Boondocking: Water Purification - Fiberglass RV
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Old 06-13-2022, 02:09 PM   #1
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Boondocking: Water Purification

We often boondock where there is water nearby but we don't trust it. Has anyone used this method? Any chemists who could comment? Are there similar methods that are cheaper?

https://twitter.com/TansuYegen/statu...87100440477698

https://smile.amazon.com/PuriBag-Bac...JHB/ref=sr_1_8

https://smile.amazon.com/Purifier-Pa...ef=sr_1_1_sspa
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Old 06-13-2022, 03:37 PM   #2
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The standard solution is to use two 5 gallon plastic buckets, stacked on top of each other, with a ceramic "candle" filter mounted in the bottom of the upper bucket.

Unfiltered water in the upper bucket drains down through the filter into the bottom bucket.

The "candles" are inexpensive, and everything else used in the apparatus is just standard hardware store items.
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Old 06-14-2022, 10:07 AM   #3
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Originally Posted by JoelInTexas View Post
The standard solution is to use two 5 gallon plastic buckets, stacked on top of each other, with a ceramic "candle" filter mounted in the bottom of the upper bucket.

Unfiltered water in the upper bucket drains down through the filter into the bottom bucket.

The "candles" are inexpensive, and everything else used in the apparatus is just standard hardware store items.

This is dangerous and uneducated advice. You don't want to get giardia or a parasite. If there are cattle anywhere upstream you are in serious danger. Get a Sawyer filter. The bigger one. They sell a bag kit to fill up. You can put that on top of your truck and have a 5' silicone hose running to the filter and a water jug via gravity feed. If you just put a filter in a bucket with no distance between them it will be extremely slow and you won't get anywhere near enough water to fill your tanks. Don't listen to advice from people who have never done it. I highly doubt anyone from Texas has actually used a water filter to get water from a river or stream. They just fill up at the tap and stay in RV parks. I do it every day and have a Sawyer filter going right now to fill up my tank. It's the only way out here in the bush 20 miles from cell service.
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Old 06-14-2022, 11:05 AM   #4
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Originally Posted by RollinMike View Post
This is dangerous and uneducated advice. You don't want to get giardia or a parasite. If there are cattle anywhere upstream you are in serious danger. Get a Sawyer filter. The bigger one. They sell a bag kit to fill up. You can put that on top of your truck and have a 5' silicone hose running to the filter and a water jug via gravity feed. If you just put a filter in a bucket with no distance between them it will be extremely slow and you won't get anywhere near enough water to fill your tanks. Don't listen to advice from people who have never done it. I highly doubt anyone from Texas has actually used a water filter to get water from a river or stream. They just fill up at the tap and stay in RV parks. I do it every day and have a Sawyer filter going right now to fill up my tank. It's the only way out here in the bush 20 miles from cell service.
Once again, Thanks Mike,

There is a way to purify the water after it is filtered. If you leave 1-liter clear plastic, (PET) bottles of clear water in the sun for a couple of days, on an aluminum sheet, it will kill any biology in the water. This works in cloudy weather as well, (as long as it is not actually raining).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection

Do you also sell Sawyer filters? I bet they are expensive.
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Old 06-14-2022, 11:17 AM   #5
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Once again, Thanks Mike,

There is a way to purify the water after it is filtered. If you leave 1-liter clear plastic, (PET) bottles of clear water in the sun for a couple of days, on an aluminum sheet, it will kill any biology in the water. This works in cloudy weather as well, (as long as it is not actually raining).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection

Do you also sell Sawyer filters? I bet they are expensive.

Wow. You are going to filter 1 liter of water every couple days? Any backpacking water filter can do that in 1 minute. MSR, Katadyn, Sawyer take your pick. Again, you have clearly never filled your trailer using the method you are recommending. How many liters of water do you use in a week? Do you shower 1 time a month with half a water bottle? We are talking about filtering enough water to fill up the tank in a trailer. Have you ever filtered even a single bottle? All the water I use comes from a river. Where does your's come from? A tap? I want to see the picture of you with 100 of your 1 liter water bottles out on your giant aluminum sheet. Not to mention it will still be filled with dirt and silt. Tasty! Where are you going to store all those empty bottles? Even a half dozen 2 liter bottles would take up a massive amount of space and only get you 3 gallons of water in a week.


