Are water treatment methods what the manufacturers claim?

Interesting article about the claims made by water treatment manufacturers. It singles out Camelbak’s inline UV treatment (the AllClear), but it could also be applied to the SteriPen. Sawyer’s claims are also scrutinized. I’d been contemplating a Sawyer system, due to it being light and compact, but it hasn’t been readily available here, possibly due to it not being approved by Canadian regulatory agencies.

I’ve been meaning (for a very long time now) to replace the Steri-Pen I have with a self made gravity filter. I have some misgivings about the Steri-Pen, but it still works, and as such have continued to use it. I think Katadyn will likely get my money for a Hiker Pro replacement cartridge. I’ll use it to make the gravity filter system. A bit heavier and more expensive perhaps, but they seem more trustworthy. 

http://indefinitelywild.gizmodo.com/uv-water-purifiers-are-bullshit-and-so-are-some-filters-1704387492

Slurp’mups

This is the first of several components that are meant to accompany the EscapePod™.

I’ve been using hydration bladders for a whole bunch of years. A few different brands. They all have their pros and cons. Just like water bladders in general. Personally I like that they allow me to carry a good sized supply of water. While carrying all that weight isn’t so fun, this time of year I drink a lot of water. Not to mention that sources of potable water are often quite a distance apart, even here where I live. Streams that flowed like a torrent in spring or fall, are sometimes a barely there trickle in summer. Being able to stock up is good. Having that hose right near my face, means I’ll probably drink more water over the course of a day. Also good. The strikes against them are that they can be a bit finicky. Refilling them can sometimes be a real nuisance. In winter that tube has a tendency to freeze up, but that can be overcome to a degree by blowing into the tube to push all the water back into the bladder itself. Another downside is that it’s often hard to gauge how much is left in the bladder. With a bottle that is in your hand when you’re drinking from it, it’s much easier to tell if you need to stock up on water. The Platypus bladders I had were a real pain since any sort of inadvertent pressure against the bite valve would cause water to come gushing out. If my pack toppled over and I didn’t notice it right away, a lot of water could leak out. The CamelBaks I have now have a shutoff valve that remedies that, but of course, you still have to make sure you actually engage that shutoff valve for it to work.

My big issue with them is invariably how to carry them. I’ve tried carrying them on my back, under a pack. That lasted a minute or two. Many packs have a pocket or area to put the bladder, inside the pack. That keeps all that weight near the back. That’s nice, but it take up a considerable amount of room in the pack, and having to refill that thing is always a real challenge. When you’re at home and you put the bladder in, and pack everything around it - great. Trying to wrestle a full 3 liter water bladder back into a full pack - yeah right. Having to half unpack your bag at a creekside, and prevent a bunch of stuff sacks from getting coated in muck or not roll down the embankment into the creek - uh, no. Not to mention, after having a bladder leak inside a pack, I’m still always a bit leery about it. Everything in my pack is in waterproof bags, but it’s still always in the back of my mind.

Carrying them on the back of a pack puts a lot of weight further from your center of gravity. Carrying them on the side of a pack works a bit better, but the load needs to be balanced. 3 liters of water on one side and nothing to counter balance that weight on the other side is noticeable. 

The other issue for me is that when I head off on a day trip, I then need to remove it from my main pack and find some way to integrate it onto a day pack set up. Preferably with as little futzing and fidgeting as possible.

I got an Emdom H2O Carrier. While it is a very nicely thought out and well constructed piece of gear, it’s just way too much for me. The basic idea was sound, so I decided to use it as a starting point to design something that would better suit me.

The front. I built this thing with three layers. An outer layer of 1000D Cordura, a middle layer of insulation (Radiantex. I got it for making cozies. There might be something better for hydration bladders, but it’s what I had), and an inner layer of 420D packcloth. I wanted to avoid as much as possible sewing through all three layers, so everything was sewn to the outer layer of Cordura, then the other two layers were added to form a sandwich if you will.

Inside of the back.

Outside of the back.
The elastic covering over the tube hole was sewn through the outer layer of Cordura, but the edge binding tape surrounding it was sewn through all layers.

