Greetings Hikers!
A lot of hikers place a lot of value in making sure that their water is filtered, and rightly so. I am not going to get into that issue within this article, other than to say that there are times when I absolutely refuse to go on a hiking trip without a water purification of some sort. Because of where I live and typically hike a water filter is not necessary – it rains so much that I can just gather water by setting down my water bottle and it fills up in a few minutes. At night, if I know the next morning I will be wanting to take a quick towel body shower, clean any gear, or just to have a nice breakfast I can easily gather three liters of water, the one liter that my primary bottle holds plus a 2 liter water bag for additional storage. Of course there are times when I am just not able to gather that much water and find a need to acquire water from another source beyond just rain falling, in these times it is typically from a river or creek.
I have gone through a lot of different water filters, like most of us have I suspect, trying to find one that works for me. Forget trying to find “that perfect one”… these days I just try to find one that makes me happy and feel safe and does not weigh a lot.
I have bought the Sawyer Three-way filter but it was way bigger than what I expected it to be and thus it never made it into my backpack, plus I almost never drink directly from a storage bag and I am just not a fan of the whole gravity system. Nothing against those methods, I just do not care to go down those roads, done them both and just do not like either of them.
I have bought the SteriPen Adventurer Opti and really do love it. It has never failed me, something I hear happens to people here and there. It is also something that I do not have to worry about freezing in sub freezing conditions. If you have ever woken up and realized that your standard membrane filter is frozen and totally unusable, you know what I mean. Yes it requires batteries, but I do not care about that. It is really no different from carrying fuel for your stove, its just a necessary part of your overall total backpack weight.
Awhile back Sawyer released their “Sawyer PointOne Squeeze Water Filter System” which at first I neglected to take a close look at, but here a few weeks ago I came across it again and took a serious look at its technical specs and it jumped out at me as something that could be the finest – and lightest weight – membrane filter system available for hikers.
Technical Specs:
Filter Weight: 63.25 grams / 2.231 ounces (filter by itself without cap nor blue instructions label)
Cap Weight: 5.78 grams / 0.204 ounces (would be completely unnecessary if all you plan to do is filter water and than store the filter in a bag)
Filter Weight After Use: 82.26 grams / 2.90 ounces (filter by itself without cap nor blue instructions label, shaken and blown out as best as I can)
Filter Time:
It takes me exactly 1 minute and 10 seconds to filter a full 2 liter bag.
This is without the white bottle cap on the outlet. With the white bottle cap on the filter it takes me 1 minute and 50 seconds. As I do not carry the white bottle cap it does not make any difference to me. But still, under two minutes to treat two liters of water, that is pretty much untouchable by any other method out there.
Compare this to the SteriPen Adventurer Opti which takes takes three minutes to filter 2 liters of water.
Compare that to hours and hours for tablets and liquid chemicals. Read a great discussion talking about these two types of treatments.
How I Use It:
I typically carry no more than three liters of water, however some times a forth liter of water just becomes necessary. That is maximum water carried. Realistically I tend to carry one liter of water, whatever my bottle holds. Again this is due to living in a wet/raining environment. Your situations may be different of course.
So for me what I have started to do is to carry my standard one liter bottle and than carry the 2 liter Sawyer bag and the Sawyer Squeeze Filter.
The total weight for the filter and the bag are 92.77 grams / 3.27 ounces.
My SteriPen Opti Adventure is exactly 100 grams / 3.52 ounces.
So by switching over to the Sawyer PointOne Squeeze Water Filter System I am able to save 7.23 grams / 0.255 ounces when the unit is fully dry. Not a whole lot of weight for a UL hiker but a worth wild amount for any SUL/XUL hikers to consider.
Now I am fully aware that the ‘Aquamira Frontier Pro’ is much lighter than this at 57 grams / 2.0 ounces. However – and this is a big however – it only filters down to 3 micron. The CDC confirms that in order to properly filter Cryptosporidium, Giardia (the two biggest issues we face as hikers) you must have a filter that can do at least 1.0 Micron Absolute. Therefore the Aquamira Frontier Pro is realistically not even a viable single-treatment option for hikers.
