Water Purification Tip For Campers

If you are going on a portage, you will have to bring along some form of water treatment to combat the ever increasing pollution entering our natural watercourse. There is always the tried and true way of using iodine tablets and boiling, but that's energy intensive and doesn't exactly produce the most potable water available using other techniques. Over the course of many decades, we've kept pace with the latest technologies and gadgets as they've progressed from water filters into certified water purifiers.

We have been using the First Need Portable Water Purifier for three years and it has been on at least a dozen back country portages. It has never broken down and we have been able to produce a 6 day supply of potable water for groups of 8 people using a single cartridge and the method below.

Before discovering the First Need Purifier we used pharmaceutical grade vaccine filters which I was able to get from work, but the principles are exactly the same. Use a set of small pulleys to hoist a container marked "Contaminated". Attach a piece of tubing to the inlet of the water purifier and another piece of tubing from the water purifier outlet to a second container marked "Potable" or something descriptive. Give the water purifier a few pumps and let gravity take over. Now you'll have more time for what's important and should be able to produce about 5 gallons of potable drinking water every 4 hours with little effort.