[pct-l] water purification/SteriPen

[GARY HEBERT]

re: uranium  - so true.

I think we sometimes oversimply "purification" and "filtering" water. It
removes most live bacteria and ONLY IF you use chemical methods AND wait 4
hours or UV (steripen) does it kill viruses.

This does nothing to other toxic chemicals in the water supply. We all hope
our backcountry water is safe, but water sources "near" or downstream
from old mines, manufacturing plants, etc should be considered toxic. It's
no different than drinking from a home well near such sites. Until you test
your well you'd have to assume it's contaminated.

I own the yellow steri-pen (Adventurer I think). Bought it on sale, but
can't bring myself to carry it even on day trips or short weekends. It
weighs just 3.6 oz which seems pretty lite. But when compared to tablets of
chlorine dioxide it's not even close.

To me cost is not an issue, nor resupply of tabs.

True, the steripen DOES kill viruses. A big plus. And faster IF just filling
1 L (90 seconds). If resupplying several liters EA liter takes 90 seconds.
You can however "camel up" and refill the container since you can drink
immediately (unlike with chemicals where you have to wait at least 30
minutes before you could camel up to reduce carried water weight. And this
assumes you have an additional container to fill for that purpose.)

Another problem I discovered (very disappointingly) is the size of the UV
lamp is too large to fit inside many smaller neck bottles or bladders which
I would select for UL hiking. For some containers you might fake it. I
carved a hole in a Gatorade bottle cap which allows the lamp to just fit
inside the neck of the bottle - but NOT deep enough to submerge the sensors
which allow the UV lamp to light. Cleverly though if I invert the Gatorade
bottle the water fills the neck and covers the contacts and Voila! the lamp
lites. Only minimal leakage from the cap. If I used this method I'd
sacrifice one Gatorade bottle for it's cap, carrying the cap with the UV
lamp for this purpose. Note this would NOT work for garden hose size caps
like most narrow mouth bladders.

FedEx

On Mon, Jan 5, 2009 at 1:37 AM, Kent Spring <kjssail at yahoo.com> wrote:

> I hear alot about chemicals and filters, but this year I used a
> SteriPen.  It is mid-weight between the other two, but has no
> toxic remainder.  I did find it to be a bit finicky: there were
> a couple of times that I really wasn't sure it had done its job.
> It does require a battery, and you might want to back it up with
> chemicals in case it breaks down.  I never had any stomach problems,
> although that could just be luck.
>
> It will not do anything about the uranium that is in much of the
> water in the SoCal mountains...
>
> Kent
>
>
>
>
>
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