there are several Water bottles with filters built in -- anybody use one?
Seems a good solution for hiking/ everyday use

I carry the Aquamira filtered water bottle when I'm out hiking and traveling. The "suck/drink rate" on mine is kind of slow, but the Aquamira rep at SHOT show claimed the ones out in the stores now have been redesigned for improved flow rate. He gave me one of the new bottles but I haven't tried it yet.

Contrary to their claims, the original bottle doesn't do a whole lot for taste, Spring Creek still has a somewhat "swampy" flavor. It does have a carbon filter for removing chemicals but I'd be leery of trusting it in highly contaminated water.

-Blast

I've avoid the bottle with filter units. Preferring to keep the two roles filtering water, and holding water, separate. Combining functions sounds like a good thing but I think you get more function having a unit do one job very well instead of having to compromise form and function to do many things.

Yep. Don't know the brand and it is outside in the vehicle. Bought it at WalMart. Works pretty well for taste. We tend to use it to fill larger containers (military canteens).

It is a must have item for traveling in urban areas. Most city water systems taste horrible to us. We have a RO system in the camper and have gotten pretty picky about water taste.

Nomad

I believe Walmart sells the Sawyer Point Zero Two water filter bottle. Sawyer claims it has 0.02 micron absolute filtration efficiency, which would be sufficient to remove viruses as well as bacteria and protozoa. I don't have anyway to verify the efficiency other than saying my son used it in Ecuador two summers ago and I've used it frequently since, and neither one of us ever got sick. It does take some effort to draw water, more as it is used, but when you get home it's easy to backflush it back to original from your faucet, and disinfect it if needed using dilute bleach.

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I didn't like the bottle it came in. The bottle is larger than a Nalgene and wouldn't fit in my stainless steel cup, and I didn't like the the Sawyer cap design either. So I took the filter out and fit it to the Bite-N-Flip cap from a Camelbak bottle, then trimmed the hose so the whole thing fit on to a standard Nalgene.

You can also remove the filter and hook it in-line with a hydration bladder, both to such through and even as a gravity filter. I tried the gravity filter and it was slow but worked.

That is actually not try. Virusses are to small to filter, but they do hang on to bigger piece of stuff, so that way it will remove some virusses.

Actually, it does seem that the Sawyer is adequate for virus removal. Although 0.2 micron is not usually considered small enough for viruses, I was just looking at the Sawyer website and there are test results which show an adequate level of virus removal.

Although not EPA certified (yet), the company appears to use the same protocol and have posted the results on their website. I assume that cost is the reason why they haven't submitted their products for certification.

That makes Sawyer products quite interesting, in fact, since it will remove viruses without adding more chemicals to the water.

I've got a couple but leave them home more often than not, in favour of tablets. (Sorry, I can't find a pic and my camera is on the fritz.) Simply put, I picked the wrong ones. I thought a filtered water bottle would be great, but the ones I got have large, fixed straw-line mouth pieces. I find them very akward to pack. The shut-off valve is easily knocked open, and I'm always worried that I'm going to break that straw. I'll keep looking and probable try another but it isn't a priority because the funds aren't there right now.

I have used the Katadyn Exstream Purifier for my trips to Ecuador. The same issue of having to compress the water bottle that others have described with other brands is also present with the Katadyn. I like that it is EPA registered as a water purifier and is effective against viruses. While I cannot prove it has prevented me from getting sick, since we always do get sick, the source of getting sick is likely from means other than drinking the filtered water.

Pete


Katadyn Exstream Purifier Waterbottle

I have the Exstream bottle (now named something else) and may did it out for a test.