Sawyer filters are $30 at Walmart. Is that too expensive for you?
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Old 06-14-2022, 11:56 AM   #6
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Originally Posted by RollinMike View Post
Wow. You are going to filter 1 liter of water every couple days? Any backpacking water filter can do that in 1 minute. MSR, Katadyn, Sawyer take your pick. Again, you have clearly never filled your trailer using the method you are recommending. How many liters of water do you use in a week? Do you shower 1 time a month with half a water bottle? We are talking about filtering enough water to fill up the tank in a trailer. Have you ever filtered even a single bottle? All the water I use comes from a river. Where does your's come from? A tap? I want to see the picture of you with 100 of your 1 liter water bottles out on your giant aluminum sheet. Not to mention it will still be filled with dirt and silt. Tasty! Where are you going to store all those empty bottles? Even a half dozen 2 liter bottles would take up a massive amount of space and only get you 3 gallons of water in a week.


Sawyer filters are $30 at Walmart. Is that too expensive for you?
Umm... I carry a flat of water bottles, (24 x 500 mL). I don't like drinking out of the water tank in my trailer. So, no I have never filled the tank on my trailer with this method. If I were to run out of water. I might have some empty bottles that I could use. 12L worth, (3 US gallons). Should last a couple of days.

Please note, I would not use 2 l liter bottles. They are too big to ensure that all the water is irradiated. If I were using surface water, the dirt and silt would be taken care of with a filter. However, salt would still be a problem. But like you I prefer river water. The aluminum sheet comes in a roll that I get at the grocery store.

I won’t be sending you any pictures of me. I just don't feel that way about you. Also, I find your interest in my personal hygiene disturbing.
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Old 06-14-2022, 12:35 PM   #7
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Umm... I carry a flat of water bottles, (24 x 500 mL). I don't like drinking out of the water tank in my trailer. So, no I have never filled the tank on my trailer with this method. If I were to run out of water. I might have some empty bottles that I could use. 12L worth, (3 US gallons). Should last a couple of days.

Please note, I would not use 2 l liter bottles. They are too big to ensure that all the water is irradiated. If I were using surface water, the dirt and silt would be taken care of with a filter. However, salt would still be a problem. But like you I prefer river water. The aluminum sheet comes in a roll that I get at the grocery store.

I won’t be sending you any pictures of me. I just don't feel that way about you. Also, I find your interest in my personal hygiene disturbing.

You might consider I saw a kayaker take a whizz right in the river last week. Hahaha
At least you put it in the sun for a couple day before drinking. I'll stick with my Sawyer.
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Old 06-15-2022, 09:50 PM   #8
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me, I carry 1 or 2 5 gallon carboys of purified water, when they run low, I stop in a town somewhere that has a 'water store' and refill them from their RO and charcoal filtered water, usually about $0.50/gallon. we use that water for drinking, coffee, cooking, brushing teeth. I use tap water from the trailer tanks for washing only. We limit our boondocking to about a week at a time, then we need to dump our holding tanks, refill the water tank, restock the fridge. 5G of drinking water usually lasts us a week.
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Old 06-16-2022, 04:59 AM   #9
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Martin, IMO this is something you may not need to worry about too much. Most of us run out of holding tank capacity before drinking water becomes a problem. Easy to carry extra in the tow vehicle.
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Old 06-18-2022, 08:37 AM   #10
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Grand Adventure YouTube channel showed a system for using lake water. https://youtu.be/X8tTn4wh3WY
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Old 06-18-2022, 12:18 PM   #11
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin B. View Post
We often boondock where there is water nearby but we don't trust it. Has anyone used this method? Any chemists who could comment? Are there similar methods that are cheaper?

https://twitter.com/TansuYegen/statu...87100440477698

https://smile.amazon.com/PuriBag-Bac...JHB/ref=sr_1_8

https://smile.amazon.com/Purifier-Pa...ef=sr_1_1_sspa
My favorite wife is a retired clinical microbiologist with experience in both standard diagnostics and has also done work for pharmaceutical companies, testing new drugs.

Here is the tip, strain the water to get the big lumps out (clear water is your goal) then boil the water for 10 minutes to sterilize it.

If you cannot boil the water add bleach sufficient that you can just detect the chlorine odor next day (means that there is still active chlorine helping to purify). Bleach will not work against all organisms but will get most of them.

If you are going to rely on filtering/straining only you must get into the 1/2 a micron range to get the bad bits.
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Old 06-18-2022, 01:01 PM   #12
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those tablets are just bleach in a solid form (Calcium Hypochlorite, instead of Sodium Hypochlorite). I would suggest instead a microfilter system, but they produce pints of water, not gallons.
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Old 06-18-2022, 06:19 PM   #13
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Berkey Filter Google it...

