Planning Want some advice reguarding filtering water in the uk

[Christian Chessher]

My brother and I are just starting out when it comes to unsupported multi-day backpacking(UK).
we have purchased lifestraw water purifyers (suposedly filters heavy metals and viruses also).

it used to be the case, you would look at the plantlife, and if it was healthy then a good filtering or boiling would be enough.

what i am worried about is a report saying that in the uk only 14% of the rivers are in good ecological state. a huge change from 10 years ago.

im worried about chemical contamination, is a good filtering enough?

 

[nigelp]

Depends where you are taking the water from? If you are backpacking in wild country then the water source will likely be up stream and close to the source. In that case a filter would be fine - I use a Sawyer filter in UK hills and mountains.
If you are lowland walking then check out taps in church yards, farm yards (ask) and also cattle troughs with the bullcock and water inlet exposed.
I wouldn’t take water from any lowland streams like the Thames etc with any water filter even one that supposedly removed everything unless I was really desperate.

Some plants will thrive in water that is not fit for human consumption.

 

[Broch]

I would not take water from any lowland rivers or streams to be honest.

Upland streams and hillside springs I am happy drinking from - often without even filtering it. I have taken water from small mountain lakes and that I filter.

Many of our rivers are actually cleaner than they have been for fifty years or more but there's still a lot of agricultural and industrial run-off so it's the animal medication and chemicals that need to be avoided - very difficult to filter out or even boil safe. As kids, a very long time ago, we were warned not to drink from lowland streams because of liver fluke - so it's a practice I've always avoided.

 

[grizzlyj]

I think anything described as a filter hasn't been lab tested to prove it removes all bacteria and virus to be safe. If it had it gets called a purifier. The bigger bladder Lifestraws remove viruses from memory, the small ones don't?
Apart from the chemical issue, why are there ones that are "only" a filter? If you have one that does bacteria but not viruses, when is it ok to assume there are no viruses? Anyone know if there some guidance or countries even where viruses are not an issue?

 

[Broch]

Filtering improves the performance of chemical purifying so if you filter out particles before adding the chlorine you increase the chance of the bacteria being killed.

 

[C_Claycomb]

Technology

purehydration.com

Might be worth looking at the stuff these folk make.

 

[Christian Chessher]

I think anything described as a filter hasn't been lab tested to prove it removes all bacteria and virus to be safe. If it had it gets called a purifier. The bigger bladder Lifestraws remove viruses from memory, the small ones don't?
Apart from the chemical issue, why are there ones that are "only" a filter? If you have one that does bacteria but not viruses, when is it ok to assume there are no viruses? Anyone know if there some guidance or countries even where viruses are not an issue?

my understanding is that virus cant "live" long unless it is attached to something. a virus is only really an issue where the water passes through any urban or populated aria. true wild water sources with little interference by humans are unlikley to have virus just bacteria,protozoa or parisites.

so the normal lifestraws are more than adiquate for places like canada or remote places in africa with no industrial or urban development.

the uk however, we are very well developed and its very dificult to find water that hasnt been in contact with anything artificial. so filtering in the uk has to be somewhat more beefy.

thats my understanding of it anyhow. as said, my worry is chemicals... i have the large life straw that aparrently filters out everything including virus and heavy metals... just not chemicals

 

[Christian Chessher]

Depends where you are taking the water from? If you are backpacking in wild country then the water source will likely be up stream and close to the source. In that case a filter would be fine - I use a Sawyer filter in UK hills and mountains.
If you are lowland walking then check out taps in church yards, farm yards (ask) and also cattle troughs with the bullcock and water inlet exposed.
I wouldn’t take water from any lowland streams like the Thames etc with any water filter even one that supposedly removed everything unless I was really desperate.

Some plants will thrive in water that is not fit for human consumption.

some good tips here... thanks

 

[gra_farmer]

We use granular activated carbon (gac) as a neutraliser for low level pesticides, you can get the wilko 5 stage filters, filter the water and then boil it. Should be fine.

Nitrates are a little more difficult.

But if you want belt and baces, have a chat with your local water company, just ask them what treatments they do to raw water to make it potable water (only worth while asking if it is a surface water supply catchment).

More often than not, it is gac and a shot of hyper chloride. So a carbon filter and chlorine.

 

[grizzlyj]

And kept in a pipe. Or the chlorine won't be there after a few days I think?

 

[SaraR]

my understanding is that virus cant "live" long unless it is attached to something. a virus is only really an issue where the water passes through any urban or populated aria. true wild water sources with little interference by humans are unlikley to have virus just bacteria,protozoa or parisites.

Viruses can't replicate (reproduce) without highjacking the cell machinery of their host cells to do all the heavy lifting for them. The free-floating virus particle is just an elaborate protective carrier containing the genetic code of the virus, with the sole job of getting that genetic code from one host cell to another, and it is actually quite sturdy.

Under favourable conditions, virus particles can "survive" (that is, remain infectious) for a very long time, however there are lots of things that will inactivate or destroy virus particles. In addition to chemicals and cleaning solutions, more natural things like high temperatures and UV-light will damage them, so the longer a particle is exposed to sun light, the bigger the risk of it being damaged to the point where it no longer can successfully infect a host cell. Virus particles can also get stuck to surfaces (due to electrostatic forces) or bundled up by ions and, since they can't actively move or do anything really, that can mean the end of that virus particle.