I also want to point out here that I absolutely refuse to use pills, tablets, or liquids chemicals to treat my water (baring the use of bleach in very rare situations). The whole idea of having to weight hours and hours for me to be able to drink water is just idiotical. Many of the popular tablets out there today require you to wait hours before you can safely drink the water. Take for example the ‘Katadyn Micropur’, it requires a wait time of at least 4 hours in cold temperatures! I am sorry folks, but if all of a sudden I realize that I am suffering from water deprivation, or end up drinking a lot more water than I expected because of a tough hill climb, the last thing I need for my well being, my safety, is to have to wait potentially a number of hours before I can safely drink the water I have been lugging around – I do not care how you look at it, 100% dependence upon tablets, pills or chemicals is not safe. (just as 100% dependance upon a membrane filter is just not safe – always have a redundant system in place, for me, its bleach, which I am already carrying)
Bag Durability:
(update: Please see my article entitled “Sawyer Squeeze – Updated 2013” for further reading on bag durability and a new version of the bags.)
There is a lot of talk on the internet about how durable the bags themselves will be – and rightly so. Given that the idea of this whole system is that you have to actually squeeze and crunch and abuse the bags, hopefully Sawyer had the foresight to actually make them tough enough to handle a thru-hike.
Given the fact that you can buy three of the 2 liter bags for around $10 bucks, whereas a 2 liter platy bag usually costs around $12 bucks for one, if the bags are just as durable that will be very sweet, as they would thus be both less expensive and lighter weight than the 2 liter platy, which has become a mainstay in nearly every backpack these days.
Should you puncture a bag and you do not have another bag, you can always screw it onto the top of most plastic bottles out there that use a standard top connector, such as a 2 liter bottle that you can pick up from just about any trail town. It also fits on a few 1 liter bottles that I have tried, but I am not going to start listing each and every freaking 1 liter bottle and whether it fits on them or not, so do your own home work on this ;)
I cannot remember exactly when they came out, but it seems like it was the end of 2011 (Octoberish?), which means that the 2012 thru-hiking crowd will be the first group of thru-hikers able to really put them through the test, so if you are out there hiking in the 2012 season I would love to have you jump back to my website after your hike and share how they work out!!
Playing Nice With Other Bags By Using Alternative Washers:
Following-paragraph added August 23, 2012: Ok so there has been a lot of discussion going on around the internet about getting the Sawyer Squeeze to play nice with other bags. I have spent an insane amount of time (and a fair bit of money) buying different water bags on the market, and different size washers, and connectors, to see what it will take to get the Sawyer Squeeze to work with other bags without any problem. My conclusion at this point in time is that it is just not worth the trouble. I can get different washers to make it work with some bags, but not other bags. Same with different connectors. In the end what I have ended up doing is switching over to the Evernew Water bags (available at places such as Gossamer Gear) which fit perfectly onto the Sawyer Squeeze without any modifications to the Sawyer Squeeze. I also find the Evernew water bags to be much nicer than the Platy 1-liter soft bottles (the cap is bigger and easier to open on the Evernew bags) so my advice is to just throw away the Sawyer Bags (or put them in a WTSHTF bag/box) and go buy yourself some of the Evernew water bags and just be done and over with it. (end of additional paragraph)
One of the key issues facing all of us as hikers these days is that there are only a small handful of water bag containers out there – Platyus, Camelbak, and Hydrapak being the big three. So we would expect that when a water filter manufacturer releases a new product it will play nice with both of the big two companies that make water hydration bags.
For the most part the the Sawyer PointOne Squeeze Water Filter works not only on the provided Sawyer water bags, but they also work on most of the Platyus and Camelbak hydration water bags. There have been reports by some that a bag here or there does not properly seal – which is bad, as it could allow dirty water to drip down into your clean water.
The filter itself does fit onto a Platy 2 liter bag, with rare situations where it does not work, and for those situations it has been discovered that a simple garden hose washer totally solves the problem. ref
I have also been told by a hiker (Thumper) within the pct-l mailing list that Sawyer has released “a new adapter set that allows the Sawyer PointOne Squeeze Water Filter System (SP-131) to be used in-line with Camelbak by attaching the filter inline with the bladder and drinking tube inside the pack… the adapter set is SP-110 and costs $6.99 plus shipping” ref
So this will be awesome for those that like to go the route of a double bag gravity system and would like to go with this lighter weight filter rather than the heavier Three-way filter. This new adapter could (maybe?) also be used in a few different situations… such as doing a system such as hydration bag -> filter -> new adapter -> standard hose with bite-valve. It will be interesting to see if that combination could work out, and how much force it would take to pull water through the filter, I suspect it would not work all that well, but if somebody out there buys ones of these new adapters and tries this, please stop back by here and post whether or not this works!
