UKH

Question for the water quality experts: I've previously used a water2go bottle to filter and drink lake district tarn water, but the bottle is leaky and the flow rate is poor. Now I have a Salomon XA filter which is great to drink from and doesn't leak. The Salomon website says the XA filter "Eliminates 99.99% protozoa, Cryptosporidium oocysts, and bacteria". If I'm drinking from a stream I believe to be 'clean' I'm really using the filter for peace of mind, so I'm happy with that. However, I wouldn't drink from a tarn without a filter, so my question is -is the XA filter going to make lake district tarn water safe in the way I believe the water2go bottle does? Thanks

In reply to fullastern:

Filter the cleanest, fastest flowing water available. Most tarns are pretty stagnant, I would avoid them and find the outlet.

In reply to Kalna_kaza:

Surely it's better to try & find an inflow if possible - something before the stagnant.....?

In reply to buxtoncoffeelover:

If there is one. Many of the tarns don't have an obvious in flow, just a collection area (e.g. Red Tarn on Helvellyn).

In reply to fullastern:

If you've got water flowing out of a tarn why should it be stagnant?

I'm sure I read something saying that you're actually better off filtering the water from the top of some still water as any particles have had chance to drop to the bottom and the action of sunlight has killed some of the bugs.

It seems to make sense and I've done it for the last few years but I absolutely stand to be corrected.

In reply to obanish:

He says confidently from one of his two heads

In reply to fullastern:

For years I've been filtering water from tarns, Peak District ponds and even the odd stagnant bog or puddle when I've been desperate using a Sawyer squeeze filter which sounds very similar to what you're using. I've never had any ill effects. 

Incidentally I also used to use the water go bottle and found that it leaked like a sieve so gave up on it. 

In reply to fullastern:

I used to drink regularly from tarns and streams in the Lakes to no ill effect. Tend to use a filter now as the Lakes is so busy. Especially as I once saw someone going for a crap by one of the streams going into Styhead tarn whilst we were camping there.

In reply to Root1:

Styhead has become a bit of a toilet as has Angle tarn (at the top of Rossett ghyll). You see people going up in the evening for camping and ‘fun’ and coming down in the morning in the summer.  I am not sure very much water is completely safe in the Lakes. 

In reply to fullastern:

Thanks for the comments so far -I'm planning a long distance route and there are sections on it where the only options will be tarns without obvious in/outflow (I think, won't have time to search for one anyway). I drank sri lankan tap water for a week through the water2go bottle without getting ill, so I reckon that works! Shame the bottle is so leaky.

In reply to fullastern:

I might be a bit out of date on the models of filters but I use a Katadyn pump with the ceramic filter that is supposed to remove even viruses. Sheep can be a bit of an issue in the UK so I personally always err on the side of caution and use the filter in the UK regardless of where I'm at due to our sheep population. Abroad I have a Sawyer mini filter, the squeeze bag type as there are less issues in mountain ranges abroad.

In reply to fullastern:

Get a Sawyer Mini as mentioned above.  £25 cheapest.  Good for 100,000 gallons that's 378,500 litres to you or 0.006p per litre. 
https://ebay.co.uk/sch/i.html?_nkw=sawyer+mini

Have used one for 7 years.  In high limestone areas the local lake or green trickle may be the only source of water (e.g. the Dolomites and the High Picos)  Its a micro ceramic filter.  Best way to squeeze is roll the bag down.  Can take a plastic drinks bottle if the squeeze bag ruptures (ours hasen't in 7 years)  1litre = 3 squeezes and is instant.  Includes a straw you can suck through and a backflush syringe for dirty water areas -backflush with some of the filtered clean.  Fill ANY bottle, saucepan, flask.  Keep the squeeze bag as "dirty" and your bottle as "clean".

The only warning - don't drop it as it internals are ceramic!

Everyone should have one of these, it saves cash buying expensive bottled water in huts too!

In reply to Kalna_kaza:

I'm not sure 'stagnant' is the right word.??
The rainfall in the Lakes is on the high side.  As someone has mentioned, Red Tarn has no stream flowing into it.  It is certainly not 'stagnant',  The water coming into it has fallen on the hillside/catchment area and gets filtered as it flows down hill.  This applies to many of the other tarns in the Lake District and elsewhere.

That tarn and many others are full of Char - a fish which demands the purest of water content.

In reply to Billhook:

When I was a kid and adults called water stagnant it normally had an odour, not a fresh one either, or an unclean appearance, stained or oily, not like the stuff you find in a decent sized tarn.

In reply to tallsteve:

My sawyer mini clogged up pretty quickly, even with frequent back-flushing, the flow is too low. The squeeze bottle leaked after some use and the plastic gasket sealing the filter to bottle deformed and fell off in the field. Seems I am not alone with the bad experience - most people opt for the larger sawyer squeeze or others nowadays. Perhaps they made them better 7 years ago?

