Water purifier filter
General Topic
Looking for advice on which water filters are best and why.
Sawyer squeeze. Light, simple, fast, no batteries.
How fast can that filter do a gallon of water? Can the filter becleaned or do you have to replace it?
As fast as you can fill the bag and squeeze it thru. You can clean the filter.
I like my MSR water filter:
Search Amazon for:
MSR MiniWorks EX Microfilter Water Filter
It screws onto most hydration bags and you can fill a 3 liter pretty fast (3/4 gallon).
Another vote for the Sawyer. Lightweight, Inexpensive, and effective.
MSR Guardian. It’s heavy at 17 ounces but s a great filter.
I have a Pur (now Katadyn I believe) pump type filter. Im no expert but it works good and isnt too big.
Lifestraw.......gravity bag or straw
Katadyn Hiker or Hiker Pro
Steripen works for me, does 1 liter in 90 seconds.
Sawyer squeeze, easy and light.
I just got back from an Alaskan drop off hunt. Had an MSR miniworks and had it been my only source of water I would have died! They claim 1 liter per min...more like an hour if your lucky. No matter how many times we back flushed and cleaned it, it would not filter. Mine was absolute JUNK!!! My buddies each had a Sawyer squeeze systems. They let me use there’s and I will have a Sawyer from now on!
Hiker pro was great for me, msr was slow and a pain
Katadyn has a gravity bag filter that uses the same cartridge as the pump. Pump is handy when you're hiking, but a gravity filter is a Godsend when you're at a camp. In hot weather hunting NM we were using well over 2 gallons per day for 2 people and not having to pump, and just let gravity do the work was slick. Having two options that used the same filter cartridge (so they could be swapped if necessary) was a good back up although we didn't need to do so.
Lots of great lightweight options available now. I use a Sawyer squeeze, but the Katadyn B-Free is really good too.
Only thing that scares me about the Sawyer is it can’t freeze. Lots of cold weather in my hunting
I have a Hiker Pro. Works for me. Not the smallest or the fastest but it is reliable.
"Only thing that scares me about the Sawyer is it can’t freeze. Lots of cold weather in my hunting"
I don't think you are supposed to let any of them freeze.
Sawyer squeeze filter for me. It will fill a water bladder just as fast as my brothers hiker pro.
I have an old Pur Hiker, and it works brilliantly. Only difference between it and the newer “Pro” is see-through plastic. And $15....
The MSR is nice in that the ceramic element can be scrubbed with a scotch-bright pad when it gets slow... but ceramic filters break more easily than paper and the MSR is a bit slower. But 20 years ago, I was told that the SEAL teams and Airborne troops were issued MSR.
Always pump it dry so it won’t freeze up.
Good thing about a pump is that they come with two tourniquets as standard equipment...
Hike pro for me. I find it liter, if water is plentiful to care the filter and only fill my my bladder with 32 oz of water. Than to have it filled with 3 quarts. My pro hooks right to my bladder hose. So I dont have take my bladder out to fill. Ed
@Teeton - What’s the make of that bladder? My son and I now have Osprey packs and bladders with the quick disconnect, and it sure would be nice to leave them in the pack when tanking up.
Totally hear you about packing a 1L and a filter vs #6 of water when there are plenty of ready sources available.... Last year we had to elbow the frogs out of the way to fill up, but this time around the only reason to pump more than you wanted to drink in one sitting was for cooking purposes...
GF, I believe it's this one in the link. Or very similar. I've had it a few years. https://www.camelbak.com/en/military/gmi-packs/reservoirs/H02004--MilSpecCrux25BlackTube?color=c57c6bc382c8456493455dbc19fa479a
I use a Katydin (formerly PUR) Hiker model. Have used it on trips for years. Have never gotten sick. About every 3 years I get a new cartridge. During our 2019 CO elk hunt, the filters were slow (my buddy had the same model). Couldn't figure out why.
This year I bought a new filter and it turns out that there's a sheet of porous plastic wrapped around the filter which is held in place by removable mesh. The new filter comes with both items off of the main filter. The plastic sheet can be removed, brushed clean, rinsed, etc. to maintain filter efficiency. If we had only known! Another friend on a previous hunt had the MSR Miniworks. It produced cleaner looking water than the PUR Hiker did at the time, but I never got sick. His wasn't even half as fast as the OUR and his ceramic filter was hour-glassed some by the end of the hunt because he had used the green scrubbing pad so many times on it trying to make it work faster.....
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I have a Sawyer, a Katadyn and Aquamira drops. Aquamira drops are by far the easiest if you have a good clean water source.
We had trouble with the Katadyn and Sawyer clogging on a fly-in lake based moose hunt. The lake had some algae in it and it just clogged them both immediately. The nice thing was the Sawyer you could backwash and clean. That wasn't an option for the Katadyn. You do have to be careful with the Sawyer freezing. I slept with it in my pocket.
The second time we did the same hunt we filtered the water through some clothing which got a lot of the algae. Both the Sawyer and Katadyn worked much better.
If you suspect clean running water, screw a pump or filter and just use Aquamira Drops. So simple and fast.
I used this one for the last three weeks with no issues. Better flow than my sawyer squeeze.
This is the water source I was thinking about when I started this thread.
This is the water source I was thinking about when I started this thread.
This water source is a spring seep coming out of the ground and running from pool to pool some of which are in Caribou trails.
We used 2 Sawyer pump filters and I gravity filter that I do not know what brand it was. They all worked but the pumps were slow and often clogged and needed cleaning. None of these were mine and I am now looking to purchase my own filter system which is why I asked the question to start with. All I currently own is a Steri Pen and I am not sure if it would have worked well enough with this water source.
