Steripen & Hydration Bladders

John,

If you had a quick release on the hoser mouth piece, then you could take off the mouth piece, and snap on a bottle, with the bottom cut off for the steripen, this serves as both the treatment vessel and a funnel, then raise the bottle above the pack to drain into the bladder.  As long as the air is removed from the bladder, the water should drain into the bladder.There was another thread on gravity filtration that went in to caps and quick connect options.  That would require the extra weight of the bottomless bottle and the quick releases, but eliminate removing the bladder from the pack.  Cycle as much as needed to fill the bladder then remove the bottle and return the mouth piece.  My 2 cents.

Cliff

I cut off the top of an old 2 L Platy bladder 3/4 up from the bottom. Use that as a scoop and use to treat with the Steripen, (1 liter is marked on the scoop) then pour that water into other containers. Then wrap the Steripen in the cut bladder and secure with a thick rubber band that produce (broccoli) comes with. Done.

Coming from a different angle, if you don’t like squeezing the water through the Sawyer why not fit the filter in-line?

Use the quick disconnects to fill the bladder with non filtered water then drink it through the Sawyer by having it in-line.

Ha, thought about that too. The solution is to simply carry dirty water and treat as needed.You can take the hoser and simply refill your Nalgene, treat and drink. So, the larger reservoir is always dirty.

I use two .5L GatorAid bottles for my hiking. For the long stretches between water supplies, I just drink from my bottles, refill & treat them as needed from a water source…in your case, from the pack reservoir. The larger 3L pouch in your pack can be emptied by gently pressing with your foot. Then you can make a couple minute stop as the bottles are emptied, refill, treat and go. Likely, after a couple hours of hiking, you will want a 2-3 minute break, anyway. You really don’t need to worry about refilling from your “clean” bottles. And treating only drinking water is more efficient with the batteries …excess water doesn’t need it… ie, water you will “cook” or wash-up with.

Wow, these are great suggestions. I was initially leaning toward using a cut-off platy/bottle to refill directly into my fast fill, but the idea of carrying dirty water is appealing because I can better track how much I’m drinking – another downside of the hoser is that I can’t see how much water is left in it. If I’m always draining into the Nalgene, I can count the liters. I’ll have to play around with a full pack and see how easy it is to drain from my reservoir into the Nalgene without removing the reservoir.

Mark – I also considered the inline solution, but part of what I don’t like about the mini is how difficult it becomes to use over time, even with regular backflushing (at least that has been my experience). I don’t want to be pulling hard on my hose every time I want a sip of water! I studied up, and while some people seem to like this solution, at least a few have complained of the difficulty I’ve described. I’m guessing it works better for people who go on shorter trips and can really clean out the filter in between with bleach and water pressure. Also, for my long waterless stretches, I would still have the problem of getting water from my other soft bottles into my bladder, to then pull through the inline!

Thanks again for your input!