Never use bleach in a Platypus

@David D — river or tap water when cleaning? When I used BeFree I was told never to use tap water as chemicals in water will excelerate clogging. Is Playtpus saying tap water is ok to filter?

@H W

Minerals in tap water can plug it up.  The harder the water, the worse.

In the field backflush with filtered water

At home after a trip, backflush with distilled, forward flush with vinegar (soak an hour to free mineral deposits), forward and backflush with distilled, then use the bleach solution for a final forward flush and then seal the Quickdraw with the solution in it.

Next trip, run some distilled through it and do an integrity check before you head out

Bleach and vinegar create chlorine gas which is toxic, so the intermediate distilled rinse is important

Bleach can react with tap water to deposit minerals so always mix bleach with distilled (shout out to Jerry)

@David D — excellent info. Just what I was looking for. Thank you.

I thought it was bleach + ammonia = chlorine gas

Not that that changes your conclusions :)

Ammonia and bleach creates chloramine

Vinegar and bleach create chlorine gas

A few other things that shouldn’t be mixed with bleach:

https://www.skokie.org/1023/Dangers-of-Mixing-Household-Chemical-Cle

ahh…

Bleach is nasty stuff.  I try not to use it.  I used to have a swimming pool which required bleach.  Now just the toilet and shower, occasionally

Chlorine combined with organic compounds can create unwanted byproducts. Chlorimine is a bit more stable. Chances are you used an ammonia product in your pool as well. Chlorimine is often preferred for water sanitation. It can still kill you. The amount in your drinking water is minimal, especially if you have old pipes. I find a drop of Dawn is all I need to clean my vessels as well as a clogged filter. Rinse well.

I don’t have the impression that Dawn is a particularly effective disinfectant, and I think that’s part of the goal of an end-of-season cleaning. There are obviously quaternary ammonium detergents that have disinfectant properties, and I have some that I use for other purposes. However, very dilute bleach followed by copious rinsing is established to be convenient, effective, inexpensive, and safe, IMO.

Disinfecting doesn’t necessarily clean. If its clean, it doesn’t need disinfecting.

You don’t find the Dawn reduces flow that’s hard to clear out of the filter?

I only really use the Dawn when the flow is restricted.  It does leave a flavor that takes a bit of rinsing. Something like Dr. Bronners might be a better choice. Generally, I just use water. Seal it in a baggie. Flush it when I put it up, then again  before use.

consumer reports says not to use disinfectants like quatenary ammonia or bleach for cleaning

just use dish soap like Dawn to remove organic matter and oils

there are microbes all over.  Don’t worry about it.  If there is no organic matter there won’t be enough microbes to matter.

and, there are exceptions, like if you have a noro virus infection

maybe this applies to water filters

I never recommended bleach for cleaning, I just said that Dawn doesn’t disinfect, if that is your goal. Personally, for long-term storage, I prefer not to rely only on cleaning and drying, since disinfection is so easy and cheap.

I will also add that many quaternary ammonium compounds are excellent detergents, not just disinfectants, and I can assure you from my firsthand experience that they are widely used in lab environments for cleaning. There are a huge number of quat formulations and they have many applications; you will find CTAB for example, widely used in consumer products. Cationic surfactants aren’t so widely used for dishwashing because they don’t foam very much, and people have the intuition that detergents that don’t foam, don’t clean. But that isn’t true, in general. Consumer Reports is not my go-to source for scientific information.

And finally, since there seems to be a lot of opinions flying around about bleach, I will just mention that scientifically tested guidelines (EPA, CDC, WHO, etc.) for using bleach for point-of-use disinfection of drinking water recommend two drops (about 0.1 mL) per liter. So while you may not like the taste, the amount of bleach we are generally talking about in this thread is considered safe to drink, even without emptying the container and rinsing. As I mentioned previously, after a brief soak in dilute bleach, I empty the container and do several rinses.

Dan, that’s much lower bleach concentration than recommended by the filter manufacturers.  Not doubting your data for water disinfecting but does such a low concentration still work to disinfect hardware (i.e. the filter; not just the water itself) and with such a low concentration does it require a much longer contact time to disinfect?

The amount of chlorine used is dependent on the organic matter present. If there’s no organic matter for microbes to feed on, two drops is plenty. What soap will do is break the bonds so organic matter and microbes can be rinsed away. If its clean, you’re only disinfecting the water.

Dan, that’s much lower bleach concentration than recommended by the filter manufacturers.

Some do, but it depends on the manufacturer. Platypus recommends only 2–5 drops per liter, the others are probably overdoing it.

https://support.cascadedesigns.com/s/article/How-do-I-disinfect-my-Platypus-hydration-system

Turns out it depends on the system.

For the quickdraw they recommend “In your dirty reservoir or bottle mix 2.5mL (1/4 Tsp) of bleach with 1L of tap water.”

The Gravity works manual recommends 2 drops per L.

Both systems use the same filter hole diameter so its a mystery why these aren’t the same

No mystery. Somebody just made it up. They do that.