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Posted by Bill S on April 26, 2007 at 11:55:38 am EDT
In reply to Re: Water Bottle filter posted by Gear Selection (Guest) on April 25, 2007 at 8:28:15 pm EDT

Mattman -

I think a lot of the responders missed what you were asking about, namely a "straw" through which you drink directly that filters the water or a water bottle that includes the filter, the idea being that you could avoid carrying a separate pump. Most of the responses were about filter pumps, most of which do have a method of attaching directly to the standard 1 liter Nalgene widemouth water bottle.

To answer your second question about getting enough water through the straw or combination water bottle, the straw is really for emergency use or small quantities, according to McNett (the manufacturer). You can drink almost as rapidly as through any regular straw, but you do have to suck fairly hard to do so. The combination bottle/filter that Katadyn makes had the advantage of being able to add a little pressure by squeezing the bottle, but basically it is the same as the Aquamira straw - you still have to suck on it more than a regular straw or than drinking from a regular bike-style water bottle.

The big advantage of the straw-filter or the Katadyn bottle/filter is that you have less weight to carry than if you carried a separate pump and regular water bottle or hydration bladder. But the lifetime before clogging of the straw-filter and Katadyn bottle/filter is much less than for even the smallest pumps (like the Katadyn Hiker Pro). And a small pump (like the smallest Katadyn, MSR, Sweetwater, etc) in combination with a full 1 liter Nalgene adds up to less than the weight of 2 one liter Nalgenes full of water. Plus many of the small backpacker-aimed pumps are serviceable in the field, which the Katadyn bottle/filter is not (well, you can replace the filter element in the field, but many of the pumps are cleanable in the field without replacing the filter element).

A big advantage of any filtration system over boiling and chemical treatments (chlorine tablets, chlorine dioxide, iodine) is the time involved. It takes a lot less time to pump a liter of water than the half hour or more that the chemical treatments require, plus the taste is a lot better, and it takes less time to pump a liter than it takes to get the stove out, light it, and boil the liter of water (actually, all that is needed is to raise the water temperature to 150 degrees F or greater). Filters also remove silt and other stuff which boiling and chemical treatments do not. But most filters, along with boiling and chemical treatments do not remove chemical contamination, like the mercury runoff from abandoned mines we have in parts of our local Santa Cruz Mountains (fish caught in Almaden Valley and the Guadalupe River have so much mercury that they are considered unsafe to eat even a few bites). As Ed G will tell you, a filter won't remove the sulfur taste from water from sulfur springs either.

Hope this is more directly to your original question.

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• Re: Water Bottle filter - Mattman (Guest) 21:17:46 04/26/2007
• Re: Water Bottle filter - Ed G 12:21:25 04/26/2007

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