UV water treatment including water containers

Hi Charlie,

I've recently switched to the Ultra. I've used the Opti in the past and have never used the freedom.

I have nothing against Nalgene bottles but it sounds like you're looking to cut weight and if so, there's better out there from a weight perspective.

A couple options for treating your water with the Freedom. First of all, it's my understanding that the Freedom will fit in a Gatorade bottle. That's worth considering if true.

I've found having some sort of water scoop to be critical when filling my bottles from shallow water sources. My scoop du jour is a recommisioned Mountain House bag. This is a multi use item as a cozy of sorts if you eat out of a freezer bag to re hydrate food (to be clear, food in ziplock in MH bag) and as a water scoop. You can also fill the MH bag up with water and treat it with the steripen before transferring the water into your super duper ul water container of choice. You may find that having two of these will be necessary; one for scooping and another for treatment.

My system as of today:

Steripen Ultra (I've owned this less than two weeks and have only used it for urban backpacking in India)

Aquafina water bottle with smart water flip cap. I drink most of my plain ol' water out of this. Since I have the Steripen Ultra, I can treat my water in this bottle.

32 fluid oz Gatorade bottle. I use this to mix drinks and for the rare occasion when I need to carry more than a single liter of water.

62 fluid oz Evernew bag. I fill this up with raw water when I'm dry camping.

Mountain House bag/water scoop.

Edit: I haven't weighed any of them in a while and can't remember what they are off the top of my head.

You know, there are lots of electronic devices like this that are battery powered. Half of the users claim that the battery dies too early, and it just seems too lossy. The other half of the users claim that the battery is normal. For some, it changes depending on weather and the phase of the moon. What's up with that?

Both halves may be correct. Lots of little electronic devices like this are built on a small fiberglass circuit board. When the little board was being fabricated, either they cleaned it well, or else they did not clean it well, and that happens before the board is coated and then populated with components. Sometimes the factory gets sloppy, and they clean the board with impure water. That leaves a trace of residue on the surface between the copper circuit traces, but only in some cases. Once you put a battery voltage on the traces, these minute residues can begin to conduct electricity, and then the path gets worse when metals from one trace are electrochemically deposited toward the other trace. Then you have a serious path of battery drain, and there isn't much you can do except to remove the battery between uses.

Alternatively, if you know where the actual microscopic fault path might be, you can go in and look with a microscope. If you see something that looks like tiny green tree branches or green mold, then that is it. Those are copper salts. If this is happening, you can go in and scrape clean the circuit board between those traces to grind up the copper salts. Some use an xacto knife and some use a dremel tool. Once the copper fault is gone, you can paint over it with some clear fingernail polish. Then you might be good for a long time.

–B.G.–

"You know, there are lots of electronic devices like this that are battery powered. Half of the users claim that the battery dies too early, and it just seems too lossy. The other half of the users claim that the battery is normal. For some, it changes depending on weather and the phase of the moon. What's up with that?"

There's been some talk that the battery of the freedom will suffer when cold (Manfred I believe) and that it's best to keep it in your pocket.

There are many ways that an electronic device can fail. If you are lucky, it was designed by somebody who knew what they were doing and they were familiar with the use environment, hot, cold, wet, vibration, or whatever. Most batteries will decay in the cold, although there are some that won't decay very much.

The more things that I put in my pocket, the more things that get lost.

–B.G.–

My Opti was reliable which gave me confidence to buy the Ultra through REI.

The ultra isn't as pocketable as the freedom but can treat more water on a single charge. I'm going to test it at room temperature and at 40*F over the next few weeks to get some sort of idea of what kind of life I can expect from a single charge at 70*F and 40*F.

To be continued.

I forgot to add to the list above, I have the Miller ML-102 Universal USB Smart Charger (Version 7)
http://www.fasttech.com/product/1137904-miller-ml-102-universal-usb-smart-charger-version

and Panasonic 18650 battery

http://www.amazon.com/Panasonic-NCR18650B-3400mAh-Rechargeable-Batteries/dp/B00DHXY72O/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1421262770&sr=8-1&keywords=panasonic+18650

to recharge the Ultra with in field. I'm planning on buying the H600 headlamp and have other devices that can be recharged with them so it's a multi use item but worth mentioning as it's a potentially important aspect of my water treatment system.

I've been using Steripen UV treatment for about seven years now. My complete kit is the Steripen Adventurer, a small silnylon stow bag and the bottom 60% of a Platypus roll-up water bag. My water bottle is typically a 1 liter Schweppes club soda bottle. The cut-off Platy bag was repurposed after it sprung a leak near the neck. It serves as a water scoop and as a treatment/stirring container. After the water is treated, the Platy can be pinched into a pouring spout and used to fill the water bottle. This is the same idea as that of using an empty Mountain House package mentioned above. The cut off Platy weighs about 0.5 oz and the Steripen weighs a bit over 3 oz. I also use a Sawyer Squeeze filter and the cut off Platy comes with that too as a water scoop and pouring spout for filling the dirty water squeeze bag.

I have had no problems with reliability with the Steripen as long as I use quality batteries (Panasonic for example) and take the battery out when I'm not using it. And, I take the instructions along since I don't always remember what the LED signals mean.

Charlie, for the same weight as your hard-sided 16oz Nalgene you could get a soft-side 32oz one. Keep in mind that the SteriPEN Freedom can, in fact, treat a full liter of water. Other SteriPENs have a button that lets you select 48 second (0.5L) or 96 second (1L) treatments, but the Freedom only does 48 seconds. Just do that twice when you're treating a full liter—it says so in the manual.

And yes, the Freedom does fit inside a 32oz Gatorade bottle. If you search around on the forums, you'll find some people who have made modified Gatorade caps that seal around the SteriPEN for inverted use.

I got the Freedom because a lot of my trips are short, and for the ones that are longer I can just bring an external battery.

Yeah, I'm always ready to discount a few Amazon reviews as just crazy or flukes. More than a few (or reports here) count for more. In any case, mine holds charge while sitting in a drawer unused for months, so no short circuit.

Just to be clear, the issue posted about cold was not battery damage but immediate function. So probably I only need to warm it up on cold mornings (I'm not winter camping). I tend to discount most reports of actual Li battery damage from cold, at least down to 0 F, but maybe an expert can chime in if I'm mistaken.

Back to containers, it seems that I could reduce weight with gatorade-type bottles. Question: Can these handle hot coffee? Two of these could satisfy my modest need for water carrying.