Water Filter?
 

Hi folks,
looking at water filters to plumb into my on board water system - seems to be a pricey business i.e. a proper filter that renders just about anything potable... Does anyone have any recommendations. General ecology seem to be about the best, but as I say pricey!
Cheers,
Gil

Yep Gil they're pricey but they really are first rate. We filled up in some very dodgy places but never had even a hint of 'explodibot'. My only criticism would be that the fittings they supply for connecting the filter to the supply-we have a Seagull iv- are not the most sturdy. The other thing you need to check is that your pump has enough pressure to 'power' the filter-if you see what I mean.

Decided where to go yet?

Q

I would agree with Quintin, they are a good bit of kit, but I generally tend to dump their fittings and get my own.

If you are ordering and you aren't interested in their tap, make sure you get the kit without it - they are more used to selling the kit with the tap, but for LC use the taps are generally a pain to mount so get discarded in favour of using some sort of shower head on a flexible pipe - if you hunt around (I use Welcome to CAK Tanks | Premier Source Of Interior Equipment | Motor-Caravan | Caravan & Marine) you can get shower heads that can be switched from working like a tap providing a fine flow of water for filling bottles or as a full shower head for washing.

I would also agree with Quintin about the pressure pump side of things, something like a Sureflow will do.

pre mac filters are lovely!
 

hi. our camper had a doulton ceramic cartridge, but a wee bit of investigating and advice made us look for an iodene addition route, since as far as i'm aware, if you don't add iodene (with treatment time) you don't kill guiardia without boiling.

i.e. filter, then heat or treat

a bit cheesy, and if you're not going where guiardia is a risk, not relevant.

but, we're going on a long trip. iodene is recommended for 3 months continuous use max. the neutralising tablets which are the same as a vit c supplement tablets only change the taste, not the effect. rumour has it that the us army were kept on iodene treated water indefinately with minimal effect, so maybe the risk is really quite small.


premac supply water treatment to the british army among others. their mini personal pump is often seen with ray mears.

we now have a point of use purifier from premac. this treats 20000 litres per cartridge set. this is only for drinking water though, the 3.5l/min flow isnt enough to run all your water through it. the first cartridge is just a ceramic 3 micron filter to remove solids, cysts etc. the second contains iodene in resin form, which adds it in a much smaller and controlled way than 12 drops from a bottle per litre which you would be doing otherwise. their website shows a model with two taps, (after iodene and after carbon) so you could take this iodene'd water to wash and sterilise veggies etc. ours only has one tap from after the third filter of carbon, which takes the iodene and many other chemicals out again, leaving you with clean and, i believe, safer water than many other filters can produce.

one small question mark i still have is since iodene only works given a bit of time ( this is a variable depending who you are asking, but somewhere between 2 and 20 minutes) with our filter continuously flowing i cant see how this would ever happen. all water would come into contact with the iodene, but for long enough?? the cartridge container holds around a litre, so when the tap is off, the water in the iodene filter is just sitting there immersed in the stuff. so as long as, if you are in an area where you question the guiardia content of the water, you'd restrict yourself to around a litre every 2 mins then no problem. premac will tell you they see no need for this because of how their filter works, and as i say they supply an awful lot of people who depend on clean water, not just the leisure market. they did suggest the iodene and carbon filters could be swapped position, so all water from the tap would have the iodene still in it. the dose is smaller by a large margin than adding drops manually, but you are then heading back toward the three month continuous exposure limit!!

that was longer than i thought! must get back to fitting the thing!! with 3 filter sections it is also a fair bit bigger than many others. hope this helps!

I have a Pre-mac IWP also. I rigged a by-pass so when I'm dealing with clean water I can get a higher flow rate.
To keep the tank sterile I obtained Accepta chlorine dioxide generating tablets. Each tablet gets 30L up to 4ppm so each of my 220L tanks takes 7 with a fill-up. I enquired with Pre-Mac and they told me the activated charcoal final filter would absorb the chlorine dioxide as well as iodine.
It was a big hassle getting the Accepta tablets (box of 500) to the States. Here, they sell ClO2 generators in quantities suitable for backpacking or in 200L drums - nothing in between.

Charlie

filter
 

I use to have a ceramic and carbon filter in series but the ceramic filter clogs easily. Had to clean it every day and removed it after a while. Now only a carbon filter for cleaning chemicals out and chlorine or similar to kill the bugs off in the tank. I pump the water up and then through the C-filter, takes also out the chlorine taste. I have an NSA 25L filter 11.000 liter capacity about Euro 150,-

Cheers,

Noel

charlie, does the chlorine affect any of the rubber seals etc in your system?