Quote:
Originally Posted by Martin B. View Post
We often boondock where there is water nearby but we don't trust it. Has anyone used this method? Any chemists who could comment? Are there similar methods that are cheaper?

https://twitter.com/TansuYegen/statu...87100440477698

https://smile.amazon.com/PuriBag-Bac...JHB/ref=sr_1_8

https://smile.amazon.com/Purifier-Pa...ef=sr_1_1_sspa
Berkey Filters are the best out there and need no power, many boondockers use them...
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Old 06-18-2022, 06:55 PM   #14
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Berkey Filters are the best out there and need no power, many boondockers use them...
I looked on their site and cannot see any micron sizes viruses can be as small as 1/2 micron.
If you are using stream water, Don't take chances BOIL THE WATER, for drinking and toothbrushing.

When ever we filled our tanks we added a little bleach, especially in rural Mexico.
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Old 06-20-2022, 02:00 PM   #15
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Filter vs purification water

I'm not a SME on this subject but I have a little experience not really to the point of filling RV water tank. Start by filtering out the big stuff, secondary filtering down to under 1 micron for "cripos, gardenia and cist. Calcium/ sodium hypochlorite (AKA Bleach) to kill viruses. Boiling will too but lot more fuel then time to cool off. So a semi compact water filtering system can easily be used then hit with "Bleach" set for 1 hour plus safe to use and drink. 30 minutes if temperature is high enough. The chlorine level should be 2.5-3 ppm to 4 ppm (max) hour after treatment. If I'm not forgetting due to years. It's been over 25 years since I've had to sanitize and purify a Army "500 gal.water trailers" To deal with over treatment, let "off gas extra chlorine" time and venting or top off with more water. Some good info can quickly be found....
I snapped a screen shot from Canada site recommended they quote WHO and US FDA data.
I still dump a quantity of bleach in my Scamp's water tank to flush system out.
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Old 06-20-2022, 02:31 PM   #16
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Originally Posted by Martin B. View Post
We often boondock where there is water nearby but we don't trust it. Has anyone used this method? Any chemists who could comment? Are there similar methods that are cheaper?

https://twitter.com/TansuYegen/statu...87100440477698

https://smile.amazon.com/PuriBag-Bac...JHB/ref=sr_1_8

https://smile.amazon.com/Purifier-Pa...ef=sr_1_1_sspa

I have three different survival filters. They are supposed to take pretty much any water that is not radioactive or contaminated with man made chemicals and make it drinkable. Any time I am going where water will not be readily available I take them with me. They are still unused in their packaging.

I also have two 6 gallon jugs and 10 gallons of potable water. I can last for 4-5 days on that easy. Actually as much as anything my waste tanks are the problem. They fill up shortly after I use all of my potable water.

I also take bottled water as a backup. Frankly the filters are a last resort backup. I am not sure I want to trust them. I know people who use them overseas where they don't have a choice without a problem. But I am not sure I want to trust them. But if I am somewhere and get cut off I want to make sure I can take care of that need. But I plan on only using water I get from a standard tap of some kind.
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Old 06-20-2022, 05:16 PM   #17
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Just buy bottled water and stay safe. Me, US Army Retired and know the dangers of off the grid water. Stay Safe.
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Old 06-20-2022, 09:29 PM   #18
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I met a guy who built a massive 'survivalist' bugout rig out of a 5 ton all terrain 6x6 army truck (the Deuce and a Half's big brudder).. he put a 100G diesel tank on each side, but one side was for engine fuel, while the other side was for used vegetable oil, and he had an onboard biodiesel purification system. Ditto he had dual 100G water tanks, one for 'wild' water, with a suction pump he could use to fill it from a stream or pond, then an onboard high pressure microfiltration system to filter the wild water into the clean water tank. He had a rather large trailer built on a military ammo trailer frame that had a complete metal fabrication shop, with CNC plasma table, lathe, mill, etc. This guy was quite a character.
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Old 06-21-2022, 06:47 AM   #19
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Like JoelInTexas, I use a couple of stacking 2 1/2 gallon pails with quality filters inside like Berkys. I've had no problems if you keep the contents of the two pails separate. For those paranoid of 'germs' you can always boil the water or add an ounce of colloidal silver or Hydrogen Peroxide to the filtered water.
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