Why Sawyer Squeeze, Membrane Solutions, and H2GO Prime?
During this past winter, I managed to assemble a fully functional gravity based system to take non-potable fresh water from most ponds, lakes, streams, puddles, etc, filter, and send it, fully sealed from collection to final output, direct to bladders and water bottles for final sanitation and distribution.
Right now, its primary capacity is based on collecting, filtering, and sanitizing up to six liters at a time but can be scaled up to 10L of non-potable water out to, if needed, up to 10L potable water in order to fully support the daily needs for a small group of people.
Though it won’t necessarily render water contaminated by industrial, agricultural, or radiological waste or seawater as potable — need a fully portable reverse osmosis system for that — it will remove dirt, sediment, microplastics, and other suspended contaminants while killing anything microbial in the water.
It’s also flexible enough to add a second filter, with activated charcoal, in-line and downstream from the primary filter, to help remove some additional contaminants that primarily affect taste. The second filter can also be attached to the sanitized water bladders to filter out any chlorine, plastic, rubber, or odd tannin taste.
What I’ve put together uses:
- 2L Cnoc VectoX Water Container with wide-opening top and a Hydrapak Plug-n-Play 42mm Cap.
- A brewer’s bag for initial filtration. It fits into the Cnoc (or the Membrane Solutions gravity filter bag below) to filter out crap down to 25 microns. This keeps the primary filters from clogging too quickly and needing to be back-flushed out right away.
- Sawyer squeeze filter. It’s rated to filter about one-hundred thousand gallons of water (YMMV, of course). The input end has a Hydrapak 28mm filter adapter screwed into it and the other end has a Hydrapak quick-connect nipple that plugs into the Cnoc bag’s cap. The output end has a 28mm cleaning coupler that can screw directly onto a water bottle or can have an inline connector attached to an output hose on one end and a Hydrapak quick-connect nipple that connects directly to a collection bladder with another 42mm plug-and-play cap.
- 2L Hydrapak Seeker collapsible water bladder with a 42mm plug-n-play cap. This collects filtered water. From there I can fully sterilize the water using a chlorine based disinfectant (I have the means to do so using salt water brine hydrolysis), chlorine dioxide, or by boiling it later.
- Membrane Solutions 6L Gravity Straw Water Filter (distributed by Simpure) for additional flexibility and as a backup filter. Its filter “straw” can be connected directly inline or via 28mm coupler to make use of its charcoal filter to improve taste or it can be used on its own, albeit at a lower filtering capacity of roughly a thousand gallons. Its membrane filter and charcoal filters can also be fully replaced rather than having to replace the entire “straw.”
- Chemical disinfectant via H2GO’s Prime unit. It generates a chlorine/hydrogen peroxide solution at the correct concentrations to kill anything that passes through the physical filters. Its battery is chargeable via USB-C or built in solar panel and is rated to last about sixteen thousand gallons worth of water to be disinfected. Even though most filters will trap anything biological larger than 0.1 microns, including bacteria, protozoa, and cysts, some may still pass through while all viruses are much smaller and will easily pass through. You can also use other purification drops, tablets, UV pens, boiling, etc.
The entire system can also connect a hand or electric, or portable reverse osmosis filter pump, inline, between collection bags and output storage since the silicone water lines are all the same diameter.
All in all, it’s somewhere under 2lbs in weight and all fits into a basic drawstring tote bag.
We all need a portable and effective water filtration and sanitation solution
Imagine trying to transport enough water for a weekend camping trip or festival? Or, better yet, imagine getting a boil water advisory, your town’s pipe purging turning your faucet water brown, or losing power and pressure because of stormy weather (“super El Niño” conditions are expected by the end of the summer), and all you have is what’s in your hot-water heater, about 100 gallons and whatever else you can collect as rain?
Imagine a hurricane causing catastrophic damage to critical infrastructure and that MAGAt cunt is STILL in office. Do you truly think that pig won’t politicize recovery funds in order to punish entire populations that his dementia-addled sponge-brain decided deserve it?
If you don’t think that access to potable water is a national security issue, look at how combatants in the Middle East are actively targeting each others’ water-desalination plants while global cargo transport capacity has been completely destabilized all due to the capricious whims of a mentally incompetent pedophile.