noel, i thought the point of filtering pretreatment was to remove particles of sufficient size that could harbour/protect/shield cysts and other nasties from any subsequent treatment? so the bulk of what you had filtered would be clean until any of these nasties break out and start multiplying? if this happens in a tank dosed sufficiently to kill this off then no problems, if this happens post carbon filter in your nice warm intestine, or in stored "clean" water then not so good? or is this a really small risk?
did the filter receive water from some sort of stored tank that allowed some settlement? from what sort of source were you getting enough sediment to block things up?
gilghana1 i hope you don't mind me asking on your thread?? :)

water treatment
 

The ceramic filter (0.2 micron) was initially to filter particles, protozoa and viruses. Viruses are in principle to small for the filter but to hardly ever exist on their own. They usually hitch hike on the protozoa or particles so the ceramic filter is good for both. However, all water in the tank and in the line to the ceramic filter is completely untreated and algae start growing in the filter housing and because it is so fine, it clogs very quickly. Or you must use a very high pressure pump (min 5 bar). The carbon filter is to remove chemicals (pesticides, heavy metals, etc). After I removed the ceramic filter, we started using chlorine in the tank to kill the protozoa and viruses and used the carbon filter as mentioned plus remove the chlorine taste. The only backdrop is indeed sediment. We did 60.000 km / 30 countries in Africa (double trans Africa) and always took water from public sources, like road side pumps in villages, taps at gas stations, wells etc. We always checked in a clear bottle if the water was clear and free of sediment and not cloudy. We only encountered whitish cloudy water in Wadi Halfa, Sudan, good for showering, not for in the tank. I only have a strainer in front of the pump, to protect the membrane. The pump pushes the water through the carbon filter which has silver in it too, so bugs can't grow in the filter. In this way the whole system is always free of bugs. When you take new water on board, put chlorine in and don't use it for 30 minutes. Sediment has never been a real issue. To my opinion a carbon filter is essential as many pesticides are used everywhere and these you don't see or taste and they accumulate in the body. We put our filtered water in bottles and stored it in the fridge, clean, tasty and fresh!

Cheers,

Noel
exploreafrica.web-log.nl

The ClO2 is removed by the carbon filter so it would only affect rubber prior to the IWP, which would just be in the Shurflo pumps and the IWP itself. It hasn't affected anything so far.
Hopefully it's all neoprene which is less sensitive to oxidizers. Anyway, it's essential to have a more or less sterile tank. ClO2 also can oxidize organics like pesticides. The tablets have sodium hypochlorite and sodium isocyanurate which react in the presence of water to make ClO2. The are Accepta product #8505 (1 tablet makes 4ppm in 30L).

Charlie

Steripen
 

We dont use any filters in our water system, very basic. A big tank with a pipe to the pump. We don't treat any water in the tank with tablets etc.

We ALWAYS however use our Steripen with the water. It takes just over 1 minute to treat 1 liter of water.

Here is a link to their test results and what it does and does not (which is almost nothing) kills in terms of bacteria and virusses.
SteriPEN Microbiological Testing

We use the Classic and its really easy to use. We've travelled through Russia and central Asia, so haven't had ane real dodgy water yet, but so far haven't had any problems.

We will however fit a basic (1 micron) filter to our system before we head to Africa and still use the Steripen for all our drinking water.

They are a little bit expensive, but I'm really glad we have it. We haven't bought any water in 6 months time. It cost AU $ 200 in Oz.

cheers

Gil,

Each 1.5 litre of water you buy will cost you about $1 in some places?

You will use one to three of these a day?

After some months the water filter will have paid for itself and you won't have left hundreds of water bottles for the local environment to deal with.

A no brainer?

I really hate to see people traveling with 6 packs of plastic water bottles (shrink wrapped in plastic!) when the local water is mostly good especially with a bit of cheap treatment.

Hello,

We use a wyckomar uv250 system. Wyckomar|Water Purification Products

We decided upon this by contacting dutch drinking water suppliers. They all said that in the past they wer using ulta filtration systems but they were easy to rupture so you would need a extra securitity system like a shut down valve and extra sensors. The new system they install is always a UV light based system, this only has one downside, the water that reaches the UV lamp must be filtered to 5 micron otherwise the bacteria can hide behind the particles.

We installed a kit with a particle filter 5micron then a carbon filter for taste an chemical filtration and then the UV light treatment that kills al bacteria and virus. Our filling pump has a suction filter to filter out any crude particles to prevent the 5micron filter from clogging up.

regards,

Henk Jan

I am a fan of Chloramine T for water treatment. The overlanding company I previously worked for used it, and I also used it on my recent Africa trip.

It is cheap and very effective. I believe some states in the US use it as their primary water sterilization agent.

I agree with RoamingYak regarding the scourge of plastic bottles polluting the local environment

Micropur
 

I used Micropur powder. A film canister full is enough for 10,000 litres, I used tank water (non purified) for washing, cooking and tea and Micropured water in a gerry can for drinking. I had no major illness in a year in asia. Most tummy bugs come from lack of hygene not water, if the locals are drinking it then it should be fine. Ask the locals.

Graeme

Yeah Micropur works a treat - we used to use it on the Dragoman Overland Trucks - had no problems using it in the 90s water tank - and its helps keep the tank /pipes clean.

The sediment/cloudiness check is a must before putting anything in the tank though.

a mild solution of potassium permanganate is good for washing veggies to save your drinking water.