Putting binding tape around the outside edge of something is tough enough, but around the inside edge of something is a real challenge. Brutal.

The center divider panel. I cut a hole through all three layers...

...and put a metal grommet on it. I usually button hole my drain holes, but opted to use a metal grommet for the first time. I’ve used grommet presses in sign shops before and they do a nice job of flanging the other side. All I had was a little grommet setter, a base and a die you tap with a mallet and it doesn’t do nearly as nice a job. Essentially splits it into several pieces and then very crudely bends them back. Oh well, it works and since it’s on the inside anyway....

Then I carefully sewed a piece of webbing over it, on the four corners, onto the outer layer of Cordura.

The zipper was sewn in between two pieces of 1½" webbing. 

I opted to take a piece of Cordura, double it and sew it over one of the pieces of webbing to form a protective flap over the zipper.

The two center portions attached and sewn to the back.

Double checking to see that all my measuring panned out properly. And it did. A full 3 liter CamelBak fit perfectly. The dimensions of it are 43 cm (17") high, 15 cm (6") wide, and 7½ cm (3") deep.

And that’s it completed. I opted to only put a tube hole on one side since I knew I would always carry it on the right side.

I also put two ladder locks on the bottom of the front since I was afraid that the weight of all that water might tend to pull it downwards. Or that as the water is drunk from the bladder, the connector straps which would have been tight when full, would then become quite slack, causing it to slide down. The idea was that I might put two straps on the right side of the EscapePod and run them through the ladder locks to act as a sling, should that prove to be the case. I need to get some time in with this thing to see how necessary that actually is.

And there it is attached to the EscapePod.

Mounted to the EscapePod™. You can see what I mean by the Slurp’mups sliding down a bit when the amount of water in it decreases and the tension of the straps consequently loosens.

This is it attached to the side of the Kifaru Express. Gotta remember to add a third female buckle.

Very happy with the way it turned out. 

I debated whether to add a means of wearing this separately with some backpack straps. I opted not to, but I’m still wondering whether I should have. Like the EscapePod, I will likely make more than one of these. One with lighter material, make some little tweaks here and there, etc. Maybe I’ll add that option then.

And it weighs  almost 200 grams less than the Emdom model it replaced.

Oh yeah, and I sewed the whole thing by hand. :-)

6° of Cameldam

A part on my CamelBak broke a few years back. The Hydrolock, which acts as a shutoff, to prevent the inadvertent leaking of all of your water from the bite valve.

Rats.

I’m a regular at several outdoor and military gear related forums, so I asked if anyone else had run into this. Were they successful in repairing it, or did they have to bite the bite valve and buy a new one.

One poster who lists his location as being Amsterdam NL, says “Hey I have the very part you’re talking about, it’s of no use to me, it’s still in the packaging, and since you’re a fellow Dutchy, send me an email with your addy, and it’s yours.”

Wow, neat.

I send him an email with my address, thank him profusely and ask him where in Amsterdam he is, telling him where I lived.

He writes me back, and tells me that he lives in a town just on the outskirts, Diemen.

Hey I know Diemen really well. My dad coached baseball there, so my every weekend was spent in that town.
He writes me back to tell me that he used to play little league ball and baseball as a teenager with an organization called T.I.W. in Diemen.
Okay that’s weird, my dad coached for T.I.W. Turns out he played at the baseball field that I practically grew up on.

When his package arrived, I thought the address looked quite familiar. Turns out he lives in an apartment building one over from the building my brother lived in during the 70s.

Hammock – Escarpment

Set up along the Niagara Escarpment to get out of the rain. Not quite as secluded as I would have liked, but I needed to get sheltered, and I was reasonably sure that I was the only person crazy enough to be out in those conditions.

I needed to get water, but the rain kept coming down hard. I decided to wait for the rain to abate a bit, but it never really let up. Not to mention that I could see the water that was roiling in the streams was getting muddier as it went on. Decided just to put my collapsible sink and a Nalgene underneath the points where the water was streaming off the tarp. Worked beautifully. No squatting awkwardly by a stream, trying to balance a bottle. In an hour and ten minutes I had collected 6 liters of water. Kept transferring it into a 3L Camelbak, until it was full, then another Nalgene, then the other Nalgene, and then let the sink fill up. Much cleaner then the water I would have gotten from a stream.

