Renovo Trio water filter?

Great idea….basically a mini sawyer with a active charcoal element for removing chemicals and improving the taste of poor water.

Minor weight penalty for having the active charcoal filter.

Having both around depending on the quality of the water sources you might encounter would not be a bad thing….just taking one or the other on a trip.

How much are the replacement cartridges?

Tony

Renovo had the Trio tested by a couple of labs, and posted part of the results:
http://www.renovowater.com/pages/testing-report

Basically, they filtered water from the Jordan River in Utah, and spiked the water with a few heavy metals, diesel fuel, gasoline, and other contaminants, at just above EPA Maximum Contaminant Levels, i.e. just above what’s allowed in drinking water.

Except there are no MCLs for diesel and gasoline, so they apparently picked a number they liked.

The Trio reduced all the measured contaminants to undetectable levels.

Except for one E Coli that got through somehow, which they state “could possibly have been caused by contamination from bacteria on the external portion of the filter spout”.

Except they left the units off of many of the numbers.

And they left out the “before” measurements for many contaminants.

And they tested for chlorine removal but didn’t report any results.

Hmmm.

So if the water you are filtering is just like what they tested, you might be fine.

If it’s contaminated even a little bit more or differently, or you have trouble keeping the filter spout clean – who knows?

— Rex

Tony, the hollow fiber membrane filter replacement is $12: http://www.renovowater.com/products/renovo-trio-uf-hollow-fiber-membrane-replacement-element

The carbon filter replacement is $10:
http://www.renovowater.com/products/renovo-trio-activated-carbon-element-replacement

Both are supposedly good for 1,000 liters.

Yeah, I would love to see someone independently & rigorously test the water filters we are using. Until that happens, though, we're stuck with what companies choose to publish.

Re contamination, that's an issue with any filter that we all need to keep in mind as we use them. Although the fact that a lab apparently contaminated a product they were testing makes me a little concerned about their test procedures in general.

(I'm not worried about chlorine removal since municipal tap water typically has much higher concentrations of chlorine than natural sources).

I am a big fan if sawyer filters, but this looks like a great filter. I don't hike anywhere that even remotely needs a 0.05 micron filter, but it's nice to know that one exists with a reasonable flow rate and at a reasonable price.