BTW, you can drop it to your heart's content, it's plastic inside, not ceramic. But you should never ever let it even slightly freeze, that renders it completely useless (it lets anything through afterwards).

In reply to Billhook:

Granted, when I said stagnant I probably meant "low flow rate" where I wouldn't consider drinking the water under normal circumstances.

In any case, when out in the fells I've rarely refilled my water bottle unless camping, always choosing a stream over a tarn. A little bit of planning by looking at a map should aid finding the best water sources within a short distance of your route.

In reply to fullastern:

Using a water filter on water from a tarn or a mountain stream will yield the same results in the end. The biggest factors that will come into play are how much material will go into the filter from the turbidity of the chosen water and what pollution sources are in play in the catchment you are taking your water from.

You won't be able to judge in the field where the pollutants that are not removed by filtering alone are but you can assess the turbidity by looking at how dirty the water you take is.

Your tarn will act as a sink for any dissolved metals and organics being carried by the streams that feed it, some of these may be removed by sedimentation in the tarn, where as your stream may have a little bit of aeration removing some iron and manganese present an may not have as much organic load as the tarn.

The biggest effect on your own health is making sure you backwash the filter as required with either filtered water or tap water from the mains, no point in worrying about things that only a complex process of chemical dosing and ion exchange could remove anyway. 

In reply to tomsan91:

Is that correct? Surely if the metals and  organics are dissolved they wont be subject to sedimentation as they are in solution.

In reply to Martin Haworth:

I was referring only to the organics present as suspended solids, not the dissolved metals/organics, bad english on my part 

In reply to fullastern:

Ok thanks for all the views. I guess ultimately my question is this:

Is the Salomon filter going to filter out anything nasty in the water in the lakes that the water2go bottle would? Or is there something (virus?) that the salomon filter lets through that the w2go doesn't?

Logic being I was happy to drink pretty much anything in the lakes with the water2go bottle, but the salomon filter, I believe, lets through some smaller things (virus sized) that the water2go doesn't. Question is are those things likely to be present in sufficient quantities to cause a problem?

To those saying "find xyz type of water", "go x minutes off your route" etc. I'm afraid that's not an option. My options are: 1) Salomon filter what's available (which may be a pond (e.g. Kirkfell Tarn), 2) water2go filter what's available or 3) carry a load of fresh water (not keen so would go option 2). I also need to be using a filter bottle, not a squeeze filter or anything else that takes up time.

Thanks!

In reply to fullastern:

If you're taking water from standing ponds or tarns another thing to be aware of is blue-green algae.  Your filter will remove the actual algae but not the toxins they secret. If you suspect that blue-green algae is present do not use the water, it will make you very ill or even kill you. 

In reply to fullastern:

From a very cursory skim of what the products promise they both claim to remove 99.9..% of biological contaminants. This leads me to think they are technically very similar.

Imagine your question was "Will the Dragon or the Camalot be ok for my climb in the lakes and will X hold a fall the other won't?" Theres possibly some fine differences in the breaking strain, camming angles, materials etc but it's all academic if the crack is the wrong size, the rock is swiss cheese, your particular product has a manufacturing defect or you dont look after it.

The only sane answer to the cam question would be that the bumff reads as pretty similar but you have to use them correctly. To properly answer the question on filters similarly assumes you are using them to remove the contaminant that they were designed for.

Our chossy rock in this analogy are things that are smaller than bacteria.  Personally, I would be less concerned about viruses (rightly or wrongly) and more about chemical contamination. Few mentions above of various nasties.  Toxins from algae, metals and minerals, agricultural contamination etc.  Small stagnant pools where these things can accumulate/concentrate being higher risk than freely running water generally, but the specifics of when and where are the important part.

My take is that I would generally trust either filter for use in most big, high, lakes tarns that have good refill but I would preferentially go for a stream uphill of the tarn where possible. Some places like near old metals mines would make me think twice (possibly over cautious), similarly some timings like a hot dry spell might give nice breeding conditions for algae.

If you were already happy with your level of risk with the water2go, then on the face of it, I'd crack on with the Salomon. To lead you to believe either removes all risk would be negligent, but they both seem to cover the main risk factor across the majority of upland lakes sources which would be the bacteria.

In reply to SouthernSteve:

 I am not sure very much water is completely safe in the Lakes. 

Got to agree with you there. It used to be ok but I generally filter it now unless I am in Scotland.

