Anyone tried water purifying tablets yet, and would you recommend them?
So, I did some research a little while ago, bottled (supermarket) water will stay good for a year, officially . Anything else ( like water filled jerrycan) goes bad after some days and needs a waterfilter and/or water purifying tablets.
You have between 100 and 300L of fresh water in your cumulus and 10L in your toilets. If you have a bath, you can also fill it as soon as alert is raised and have enough water for days. Yes, it’s not the perfectly clean tap water, but it’s emergency situation. And you have an immune system for this.
Unless you go on treck or on country with suspicious water, don’t bother with purifying tablets. You’ll have to throw them away and replace every 2 years. They also give some unpleasant taste to water.
It’s important to note what purification tablets do and don’t do. They kill bacteria, some viruses and many parasites. They don’t remove chemical pollution, or biological toxins.
You should use them if you want to drink from open water like steams and ponds, but it won’t, say, remove factory effluent. It will prevent getting diseases from human or animal waste, which is the main risk.
But it won’t make the water taste like it didn’t come from a pond.
Anyone tried water purifying tablets yet, and would you recommend them?
They’ll kill bacteria in water, though obviously they can’t pull chemicals out of it.
I wouldn’t be worried about bottled water going bad after a year — I’ve kept distilled water for much longer than that — but if you want more capacity in a smaller package than by storing water, you can get a water still, distill water yourself as long as you have some source of water and some sort of sufficient heat (e.g. a fire).
If you don’t have access to a water source but have sufficient electrical power — which in the past I’d have said probably isn’t very likely if the government can’t get water to the public in 72 hours, but isn’t as crazy as it once might have been, what with people running around with beefy home solar setups and the like — it’s possible to run devices that condense water out of the air off the cold side of a heat pump, these sorts of things:
I’d guess that for most people, the most-practical and cost-effective approach is probably just to estimate how much water one might need and store that much potable water in advance. That takes care of the “have a source of water”, “get any energy required to purify it”, and “purify it” points all at one go. Doesn’t require a lot of expertise, effort, or place constraints on your environment to open a bottle of water.
This one only goes for people who trust their government or an ngo to come rescue them when there’s an disaster or other emergency going on. I am one of those people, but there seems to be a lot of people who don’t and want to buy stuff now they can so they can survive as long as they can without any help when the point comes they can’t buy these things.
Anyone tried water purifying tablets yet, and would you recommend them?
So, I did some research a little while ago, bottled (supermarket) water will stay good for a year, officially . Anything else ( like water filled jerrycan) goes bad after some days and needs a waterfilter and/or water purifying tablets.
You have between 100 and 300L of fresh water in your cumulus and 10L in your toilets. If you have a bath, you can also fill it as soon as alert is raised and have enough water for days. Yes, it’s not the perfectly clean tap water, but it’s emergency situation. And you have an immune system for this.
Unless you go on treck or on country with suspicious water, don’t bother with purifying tablets. You’ll have to throw them away and replace every 2 years. They also give some unpleasant taste to water.
It’s important to note what purification tablets do and don’t do. They kill bacteria, some viruses and many parasites. They don’t remove chemical pollution, or biological toxins.
You should use them if you want to drink from open water like steams and ponds, but it won’t, say, remove factory effluent. It will prevent getting diseases from human or animal waste, which is the main risk.
But it won’t make the water taste like it didn’t come from a pond.
They do make water filters that will pull larger stuff out.
I understand that the American Sawyer and the Swiss LifeStraw make popular small, portable devices.
https://www.sawyer.com/
https://lifestraw.com/
They’ll kill bacteria in water, though obviously they can’t pull chemicals out of it.
I wouldn’t be worried about bottled water going bad after a year — I’ve kept distilled water for much longer than that — but if you want more capacity in a smaller package than by storing water, you can get a water still, distill water yourself as long as you have some source of water and some sort of sufficient heat (e.g. a fire).
kagis
https://www.amazon.com/Roots-Branches-VKP1208-Little-Distiller/dp/B07WSJ2H8C
If you don’t have access to a water source but have sufficient electrical power — which in the past I’d have said probably isn’t very likely if the government can’t get water to the public in 72 hours, but isn’t as crazy as it once might have been, what with people running around with beefy home solar setups and the like — it’s possible to run devices that condense water out of the air off the cold side of a heat pump, these sorts of things:
https://www.amazon.com/Solaris-WaterGen-A10-Atmospheric-Generator/dp/B0DL4N1PRG
I’d guess that for most people, the most-practical and cost-effective approach is probably just to estimate how much water one might need and store that much potable water in advance. That takes care of the “have a source of water”, “get any energy required to purify it”, and “purify it” points all at one go. Doesn’t require a lot of expertise, effort, or place constraints on your environment to open a bottle of water.
This one only goes for people who trust their government or an ngo to come rescue them when there’s an disaster or other emergency going on. I am one of those people, but there seems to be a lot of people who don’t and want to buy stuff now they can so they can survive as long as they can without any help when the point comes they can’t buy these things.