Hi everybody. I have read many posts about water filters and there is one thing i cannot understand. Why buy a water filter when you can just boil the water ? What is the additional benefit of a water filter? Is there something that a distilation won't keep out? And while I am at it, does anyone knows how to make a water "distiller" that can be easily packed?
Thanks for the time

It is not always possible to boil water. Eg. run out of fuel, leak in the pot that you carry or your source has only muddy water, to name a few examples. Also, a filter is more convenient and quicker than boiling water.

I personally don't use a filter. the areas where i am ussually active have "clean" water, But I still carry purification tablets as a backup. Filters are just, too heavy to carry as just a backup in my situation.

If you need to treat all your drinking water, I suggest you get a filter. there are several that come highly recommended by their uses on this forum.

When hiking, filters are great because they allow you to "clean" a high volume of water quickly. I carry a tiny MSR titanium keetle that would take forever to boil 96 oz of water in. But it takes reltivley littel time at all to pump enough enough water through my filter to get that amount.

I imagine you would burn a lot of fuel if you used it primarily to clean water.

Let's start with why bother in the first place?

1) remove or neutralize biological pathogens

2) remove chemical and mineral impurities

3) Make it tast better

4) make fresh water from salt water


In general the options are.
a) boil the water - this doesn't mean distill it just get it hot enough to boil and then use it. This will kill all the bugs - or atleast any we realistically need to worry about including the plague.
b) poison the water This includes the chlorine, iodine and other chemical additives. The idea here is to add enough poison to kill the bugs without adding so much that we kill ourselves. A relatively safe approach since the bugs are vulnerable to a bunch of stuff that we aren't.
c) filter the water - This will remove the bugs if the filter is good enough. If a bug is small enough it will pass the filter but filters have become very small. most of the minerals and chemicals will also be removed by a good filter
d) distill the water - This requires making the water into steam and then condensing it out on a cooler surface and collecting the condensate.


Boiling the water doesn't take too much fuel and will take care of any reasonable bio contaminants but will do nothing about minerals and only a little about chemical impurities and won't drive off the salt of salt water only concentrate it a bit.

Poisoning the water will take care of the bio contaminants and do nothing about chemicals or minerals or salt

Filtering the water will take care of bio, chemical and mineral and if you get a very expensive filter you can make fresh water from salt. (Making fresh water is very hard and will consume a bunch of energy either from your muscles or a battery.)

Distilling water - This requires a bunch of input energy, usually some rather elaborate setup and a bunch of time as well but if you can do this in a precisly controlled thermal environment you will get 100% pure water with no contaminants even from salt water.

If you are packing for a psk the only thing that will fit is tablets.

If you are packing for a BOB the energy consuming options are poor because they also consume a bunch of time. So you have tablets or filters. Filters have no shelf life and address a wider range of issues. A good backpacking filter is small and light as well.

If you are in a longer term mode you might want to build a solar still so that you can be making water when the sun shines without haveing to work for it. This is not the typical survival solar still I refer to here - Those don't work. I am talking about using glass and plumbing to bring a ready source of water to a hot enough temperature to boil and then condense and collect. This presumes a good volume of questionable water readily available from a stream or pond.

If you are in a PSK or BOB situation and your first choice method doesn't work then be prepared to boil water in your cook pot for cleanliness. Won't address any industrial contaminants but will handle the bio nasties.

hey im new here and generally VERY new to building a better psk kit and such so i got a newb questions... whats a BOB that was mentioned here?

BOB = Bug Out Bag

Basically a large, well equiped PSK - prepacked and ready to be grabbed at a moments notice.

there are small filter which can be carried as a backup like the gatekeeper ( picked on up on a discount box for € 3 ! ) or filter/purfing pen which are pretty small too.

NY Rat, here's my BOB (Bug Out Bag) list. There are also many others out there for reference:

http://www.roblester.com/rob/bugout.htm

What kind of storage time can I expect from a full cambelback left in my trunk, Do winter summer shelf lives vary?
Thanks
Scott

My experiance with camelbaks has not been good as far as storing water. I'm not sure how long I kept mine full but flaky stuff, like the liner delaminated, formed. I still use and love my camelbaks but I don't leave water in for days on end. The platypus bladders work well for that. I've found old platypus bladders in bags that have had water in them for almost a year and it was still fine. Large gatorade bottles seem to work well too, for storage, because they are big and have a handle.