Which waterpurifier should I get?

[kebabtomten]

Hi its a jungle out the with filters and purifiers .

I really dont know which one to get ? the one I have been thinking of getting is the General ecology-First Need its the only one which removes everything from the water , but bloody expensive £90

https://www.travelwithcare.com/Water...rtable-97.html

I am going via kazakstan,pakistan,india nepal. Do I really need a purifier draging with me?? Any one done the route and survived without a purifier?

[*Touring Ted*]

I havn't been to those places but surely you can buy water when its not safe...

Even if you get stuck without somewhere to buy it, if you have a camping stove, boiling water for 2 mins will kill everything which will make you ill out of a tap...

[spooky]

well if you are thinking about to get the "Pre Mac Travel Well Trekker Set"... I would say you should grab it instantly or spend the price for a "Katadyn Pocket" ! the Pre-Mac it the civilian version of the MOD one 350Lt water per cartridge is OK for a backpack traveller, even very light to carry.
Last year my mate had one of this with him on our trip.... well I have a "Katadyn Pocket" which can filter much more water in a much shorter time up to 50.000Lt per cartridge, so we used mine all the time in the end... and his Pre-Mac was a sort of backup, just in case.
The Katadyn is a lifetime investment but heavier..... I use it with a adapter to link it up right to a Camelbak with the quick release connection, that way I don't even have to take the thing of my back to refill it.

Brands and Products - KATADYN Brands and Products - global Number One in individualized water purification systems and water purification products

Welcome to Pre-Mac International

by the way it's cheaper to buy the Pre-Mac by the company direct instead of a retailer....

Now as a conclusion... depending the amount and quality of water you tend to clean.... this £90 quit is may more expensive than a £200 quit peace in a long run...
my tip... buy the "Pre-Mac" as a 2nd best choice to a "Katadyn", all the other filter kits may cheap, but that's only the 1st time, companies like MSR and others make there money by selling you the cartridge and the price for a cartridge comes very close to what a newer model of the purifier unit will cost.
oh yea... al this side leaver units are very bulky too....

PS.
I know the price for any good equipment dose hurt.... but hey... it only hurts ones... bad equipment hurts more often in a row... and continues to hurt.....

OK, India and Nepal... been there in 1980...
my advise !... don't drink any bottle water or any thing else sold in bottles in the streets, the bottles are often washed out with unfiltered water out of the tab over there right at the factories before filled with juice or Coke or water .....
Instead drink a lot of cheap "Chai" (Spice Milk Tea) offered every where, tastes nice is very refreshing, the imported thing is... Chai is made with long boiled water, gets you in contact with real folk too !
Had a very bad stomach after drinking a bottle "Coke" for days... after managing to drink a few glasses of Chai, I instantly and continuously was free from any bad gut feeling for the rest of my 10 weeks trip around India and Nepal.

good luck
spooky

[kebabtomten]

Thanks for the advise

[ssa2]

about 20 years ago I had the good fortune of meeting up with a guy that had done lots of camping in the USA. He told me to buy the Kayatdyn filter and after using it to raise 3 kids through lots of camping I can say that I agree it is the best and the cheapest in the long run. I am still using the the orginial cermic filter it came with and I would say that over the last 20 years it has pumped all the water for about 1200 man days of use. I think I paid about $239 back then which I thought was nuts but I know that for all the camping I have done with it I would have spent 4 or 5 times that on paper filters every time I wanted to use it. Check it out and I think you will be money ahead as when you are done with it you can always sell it on ebay and get most of your money back. Most of the other ones you will never get anyone to buy again or you can not find filters when you need them. You also end up carrying extra of them incase you have a blow out or get some really bad slimy water. With the Kayatdyn you just wash it and you can start pumping again. As you can tell I am sold

[othalan]

Originally Posted by kebabtomten

I am going via kazakstan,pakistan,india nepal. Do I really need a purifier draging with me?? Any one done the route and survived without a purifier?

Personally, I would never carry around a water filter. I use "Polar Pure", which is a bottle of iodine crystals. One bottle costs about $15, is very small, and will last you a lifetime.

How it works:

Polar Pure Water Disinfectant with Iodine and Iodine Crystals for Water Purification in Camping and Wilderness Survival to kill Giardia and other pathogens.

Cheaper price at amazon:

Amazon.com: Polar Pure Water Disinfectant: Sports & Outdoors

The taste is annoying at first, but you will quickly get used to it. If you need to filter gunk out of the water, the easiest way is to put some cloth over the mouth of the water bottle as you fill it. Simple, inexpensive, small, and you never have to worry about replacing the filter.

