#AskPaulKirtley Episode 39 – Wilderness Water Sources & Water Purification
In this episode of #AskPaulKirtley I answer a bunch of questions about water. What are the advantages of Millbank bags? Can you use a bandanna to filter water? Do Steripens work? How do you deal with herbicides and pesticides in water? Can you use activated charcoal to filter water? Is it safe to drink water from springs and wells? These are the jumping off points for a wide-ranging discussion about producing safe drinking water outdoors – close to home or further into the wilds…
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Links For This Episode of #AskPaulKirtley
Water Purification: The 5 Contaminants You Need to Know About
How to Use a Millbank Bag: 6 Easy Steps
Does Boiling Always Make Water Safe To Drink?
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#AskPaulKirtley is my Q&A video and podcast series that aims to answer your questions about bushcraft, survival skills and outdoor life.
The idea here is partly to take the strain off my email inbox and get answers out to people in a more timely fashion.
Rather than send an answer to just that one person, I’d like others to benefit from the answers too. So, just in the same way I’d previously write an email answer, here I’m going to speak the answer (which is much quicker than me typing out an answer, so I’ll get more questions answered as well as benefiting more people).
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Related Material On Paul Kirtley’s Blog:
#AskPaulKirtley Episode 18: Power In The Wild, Water Purification, Chaga & What I Have In My Pockets
#AskPaulKirtley Episode 4 – Biting Insects, Wild Foods, Tree ID and Water Purification
6 thoughts on “#AskPaulKirtley Episode 39 – Wilderness Water Sources & Water Purification”
No matter how many times he said “protozoa cryptosporidium” Harry Potter’s water purification spell wasn’t going to plan. So he turned his wand into a featherstick, set fire to it and boiled the water instead.
Improvised water filters (charcoal, sphagnum moss, etc).
The Swedish army developed a version of these, and found that while they worked at least to some extent to remove radioactive and chemical pollutants they tended to actually add microorganisms to the water. After several incidents when people got sick they banned it (in the army you can give orders… :-). So while your advice was acceptable for the question (chemical contaminants), it really ought to have the caveat that you *must* boil the water after the filtration step before you drink it.
P.S. If you want to I can check if any of the studies were non-classified and send them to you.
And good answer to the “can I use charcoal for water filtration” question. In the lab I could probably (I have never tried it, so I don’t know for certain) produce an activated charcoal column that would filter water sufficiently to make it safe to drink, but that would be a carefully packed liquid chromatography column prepared over many hours (letting a fine slurry of very even charcoal particles pack down under constant gentle water flow for several hours, etc). Not a trivial thing to improvise in the field! Besides, for any reasonable sized column we are talking fairly low flow rates (say a liter/h)
As always Paul, thank you very much for the great work you are constantly doing.
For the time beeing I used millbank bags (at your courses) or the very similar brown bags
(on my private wanderings) for course filtration followed by boiling. I found this to be
a very reliable and safe way to treat water found in nature and had never any problems, upset stomache, etc.
For some reason (don’t know exactly why) I am a bit afraid to use chemicals for water treatment
and so far I had not yet the opportunity to try one of the industrial made filters like Katadyn,
MSR or Sawyer.
I am also very skeptical regarding improvised water filters. I once have been teached on a
bushcraft course in Germany how to make one: the bottom of an empty PET bottle was cut off and
the bottle was then filled with tightly packed layers of charcoal, sand and grass. The bottle
was hung up upside down and was filled with murky water. A small hole was poked into the lid
of the bottle to give the illusion of a very low flowing rate. When the lid was removed, however,
the water flew almost unimpeded through the system which convinced me that there was not much
filtering going on. The murky water was slightly lighter in colour but I didn’t want to drink
it without boiling as suggested by the instructor.
Later on I found this article on an experimental series of the renowned Norwegian School of Winter
Warfare ( http://survivology101.blogspot.co.at/2015/03/water-water-everywhere-but-not-drop-to.html?m=1 ) and learned that plant material and sand have almost no filtering effect regarding bacteria whereas charcoal seems to work to some extend.
However, as you already said in the video, it’s not a reliable way to remove pathogens from water as it
works just by chance and should at least be supplemented by boiling.
Kind regards from Austria
Michael
I do not know the correct name for that in english, so i try to explain, what i mean:
There are some engineers, hired by the city to pump water from the ground through a filtration system into tubes which are ending in the tab in the kitchen of your house. That job was done by my father, so i trust, he was informed about that. He told me, that under the river Havel is floating 28 meters deep a second river through the sand in the same direction, of course somehow connected to the surface. The river ontop is every thing else, than clean, but of course also not chemicaly conterminated.
They pumped the water out there, sended it to a sand filter and more or less that was all. This drinking water was the only water outside the USA, which the US Army was allowed to drink outside the USA without doing Chlor inside, they made an exeption for Berlin, in cause of the high quality of that water.
My fathers opinion was, that every source in the alpin mountains, every fast floating small river there, where there is no house on top carries water you can drink out of the small river, we never got a problem.
We did the same in mountain areas in Germany where only forest was over the source, but not under houses and fields. (in the alpine mountains you have only cows, no fields in higher areas).
My father did this his hole life. He never had a problem. But we used very exact german , swiss and austrian maps, where every house really is printed in.
So when the water comes out of a mountain it went trough a huge sand filter and normally is clean.
If there was any doubt, especially in lower areas, we cooked pasta soup and boiled tea from visually clean spring water. In lower areas than our german Mittelgebirge, middle sized mountains in central germany so that means in valleys or everywhere in northern Germany we carried 2 liters per person from the last village to the camp, our goup had a waterbag that was collapsable of 10 liters, bottles and a 6 or 8 liter cooking pot, that allowed me, while others constructed the camp to send out two boys to ask for water at the next house. Whith that system we lived for years in all german forests. In the south of france we didnt carry much more than short clothing in the summer an a canvas military tentpeace as coat, tent , sunroof or sleeping bag, what is enough in the summer. That allowed us to carry drinking water in Plastic bottles from the Supermarket around, 6 liters each person.
On paddling tours in Mecklenburg, we had 10 liters per person in cheap water bags in the boats, refilling them in villages. In skandinavia i did it similar with germany.
In cases of emergency i boiled water and used micropour, later micropour forte, and prayed.
So i had in 42 years no problems with drinking water and illnesses.
Marcus
Post skriptum:
In Germany i collect high hanging berries, not the lower ones in cause of the fox wurm illness (Fuchsbandwurm) and i am steeling cherries and appels, in France I am steeling wine berrys, which are protected with unhealthy fungizid sprays. But steeling and eating unhealthy things is better than dehydration problems in hot conditions. If you do things like that throw some coins in the box of the next church to correct this misbehaviour somehow!
Marcus