The Sawyer bags are lighter and less expensive – if they prove to be just as durable, or even nearly as durable, it could be illogical to go with a more expensive and heavier water hydration bag.
I have tested the Sawyer PointOne Squeeze Water Filter on my 2 liter platy bag and can confirm that it does not work – the filter will not properly screw onto the bag, which kind of sucks that Sawyer was not willing to play-nice with the Platy bag.
I do not have a CamelBak hydration bag to test it on so I am unable to provide any solid and reliable personal details on how the two play nice with each other.
I received an email yesterday from a hiker by the trailname of “SomeGuy” who after reading this article he went to a local big-box-store and purchased both a 1/16th washer (think a washer for your garden hose) and while he was there he also picked up a couple of these to try. This second one could sort of be kind of neat if you are going to be somewhere that there will be a lot of small sticks and mud chunks and other debris in your dirty water source.
I myself have swapped out the original washer for a 1/16th and can confirm that it works perfectly on both the 2l platy bag and the original Sawyer bags. So for $0.49 cents, just go buy one of the 1/16th washers and throw it in there (replacing the original), as than should you find yourself needing to use a platy you will not have to wonder if it is going to work or not.
Alternatives To Bags:
There are a few alternatives to using bags for those that have issues with the Sawyer bags, or just using bags in general.
One solution so far has been from Ed “Eeyore” Jarrett where you take a water bottle and cut off part of it and attach the top part of water bottle to the dirty water part of your filter. See the photo for an example. He goes into detail within his own review of the Squeeze which is a great right up and worthy of a few minutes of your time.
As he states, “But if you have a soda bottle top for a scoop like I do, you can screw the top onto the input side of the filter and then use it as a gravity filter. My scoop is about 4 inches long and, so long as I keep it nearly full, will allow me to fill a quarter Gatorade bottle in about 7 1/2 minutes. That is slow, but easy, and does give you a fall back without having to carry an extra bag.”
Seven minutes to filter a one liter bottle is a lot longer than the 2 minutes it takes to filter a two liter bag, but such is life sometimes on the trail, eh!
Another option is that Sawyer has released SP110 which are inline adapters that attach to both ends of the Squeeze and allow you to connect directly to water drinking tubes, or gravity feed bags. These work very good and I have used this method myself. You can buy them at: Sawyer, GossamerGear, Amazon, REI, and elsewhere. I think this works great in a gravity system, but I found trying to drink water through the filter via hydration bags to be too difficult for my likings.
Please also read my article “Sawyer Squeeze: Updated Thoughts, Ideas, Tips” for further insight into this topic.
Backflushing:
I have had a few people message me about backflushing/backwashing this filter and if that crazy huge and heavy syringe is something all of us are going to have to lug around.
I had to go on a hunt to find some exact figures on how often Sawyer recommends you backwash this filter and they recommend doing so every 5 through 10 gallons of water. Many thru-hikers consider the 8 liter mark the mark to shoot for when it comes to water consumption per day (especially in desert regions) so that means that every 4 or 5 days you should consider backwashing it. That is perfect for those who use a bounce box from town to town. If you are not up for using a bounce box and want to carry the syringe, I just threw it onto my scale and the syringe is 33.34 grams (1.176 ounces). Another idea that would be slightly heavier by 0.2 ounces, but that take up waaay less room inside of your backpack would be one of those “Tornado Tubes” (amazon affiliate link) then you could just throw a bottle of water onto the outflow section and backwash it with a normal plastic bottle of water. I really liked this idea but I was unable to find any tornado tube that fit properly, others have found ones that work, but I have not been lucky enough to.
Please also read my article “Sawyer Squeeze: Updated Thoughts, Ideas, Tips” for further insight into this topic.
Freezing Temperatures:
There has been a LOT of discussions and arguments about whether or not the Sawyer Squeeze can survive freezing temperatures. I have long held with the fact that any freezing of the filter should result in you throwing away your filter. I have zero evidence to prove such a drastic action, but to me the facts are simple: the squeeze is a Hollow Fiber Membrane filter. What this means is that there are a whole bunch of very very small tubes inside of the filter (read more on wikipedia regarding membrane filtering) and this is really good in that it allows for significant amount of more water<->surface contact thereby allowing the water a higher chance of being filtered. But the downside to this is that the tubes are significantly smaller than non hollow fiber membrane filters, like most other backpacking water filters. These smaller tubes mean that any water trapped inside of them results in a drastically higher chance of that water freezing and as we all know, when water freezes it expands in size, and therein is the problem. When the water freezes it a very high likelihood of blowing a hole (rupturing) one of these very small tubes. When that happens it means there is a very high chance of allowing water through the filter without being filtered.