Octortopoise

I’ve had this Camelbak Thermobak since ’02, and it’s a good bit of kit. In ’06 I decided to modify it to create a small day pack / grab it and go bag out of it. In its original form, it was only a carrier for a water bladder. What I wanted was something that I could attach to my main pack and detach it in a hurry. It would have to carry (in addition to the water) some form of expedient shelter, ie a poncho, and some other miscellaneous survival stuff. Water filter, woobie, a days worth of food, signal kit, etc. Just stuff that if I went on a day hike, I could just grab it and head off. If I was to get hurt or get lost, I could spend the night out and do okay.

Oh and the name comes from my nephew, who saw it in a way that likely only a 3 year old can see the world.

“It looks like an octopus turtle, uncle Thomas.”
I looked at it and realized that he had a point. With all 8 straps hanging down, and the panel looking a bit like a carapace, I had to concede that his observation was a very astute one. I combined the two and came up with the name. Thanks Anand.

What it looked like originally. I added the bunjee cord myself, so I could lash a rain jacket under there.

First step was to remove the handle.

The next step was to add eight straps, and 4 SRB “repair” buckles. The straps are what the floating panel would be attached to. The buckles are what would attach to the PALS (Pouch Attachment Ladder System) on the larger pack.

Closeup of the straps on the bottom. I figured out where they had to go, marked it, cut a slit just wide enough, turned the bag inside out, inserted the straps, held them in place with binder clips and sewed them down.

Next came the floating panel. The poncho and woobie would be lashed under the panel, and then pouches would be added to the front to contain the other necessities.

Closeup. (Oh yeah, I should mention that this whole thing was sewn by hand on the commute to work. :-} )

Another close up of the PALS webbing on the panel.

View of the under side of the panel.

Close up view of the underside of the panel. The on off sewing act as very simple drain holes.

I decided I may as well utilize the panel as a map pocket as well. About 5cm from the top is the entrance flap.

Close up of the map pocket opening.

Showing the inside of the map pocket.

Another view down along the map pocket.

My little pal Meemers checking things out.

Some views of the panel attached to the straps of the body.

A view of how much room there is to put stuff between the body and panel. Of course I will never have that much stuff in there, but I’d rather have lots of strap to grab on to and pull.

My trusty old Dutch army poncho. It’s older than I am, but still going strong. Works as a poncho, I can fashion a shelter from it, a ground sheet, a stretcher, etc. Since the point when I made this I have relegated it to the pile of back up gear. I got something a lot less bulky and a lot lighter. It’s served me well for a long time, but it weighs a kilo and that is too heavy.

The poncho under the panel.

Strappage.

Radiation seeped into the Exploriment laboratories and this mutant monstrosity was born.

Scientists at the Exploriment laboratories have been closely observing this new mutant creation.

They have learned that it can shed the carapace.

Molting complete, it slithers away to whence it came, the overflowing gear locker.

A closeup of the quick release buckle.

One of them I screwed up slightly. The right hand side should have been in front of that little flap of cordura on the right hand side there. Since it had to be turned completely inside out in order to sew it in place, I didn't notice that error until I was done. Not a biggie, but still one of those "Doh!" moments.

Strap monster.

View of the side with with poncho strapped in the middle.

View from the top.

Another view with the poncho in place.

Shot of the very handy little GrimLoc I use to keep the drinking tube attached to the shoulder strap.

 A shot of the GrimLoc opened.

 All in all, not a bad idea, and I think the execution of it worked fairly well. After using it for a while, I realize that I need to add some sort of closure on the top. If I have too much weight attached, it starts to really pull at the top. I also know now that I really can’t add too many pouches to the outside, especially near the top.

I think after trying this out for a while, that I might just have to design something else entirely, something that’s essentially just a small one compartment pack that all the needed stuff fits in. And I think that instead of a bladder I’ll just go with a 1L Nalgene bottle. I think a bladder will go in my main pack instead.

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What it looked like originally. I added the bunjee cord myself, so I could lash a rain jacket under there.