Clean Stream" (now gravityworks) 4.0 L dirty bag with quick disconnect features
Platy "dirty" tubing to connect to Sawyer filter, about 30 inches
Sawyer filter, circa 2009 (the black one)
Short length of tubing and male attachment to insert into clean hydration tube

The whole system, sans my 3.0 Platy hoser hydration bladder (think of ditching this and going with two 1.0 Platy reservoirs on the outside pockets of my pack), weighs in around 6.7 oz. I could try shortening the dirty tubing to save weight, but I think based on my past empirical research having a longer tube helped speed up the filtration time.

Here is a pic of me standing on my kitchen counter trying to awkwardly model the system:

[Tyler T]

David, you have basically what I came up with.

I just got back into backpacking and had a trip coming up with very short notice. I didn't have time to order anything online and had to make do with whatever REI had in stock. So I got a 1.8L Platy "Big Zip" and a Sawyer and… that was it. Cut off the Platy bite valve, cut off 6" more hose from the Platy to attach to the Sawyer clean side output, and finally, jam the Platy hose into the Sawyer dirty side input. Done. Easy. The Platy hose is left long to give fast flow rates, I would not recommend trimming it.

I suppose I could cut the bottom of a Sawyer bag off to make a scoop and buy an adapter to mate the hose to the Sawyer bag-née-scoop. That would save some weight, but then I lose the ability to carry extra (dirty) water for a dry trip. So I think I might just stick with this.

[Derek M.]

I've got to disagree with Jake D here, simply because I cannot see how you can be certain that the water coming out of a Sawyer Squeeze filter is clean just because it "goes through."

How do you know there is not a small crack or leak in the filtering element? The water would still go through in that instance, but it would not be filtered and therefore might not be "clean."

My biggest problem with the Sawyer filters is that you can't inspect them for flaws. You simply have to go on faith that the element is working. That's fine when you are fairly certain that the water you're filtering is clean to begin with, but we've all been to that dinky little pond that is the only water source for 10 miles and been forced to take water from it. And what have I always seemed to do in this instance? I've chemically treated the water after I've filtered it, just to be sure.

That might just be me, but I suspect others do it too. And if that's the case, I have to ask myself why I'm even bothering with a filter if I don't trust it.

I've tried a Sawyer filter before but I just couldn't find myself trusting it when I needed it most (but that's just me). I haven't had as much of a problem with my MSR Miniworks EX, which is fully field serviceable and the ceramic filtering element is easily inspected and cleaned. The only problem with that filter is that it's not the fastest one out there and it's relatively heavy, certainly compared to the more recent options that have popped up in the last few years.

So, I find myself back to square one now, using Aquamira drops as my sole means of water treatment on most trips. I can see the chemical reaction take place with my own eyes that activates the chlorine dioxide (with the solution turning yellow), so I always know if the chemicals are "good" and can confidently drink the resulting water that is treated.

If you are afraid of "floaties" then just place a bandana or a shirt (or any piece of clean fabric) over the mouth of your water bottle as you fill it. That will take care of most macro particles.

Anyway, this is just my opinion. I certainly don't think that people are "suckers" for using Sawyer filters (hey, I've tried them myself), and I'm guessing that their failure rate is relatively low, I just can't seem to trust them myself too much, so I've personally avoided filtering my water with them lately.

To each his/her own though. I think that most of this worrying about filtering water can be avoided by simply choosing your water sources carefully– that, at the very least, will dramatically decrease your overall odds ever getting sick. In the end, I think this is all just a game of odds, just like nearly everything else when you get right down to it.

[Jake D]

Pretty sure the only way through the Sawyer filter is through filtering elements. The only method of failure that i know of is freezing.

i use the coffee filter circle to avoid "floaties" to increase time between backflushes.

How long do you wait with you drops? 5min… 15 min.. 30 min. how cold is the water? to technically be sure you need to wait 30mins.

unless you've had a problem while filtering with a Sawyer then you have no basis to not trust them.

my use is a drop in the barrel (im sorry…sorry) compared to Balls and Sunshine who have used theirs on the CDT for 1500mi so far.

[Derek M.]

Jake D,
You are right in that the only way through the Sawyer filter is to go through the filtering element. That is, of course, assuming that the element is intact. If you think about it, there must be a seal between the filtering element and the hard plastic casing. There might be glue involved at this junction (though maybe not). Either way, it is a point of failure.

Another point of failure is the filtering element itself. It is clearly not indestructible or else you wouldn't have to worry about freeze fracturing it. We know that ice crystals can cause the filtering element to break, so what else can cause failure? The point is that we don't know and we can't find out because the filter is basically a black box!

I also don't agree that the default position is to inherently trust a filter just because you have never had a problem with it. I do not trust the design of the Sawyer filters because I cannot inspect them (again, this is just me, and it's a little paranoid… I'm aware of that). The fact that I have not had a problem with one yet does not change how I feel about the design.

And for the record, I have had problems with the Sawyer in-line 3-way filter. The first one I bought had to be returned because it wouldn't pass much water (it took about 20 minutes to get a liter of water through, even with lots of pressure). I tried backflushing to no avail. I think it was simply a "dud." I still don't know what was wrong with that filter (and guess what, I couldn't inspect it to find out!). A failure like that sure would suck in the backcountry…

Ok, now to make peace. You are absolutely right that tons of people have used the Sawyer filter over thousands of trail miles and have been just fine. You are also right that chemical drops are not a totally fool proof system either (many variables such as temperature and turbidity can affect the effectiveness of the chemical treatment). But there is no perfect system! That's the whole point, and the reason that there is a multi-page thread on the subject that we are posting on currently!

I am not trying to bash Sawyer filters. A lot of people have used them in the backcountry and have not gotten sick (presumably because of the filter, but we will never know because we don't have an appropriate control group with which to compare sickness rates).

I guess the main point I wanted to get across in my post is that one potential weakness of the Sawyer filters is that you cannot inspect them for structural integrity without breaking the product itself. I didn't see that discussed on the this thread before my post so I thought I would bring it up. That's all :)

[Jerry Adams]

"We know that ice crystals can cause the filtering element to break, so what else can cause failure?"

Sawyer says they don't know if freezing can damage filter so replace if it freezes.

The tubes are flexible because that's what happens when you backflush, so if they froze and expanded a little it wouldn't matter. If the whole filter is full of water and freezes then something will probably break.

But I agree, the housing is opaque so you don't know whether it's working or not. If you try to blow through filter and you notice any significant flow then I think it's broken, but's that what a different hollow tube filter manufacturer says, and that's not very exact. Too bad the housing isn't clear, then you could see the tubes.

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