Here is the official position of Sawyer via their FAQ page:
While we have no proof that freezing will harm the filter, we do not have enough proof to say it will not harm the filter, therefore we must say that if you suspect the filter has been frozen, to replace it — this is especially true with a hard freeze.
Only you can decide if the risk is worth it, personally, I do not. Puking my guts out four 2-4 days, than being constipated for 4-7 days is simply not worth it to me. $50 bucks is not worth a week or two of suffering.
Please also read my article “Sawyer Squeeze: Updated Thoughts, Ideas, Tips” for further insight into this topic.
Videos:
This is the official promo video for the filter. It does not really highlight anything special for this filter, but I felt like I should include it within this article.
In this second video by you will see a nice way to solve one of the problems with this filter – personally I do not find it necessary as you can easily shake it out and blow it out good enough to put into your backpack – but it is a neat idea, specifically bounce ahead to the 7 minute 50 second mark.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nw6cCAXn1_g#t=07m50s
In this third video you can see how much water you could put through this filter before it would need to be replaced – theoretically. Bounce head to the 9 minute mark. I laughed pretty hard when I saw this part of the video. Beyond amazing!! (adult notice: bad language)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0LwgUNR6_UU#t=09m00s
Purchase Online:
http://gossamergear.com/etc/hydration/sawyer-filter-adapter-bundled.html (also sales the Inline Adapter)
http://www.mountainlaureldesigns.com/shop/product_info.php?products_id=195 (also sales the Inline Adapter)
http://www.moontrail.com/sawyer-squeeze-water-filtration.php (sadly no bonus points for this item)
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005EHPVQW/tag=52541358-20 (amazon affiliate link)
https://www.sawyersafetravel2.com/more.asp?pid=226 (official sawyer online store)
Replacement Bags:
Update: April 18, 2013 – Mountain Laurel Designs has gotten access to, and has started to sell, multi-packs of the new Sawyer Bags in both 1L and 2L sizes! They are $15 bucks for three 1L bags, and $15 bucks for two 2L bags. They are a 9-ply bag, compared to a 5-ply bag of the Evernew bags, and they are estimated to be 4 grams less weight than the Evernew bags.
Final Thoughts:
Until something lighter comes along that provides full 0.10 Micron Absolute level filter that does not involve waiting hours and hours to have drinkable water, and is under the 2 ounce mark, the Sawyer PointOne Squeeze Water Filter System is going to be the only filter making it into my backpack. It is fast enough for my needs, is light enough to justify carrying in those situations where I know I will need a filter, and while it is a bit expensive, it is far cheaper than a UV filtering system and far less expensive than buying the other filters out there that do not have a total gallons rating that this does. Every way I look at it, this is the winner in every category when it comes to a water filter for hikers.
Additional Articles On The Sawyer Squeeze I Have Published:
Sawyer Squeeze: Updated Thoughts, Ideas, Tips
Sawyer Squeeze – Updated 2013 Version
Article History:
(updated April 18, 2013 to indicate that MLD is now telling multi-packs of the replacement bags)
(updated April 04, 2013 to add ‘additional articles’ and ‘freezing temperatures’ section and to document SP110 inline adapters)
(updated March 07, 2012 to add the sections “bag durability” and “playing nice with other bags”)
(updated March 08, 2012 to add the sections “backwashing” and “alternative washers”)
(updated May 22, 2012 to add the link to GossamerGear as a place to buy it at)
(updated June 23, 2012 to add the link to MLD as a place to buy it at)
(updated August 23, 2012 to add information about the Evernew Water Bags)
(updated September 14, 2012 to add information about the ‘Alternative to bags’ section)
In accordance of USA Federal Trade Commission 16 CFR, Part 255: I hereby declare that the products mentioned within the content of this article were not supplied to me in exchange for services. All products mentioned within the content of this review are free of endorsements between myself and the manufacturers and meets all FTC 16 CFR.255 compliance requirements.