-- David

[grizzly7]

that polarpure looks a good alternative to a bottle of iodine tincture, but is no more suitable for long term use than iodine in any other form?! 3 months max continuous exposure i believe?
filter, then heat or treat!!

[crazyclimber]

Get a travel tap... I've been using the 'survivor' model from the same company for years and they've just released the travel tap, from all the reviews it's just a more refined version. The Travel Tap They're great since there's no faff with pipes and pumping etc, they just work. No connection with company etc

[Savage]

Filters can filter out poop, protozoa and sometimes bacteria but not viruses.

Purifiers have iodine or something else with it that can kill viruses and bacteria.

Iodine kills most protozoa, bacteria and viruses.



UV light from a steripen, Chlorine Dioxide, Mixed Oxidants (MIOX) and lots of heat kill everything but don't remove particles and taste from water.

I don't care for filters as they a bit too much trouble compared to pills or light, are bulky and drip after use.

Zen Backpacking - Water Purification, Filtration and Treatment

[kebabtomten]

After alot research I finally decided to get a steripen Adventure, its a brilliant piece of kit. Most importantly it fits in your pocket

[travelHK]

I used my Katadyn for years in Africa,Asia,and south america (jungle) and loved it , easy to use and clean,very fast and very rugget .A filter may seems expensive but if you travel for month the taste of clorine is not fun and you cannot always buy or trust water sold by the local. It also take all the floatting junk in the water , in some places I took and drink brown water without ever getting sick.

[electric_monk]

A number of years ago at a HUBB rally at Lumb Farm, Tiffany Coates gave a talk about her travels on the bike which have taken her all over the world. She stated that in all of her travels she never used a water purifier. Her view was that if the locals were drinking it, it won't kill you.
I have never travelled anywhere where I would have needed one myself but I would just see it as another piece of unnecessary clutter.

[Sirakor]

Good advise above about drinking tea. I believe coke also to be ok. It's a lot rarer to get improperly recycled bottles with coke than with water. Also, coke is so acidic and contains so much sugar that microorganisms aren't likely to survive in it for any kind of extended period of time.

I personally don't like filters. They're the most expensive, bulky, heavy solution, that when something breaks, you can't do anything about. In addition they do not protect you from viruses, so if you want to be safe it is kind of pointless. Water taste may be an argument, but that's got nothing to do with health.

UV based solutions are propably ok, as long as you have some basic filtering device (t-shirt if necessary), as it'll seize to become effective if there are too many particles in the water.

In general I think water treatment is over-hyped. Of course it is an important issue, but you need to take equal precautions about your food, your hands and cutlery/dishes etc. If you skimp on the latter, a fetish about water filters is a bit of a waste imho.

Personally I stick to bottled water/tea/coke where available. If that is unavailable or of dubious quality, I do a combination of boiling and iodine. Boil a litre or so everytime you cook and use iodine for the rest. I use concentrated iodine solution which doubles as water treatment and antiseptic. Taste is no issue, you can neutralize it with Vitamin C. As to health risks caused by prolonged exposure to iodine, most of those tend to be exaggerated by water filter manufacturers (imho). Also, when travelling I highly doubt that you will spend several months in an environment where it's neither feasible to boil part of your drinking water supply (thus reducing exposure) nor to buy any kind of safe drink, be it tea, coke or water. If you work for an NGO for a long time in the same place it might be a different story.

In the end, the way I see it, the only justified advantage of filters or UV appliances is that water is available fast (<1-2min, rather than ~20-40min).

[Honybadger]

I've just come back from staying at a small village in Uganda, to which we took a katadyn filter which worked superbly for a group of us with the occasional scrub.
The locals warned us about people buying large amounts of bottle tops and refilling bottles of water from wherever, similar to slumdog millionaire.
The other very important aspect about the buying bottled water/purifying argument, is that the village, like many in the developing work, has no safe rubbish disposal. Any empty plastic bottles are just burnt, normally by the children. Do you want to be responsible for this as you pass through these communities?

[travelHK]

to respond to Electric Monk,the concept that if local people drink it its ok for you is great, if you like to get sick like the locals .I travelled in very remote places and met with locals which were sick like hell thanks to local water.I agree with or coke but for long run water is the best,the new filters are small and light and I never saw one broke ,I even gave my first one to some doctor in the bush and they loved it.I wonder if the concept applyed to other problem,if local don't use repellent do you think we should not and lets not forget that they are way more resilient than us.

great post by the way.