Using a rigid bottle on the dirty side of a Sawyer Squeeze

[Lance M]

While section hiking the PCT the past few weeks I observed a number of thru-hikers with Sawyer Squeeze filters attached to rigid soda/water style bottles.

It seemed pretty simple; no separate scoop, no need to unpack/empty a cook pot to scoop, and easy to retrieve, drink from and replace on the fly. But I wondered how they dealt with 're-inflating' the collapsed bottle after a squeeze or two. After watching one hiker loosen the filter between squeezes to 're-inflate' the bottle, I thought there could be a better way.

A simple check valve of some sort seemed to be a good start. Here are some pictures of a check valve added to a Pepsi bottle. It works well and doesn't leak.

Duck-bill valve taken from aquarium check valve:

Duck-bill valve installed in appropriate size hole drilled with unibit:

Bubbles from valve during re-inflation:

Link to video: Windows Movie Format
Apple Quick Time Format

With the valve installed near the bottom of the bottle, the filter will even slowly gravity feed. (Gravity feed doesn't work well with the valve installed near the top, because head pressure inside the bottle keeps the valve shut.

Hope this is interesting and helpful.

[Desert Dweller]

Very cool.

[Kevin Schneringer]

I have been looking at the Jetflow kit for using soft bottles and reusing rigid bottles. As my hydration bladder kit is a 2L platypus soft bottle with a hose and bite valve attached but the vacuum causes problems.
This might be a simple and LESS expensive alternative to let the vacuum out.

Plus it seems like a very nice set up to use the rigid bottle on the squeeze! Nice find!

[diego dean]

Nice idea, but what happens if the check valve falls out? Have you secured it with some type of glue or just rely on a tight hole? If there is a good way to secure this I think it would be really neat and simple method.

[Christopher Kuzak]

This looks like a great idea.

[diego dean]

I just tried this out, and Ill be damned…it works great!! The check valve is somewhat rubbery, so just drilling a smaller diameter hole and forcibly working it through the bottle seems to provide a very tight seal. This will definitely simplify things for me on the trail.

Thanks!!

[Daryl and Daryl]

Very clever. Thanks for the post.

[A W T]

Thanks so much for this info!

Loosening and tightening was too slow.

[Author]

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