In reply to fullastern: As has been said , there are lots of sheep in the Lake District and sheep are stupid ( getting stuck in very small streams and then starving to death or drowning ) unfortunately  a small but significant number of people are even stupider than sheep . The chances of even very small streams being contaminated with rotting sheep juice or human crap juice are enough to stop me drinking any untreated water in the lakes .. my general approach is to carry enough water if possible , stash some  before hand ( wild camping with the kids ) or “ belt and braces “ , treat and boil , filter and boil or treat and filter . I’ve had giardia, not from the lakes but I really really don’t want it again . I treat with lugols iodine solution ( requires great care ) or iodine tablets ( the best way but hard to find ) . I seem to recal that steri tabs / chlorine are / is useless against amoebic cysts  .  I’ve got a small msr pump filter that looks like the small katydn one but was much cheaper . I use these tablets or lugols :
https://www.amazon.co.uk/Potable-Aqua-304-Water-Treatment/dp/B0009I3T3S

In reply to mike123:

I'm finding all this talk of iodine being superior a bit surprising. A lot of our treatment works are coagulation/floculation, filtration then disinfection with the disinfection being chlorine (e.g  in the form of sodium hypochlorite solution). There can be UV disinfection, but with additional chem dosing to keep a residual out into the network.

As far as I understood it, chlorine kills everything, including the crypto oocysts  which are particularly resilient. There shouldn't be many making it through the upstream stages to the disinfection stage though.

But as a mech eng, I only need to be aware of this stuff while I talk about the associated machinery so I would welcome being enlightened.

Belt and braces makes a lot of sense. I'm a bit wary of trusting everything to a filter that I cant prove is fully working, (but the OPs question was if "I'm happy with filter x, is product y equivalent"). I usually go for just chlorine dioxide tabs into a clear raw water, but they come with the note to pre filter the water if its lumpy.

In reply to jdh90:

Both Iodine and Chlorine are just strong oxidisers from the halogen group, so you are correct there is little difference in the way they work.

The issue with their use as a disinfectant is that they are totally dependant on the chemical demand when added to the water you are treating. If there are metals and organics in the water you take from the environment  your added chlorine or iodine will be used up oxidizing these and will deplete the amount left for disinfection of pathogens.

The chemical disinfection of protozoa is difficult as the organisms protect their genetic material within a harder exterior than a bacteria does so the contact time with the disinfectant has to be much higher some studies have only observed a 60-90% reduction after a 240+ minute contact time with a chemical disinfectant, hence why UV is required at water treatment works that do not have multi barrier treatment systems. 

Hope that clears up the iodine vs chlorine debate  😁

In reply to tomsan91:

Cheers! Every day's a school day! Ill have slightly more idea what the process guys are talking about now and I'll more seriously consider picking up a filter rather than just relying on the tablets when out on the hills.

By the way, I remember a thread ages ago about university courses where you said you were at Lancaster the same time I was, and at the time thinking we might have some mutual friends. Find it funny that we both post on water quality threads on the same climbing forum now!

I will say it first that I am very careful and keen to keep healthy; especially when just getting the runs can make the logistics of getting home difficult. Giardia can curtail an expensive trip abroad and lead to hospital charges.

Where possible I get water from a tap or buy a litre bottle, folks/shops are usually helpful if asked. With a backpack on they can usually tell you can tell you are genuine hiker

If wild in the hills – I use a Sawyer Mini. If in the UK lowlands I use a Drinksafe bottle. In my recollection Drinksafe claim to filter chemicals and viruses; Sawyer do not. 

My strategy in the hills during the day is to use the Sawyer Mini to collect water so there will be no waiting, if there are stock about I will add AquaVenture. Each evening I use Aqua Venture tablets to treat 2 litre of water for camp use - for that night and the next morning, boiling to make drinks completes water safety
If the Aqua Venture is used in any storage bottles and the Platypus then that it should also result in those containers being "clean". If I later come across a tap water supply I can use those bottles directly without the Mini Sawyer filter attached.

The myth about there being dead sheep in the stream above is not myth: when I did the Cape Wrath Trail in different streams I came across a dead sheep and a stag.

In reply to jdh90:

What a small world, in my first year (2009) I took 3 of the Mech eng modules so we might have even been in the same lectures! 

In reply to Diddy:

 In my recollection Drinksafe claim to filter chemicals and viruses; 

Looked into this a while back and very quickly found that no filter small enough to be carried is going to remove chemicals. If the pores in the filter are small enough to filter out viruses they won't let water molecules through. 

Oh this could be embarrassing. I was definitely in those lectures, can't remember who I was paired with for the lab but I do remember being a total waste of space for it and hoping that being able to fly the CAD programme would make up for being a dead weight on the calculations because the theory hadn't clicked.  Maybe I should just fade back into anonymity. Yeah sorry mate, we're definitely off topic...