no prob
At times Ive carried all my water for a 6-8 day trip in a canoe. EAch canoe in the group carried about 5 gallons.
Chemicals
won’t be treated very well by any of the ultra portable filters out there. There is just not enough residence time in typical outdoor filters for activated carbon to adsorb the chemicals well. They will remove some, of course, but not nearly all.
If you are worried about Atrazine or other herbicides and pesticides, they will be most concentrated early to mid summer and least concentrated about March.
As suggested above, alum works wonders overnight. I use it, then filter through a hiker pro and finally chlorinate the final water. Chlorine is not evil, it is your friend in the wild.
I may be paranoid, but I work in the water/wastewater business and it’s hard to be too careful with bacteria and viruses.
What is “First Need”?
Why is it different than a filter that also purifies (like my old Pur that has iodine impregnated into the medium)? How does it remove chemical pollutants? Is it membrane-based, like Reverse Osmosis? I’ve looked into hand-pump RO units since I paddle on the coast, and would need to desalinate, but the water output per pumping effort needed doesn’t make them attractive to me. Sitting on an unshaded barrier island in August, with temps in the 90s, and RH in the 90s too, the effort to pump a membrane unit would cause me to sweat more water than the unit would put out.
So you’re using alum to flocc TSS?
If you don’t like the taste of chemical
disinfectants, check out the Steri-Pen. It uses UV light to deactivate bacteria, viruses, crypto, etc. I bought one to replace my MiOx unit which although it worked well, imparted a noticeable taste to the water.
Like filtration, it will not remove dissolved minerals.
agricultural runoff
the parasites and other bugs in animal wastes that have been diluted in a river do not bother me as much as chemicals, which often cannot be nutralized. Grain farms use chemicals such as 2,4-d (agent orange, look it up) and Roundup, Atrazine, etc. It’s bad enough that this crap is being sprayed on your food, but you shouldn’t drink it. Early in the year, and fall will be the worst times for chemical runoff. Animal waste is a given, but at least your filter can remove it, or iodine/boiling can kill it.
On a side note, you may all be delighted to know that nearly all your wheat products have been sprayed with Roundup, or a generic version 7-10 days before it is harvested to aid in drying the grain before harvest. Enjoy your poison bread.
Looks like
a box wine bladder to me. I have a couple that Sterns put in a nylon bag (looks like the boatabag) and only cost about $9.00 Works great.
If 2,4,D and Roundup . . .
. . . were threats most farms would be dead. Smoke two packs a day and drink a six pack a day, served a year as a clerk in Vietnam and have emphesima, agent orange did it.
Yeah, cap, your "poison bread"
warning is a gross exaggeration. Whether to use Roundup type products close to harvest is a legitimate question, but nobody is going to be poisoned, and they won’t need a lawyer later on.