Water purification -

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Seen the video, it's a kinda pointless advert.

The product is interesting ... Until you stop and think. The video even sums it up well: "It's a water tablet generator".

Pity the video didn't show the other uses via treatment card.

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Copied from else where, Kudos.

So simple question: To use the H2Go system you would carry around a little bottle of salt water... OR a little bottle of bleach!
Because all the magic box generates is a small amount of fresh bleach. So would you spend the money on the gadget?

A small 40 ml bottle of bleach, should treat a lot of water.
The dosing is 2 drops per litre for clear water. 4 drops per litre for cloudy water. Sources, dosing and timing is another topic. (Min time 30 mins, recommended 4 hours.) Some water sources may be a additional time/treatment/s.

02 drops = 600 litres Base dose
04 drops = 300 litres Heavy dose for cloudy water
06 drops = 200 litres
08 drops = 150 litres US-CDC limit.
10 drops = 120 litres US-RSOG limit.


(150 drops_constant * 40ml in the bottle) / ( 2 drops per litre dosing * 5 ml_per_drops_constant) = 600 litres.


The H2Go Global says it can treat up to 240 litres of water, (n.b I inject my opinion here: at 2 drops per litre).
The H2Go Prime says it can treat up to 120 litres of water, (n.b I inject my opinion here: at 4 drops per litre).
There is a question of how best to use the salt, water, battery... and well your (receiving) container too!

You fill the gadget with solution, then energize to obtain the right strength for a larger container. If you carried a spare rubble sack: You could treat 10 litres easily enough so 120 litre capacity, not bad. But with a 2 litre camelbak... you'd be down to 24 litres. I would carry more tablets than that!


Also be aware Most H2Go Prime customers (@4 drops) haven't used or tested their purchase... but they have left a 'review'.

< Global reviews (@2 drops) >
• “the water didn’t have any kind of bad or unpleasant taste or smell.”
• “The water dose have a bit of a taste but it’s not bad. Still better than city water.”
• “Your water WILL taste kind of like a pool, but only vaguely, it can be ignored. Good instructions included.”
• “I couldn’t even taste the chlorine after the 30 min wait but I could smell it.”
</ Global reviews >


Nowhere does H2Go provide independent lab results of their product working in the field.
 
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So basically rather than being a regular filter this is a solar powered disinfectant generator which can then be added to water to make it's safe to drink? It’s a neat idea.

This reminds me of a video I saw a few years ago showing how swimming pool disinfectant (calcium hypochlorite powder) can be used to make safe drinking water. Obviously if storing calcium hypochlorite powder you would need to take care to keep it safe in a dry and well ventilated area because when mixed with water it produces chlorine gas during the chemical reaction which will badly burn your eyes and lungs if too concentrated.

However calcium hypochlorite powder is cheap to buy and a kilogram or two of the stuff is enough to disinfect a lifetime supply of safe drinking water. If you’re interested City Prepper and Canadian Prepper have both made Youtube videos which give instructions on how to prepare it safely.
 
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I was thinking of maybe the tool fitting the environment.

Is this much of an improvement for us here? No.

But right place , right time.

For those that venture into foreign lands where the water quality is suspect but the availability of salt is somewhat more ready to hand - I could definitely see the merit in this if one was needing to think about longer term solutions.
 
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Chemical treatment is (often) a second step. Virus are so small, that most backpacker filters can't catch them.
- Let's go back to beginning of this point. I think the common backpacker filters are only really designed for the US outdoors. They specifically target Crypto sporidium and Guardia (beaver fever). Which are both big enough to filter and Crypto is highly resistant to halogens. So the idea isn't all bad... clearly you could follow up with chemical treatment too. In theory, a lot of virus and bacteria will be neutralised in the first 15 of the recommended 30 min contact time. Assuming adequate water temperature!

But it to me it feels like the companies are selling an image rather than a solution. Nobody wants a pump that is too stiff, or a filter that is too slow, people don't want to change a filter that gets blocked 'easily' ... But they still want to drink from muddy puddles with a draw through filter! :angelic2:


Taking a small step towards preper-lore:
Using the single dose of 2 drops per litre, and a 2 litre bottle of bleach you could treat 30,000 litres. (Upper limit of what I'd quote.) I could store these in a cupboard and use them for regular cleaning.

1,000 litre IBC (intermediate bulk container) could be treated with 133.33 ml (dosed at 4 drops per litre). If you knew it contained a thousand litres...


(I) Avoid Canadian Prepper.


I was thinking of maybe the tool fitting the environment.

Is this much of an improvement for us here? No.

But right place , right time.

For those that venture into foreign lands where the water quality is suspect but the availability of salt is somewhat more ready to hand - I could definitely see the merit in this if one was needing to think about longer term solutions.
I'd follow the CDC for medical personal 'abroad'. Or concede to mindshare and buy Grayl or Bachgold.
 
Actually circling back round how would this be different to using a millbank bag or a sawyer mini and then dropping an Aquatab or other sterilisation tablet in?

I quite like the test strips idea though, presumably they just show that the concentration of solution is correct
 
Sterilisation tabs bought bulk are inexpensive and much more convenient for use as we tend to filter only a few litres at a time and 100 tabs in packets weigh maybe 1oz at most.

Last ones I bought were £5 for 200 tablets, or 2.5p per litre.

As noted above bulk purchase of sterilisation powder or tablets (often marketed for swimming pools where 1 tablet treats 1000l) or plain bleach is even less expensive per litre when used with common sense.
 
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@mrmike. My guess if you might be thinking about the "MSR MIOX". The early model used CR123 lithium camera batteries. The product was way ahead of the technology, the cost of treatment was too high. Only really military applications? EDIT: I wasn't getting the details right. I had discounted as it wasn't suitable for my goals.



@MrEd. It depends how far you want to do with this route. The process is largely be the same. Ideally a coarse pre-filter, certainly a fine filter then follow up with chemical treatment of your choice.

The test strips are a nice touch... but check the details, I suspect that a battery of tests would take way way too long and likely have temperature requirements. You can buy water testing kits online. I think the gadget is pretty simple.

^ I am tempted to break out the science kit. I'm really sure if back to back testing could 'track' dosage. I am very interested to try this. EDIT: batteries are shot, so the readings are hunting all over the place.


Where the slight edges are. erm I diagnose Shinitis... the toy is awesome purely because it is shiny. I'm struggling to defend it.

The magic (salt water) solution bottle isn't too different from a small bottle of bleach or Milton sterilising fluid.

Milton's solution is a lower concentration so the reccomended dose is 0.5ml per litre for drinking water. Quoted as "1/2 a teaspoon or 2.5ml per 5 litres and leave for 15 mins". Active ingredient sodium hypochlorite 2% w/w. Treats about 11 litres for 1p. N.B all this is just a single step in a larger process.


Easy of use? If you buy the bandana with printed instructions you can pretend the hunk of tech is more useful. The only edge is maybe if you've got the freshest bleach via gadget it should be more effective... But you don't really know what is in the water and you won't know what the effect of temperature is.

The worst point I see is how to scale up using bleach, after all how big is a drop really?
I know 150 drip where counted and a reading of 5 ml was recorded. Thus 30 drips per ml.
With Milton's it would be about 24 drips per ml.
But the 'standard' is 0.05ml or 20 drips per ml.
So a 1 ml syringe would treat 5 or 7.5 litres at '4 drops per litre' depending on drop size... This could be validated via pipette.
 
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