Different groups of viruses have very different structures, so how sensitive they are to different destructive forces varies quite a lot. Viruses also have rather specific host ranges, so of the 10,000,000 or so virus particles present in every millilitre of freshwater, the majority will not be able to infect humans. Sounds great, but the problem is that for many viruses it doesn't take a lot of virus particles to make us ill. Also a sick person (or animal for viruses that can infect both) usually produce a boat load of viruses that gets released into the environment with their "outputs". So even if you think you're far away from anywhere populated, you just don't know what's there.

Between the disease microbes and various harmful chemicals/compunds from populated areas and modern life in general (farming, industry, roads) and heavy metals from our mining legacy, I really would avoid drinking water from most streams and any UK river even if filtered. If you had a really capable and well-maintained filtering/treatment system and it was a one off? -- maybe, but I'd still rather explore any other options first.

 

[grizzlyj]

That's very helpful thank you
So a filter that doesn't remove viruses is pretty much always a bit risky, a purifier that does is safe assuming in good working order, used correctly etc etc?

 

[SaraR]

That's very helpful thank you
So a filter that doesn't remove viruses is pretty much always a bit risky, a purifier that does is safe assuming in good working order, used correctly etc etc?

You need to make sure that whatever system you use will reduce most of the hazards you are likely to encounter and to do that you probably want a system rather than a one-stop shop solution. If nothing else to avoid clogging (shorter lifespan, reduced flow rate and risk of crossover) and to allow each method to work optimally. E.g. if there is a high particle load (organic or sediment) you want to prefilter the water, to get rid of large particles so that the smaller pore-size filter can do a better job. You might want to treat the filtered water with UV-light (steripen for instance) or chemicals (chlorine tablets etc). These work much better if there is less particles in the water, so makes sense to do that afterwards. You still need to think about heavy metals and other dissolved molecules, and various water purifications systems are better or worse at targeting some or most of those. All this comes with a weight penalty, of course, so you need to think about that too.

And at the end of the day, the easiest and safest way of avoiding a lot of risk is to start out with the cleanest water you can get your hands on. Just because your system can clean up muddy, peaty mucky water, doesn't mean it wouldn't be better if you went for a cleaner source. Both in terms of lowering the risk and in terms of increasing the lifespan of your system.

If you are somewhere close to civilisation, consider filling up at cafés or garages (or ask to use people's garden taps etc) than rely water from the rivers, especially in places like Wales where you have a mining legacy and inputs from farms and population centres.

 

[saxonaxe]

"especially in places like Wales "

There's nothing wrong with Welsh water..


...

 

[billycoen]

We've got leccy too...

 

[grizzlyj]

This was tap water going through a coarse pre-filter before entering our camper tank at a campsite in Morocco. They pumped from a briney borehole every evening into a rooftop tank with an open top with dead who knows what in and all the birds and bats drinking from it. They didn't tell you that is what the tap water is so I'm sure many drank direct perhaps The locals drank bottled water there!

 

[grizzlyj]

Also, I read somewhere ages ago the only thing that may remove some chemical nasties if you had to was a Brita, but that would have to be an add on after making it biologically safe first.

 

[saxonaxe]

"This was tap water going through a coarse pre-filter before entering our camper tank at a campsite in Morocco"

Studying that would keep a Marine Biologist busy for hours...

 

[saxonaxe]

For what it's worth Grizzlyj, I drank filtered then boiled water from a Medieval Well that I discovered in woodland that I owned in East Sussex.
It was in a rural heavily wooded area bounded by Dairy pastures and I used the water at my campsite weekly for almost 10 years.


It may not appear so but that stainless pot is about a foot under water in that photo.

I used a Drink Safe main filter, the black 5 litre bag hanging on the tree, which gravity drained into the blue Ortlieb bag on the ground and used the water for tea and cooking, so it was always boiled before consumption.
I regularly back flushed the filter and occasionally rinsed the bags out at home with diluted Milton, the stuff used to sterilise Babies feed bottles.
I never suffered any ill effects and I camped in all months of the year over a 9+ year period.

 

[grizzlyj]

That is a lovely well
If you dig on Miltons website possibly on their Aus version they suggest a dilution with the tablets for water purification, perhaps something like 1 to 100l rather than the baby bottle cleaning strength. Tablets being better than liquid since the chlorine won't have evaporated as much. The CDC I think has directions for using bleach to the same end in the USA, but liquid bleach there has the strength stated on the bottle. UK stuff when I looked didn't, so dosage, and perfumes etc, were a bit of an unknown. So I used katadyn micropur forte, the red one with silver ions for water preservation (once clean) for six months, well after the chlorine is gone reliably. The big bottle of powder does 50000 litres and costs about £55 sometimes, but the cleaning aspect has a shelf life, the preservation part lasts much longer. Just doing a jerry cans worth is tricky. I diluted it part way in a nalgene to give easier dosing at 20-250l water volumes.
As well as filtering normally. Filter, then heat or treat.