SAWYER MINI WATER FILTER SYSTEM & HACKS

welcome back friends today we're talking about water filtration and water containers this is the particular system that I use it's built around the sawyer mini which is the filter you see here probably the most popular filter you're going to see out there on the trail for a variety of reasons i like it because of the size and the weight and the low cost doesn't really hurt either let's talk about the specs just a little bit it's nothing really too crazy we're not going to really get off in the weeds with it but this filter here filters pretty much everything that you're going to be worried about they say ninety-nine point nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine nine percent of all your basic bacterias such as cholera and e.coli Salmonella Cryptosporidium some other things if you go to their website they have some detailed reports about their filter and all the things that will you know it'll filter as well but suffice to say nobody's died using this filter and there's a reason it's the most popular filter out there and that's because it works it's got a big brother called the sawyer squeeze the difference is is one ounce of weight it's a little bit bigger you can see this one's pretty darn small and it has a little higher flow rate but for you solo backpackers and maybe hiking with one other person you're not having to filter a tremendous amount of water this filter is going to work for you in just about all cases if you need a lot more filtration or you're filtering for a group then go on up move up to the soldier squeeze this filter here is going to cost you about nineteen ninety five just about anywhere you buy it except rei it's going to be twenty four ninety five there if you buy the sawyer squeeze it's about ten dollars more and you also get a larger water container along with the filter and it's one one-ounce more in weight so enough about the specs what are you getting your kit for your 1995 will you get your double throw down filter here you get a bag for gathering your water you get a 50 ml syringe for back flowing your filter and you also get a straw here if you want to use it just like a live straw attach it to your filter and drink directly out of the water source for getting small amounts of water the biggest downfall of this kit and I'm not really knocking it because it's only 19.95 is the bag the bag not so much the construction of the bag it's it's not as good as a platypus in my opinion some people have complained that well they've blown out the sides and I think that's really operator error because you're not really supposed to squeeze these really hard and that would result in blowing out the side but it's this here and that's it's 16 ounces really no one carries a 16 ounce water bottle everybody's carrying something in the 24 ounce or up to a 1 liter water bottle so you're going to have to gather water several times and filter it to fill up your bottle so that's kind of a hassle but you know for 1995 I'm not complaining I use this as a spare it's no big deal the other thing is the syringe I don't use the syringe I want to show you why later on and also I don't carry little patched plastic straw my system is built around the filter using a platypus and also the smart water bottles one of the great things about this filter is its versatility not only can you use it with this system you can plug this right into your hydration pack in line and use it just like that you can use your bladder as a water you know gathering device you know you've got a nice big opening it's easy to use and you can plug it right in there's there's kits and adapt that you can get at just about any of your Outfitters to make that work or you can just plug it in and clamp it off with some zip ties to keep it on there nice and tight this thing is so small it's going to fit on your shoulder strap without any problem you'll never know you have it there's also some gravity feed systems that you can buy and adapt and there's all these hoses and all this stuff tornado tubes and all kinds of you know in my opinion nonsense there's easy way to do that I'm going to show you how to do it but you know whatever you want to do is fine with me but you can use this in a gravity feed situation or in line another simple thing is and like I said I don't carry this but that is the hooking up the the live straw type situation to it and what you do is you just attach a little hose they give you and you can drink it directly out of the out of the stream or river so that's also an option as well so the way my system works is I gather my water usually in a platypus cos I just like platypus I carry a 1 liter size in a 2 liter size and you just screw it in your filter and then what's great about this is I don't have to worry about holding it or anything like that if you use a smart water bottle with this cap on it it plugs really nicely right into it just like that squeeze your bottle and you can do one liter in one minute 21 minute 25 seconds so a minute and a half you can filter one liter of water if you want I just attached some paracord here this will gravity feed one liter of water in about five and a half minutes one of the keys is is you unscrew this a little bit give this some airflow right here and the water will flow right down in here also this will hold this cap this blue cap will hold one litre of water without falling off so you can hang this from a tree branch or whatever you want to do it's really a pretty easy system there are some people that they have a thing called the tornado tube you can look it up there's some other adapters and hoses and everything you can use for gravity system but I'm just telling you you can gravity feed it just like this and you're going to filter a liter of water in about five and a half minutes some of the complaints that you may have heard are around two things number one is the bag and we've already talked about that it's not as robust as a platypus but you know it's free you know in the kit for 1995 it's only 16-ounce so that's the big problem however if you want to stay with the the sawyer bottles you can get two of these and I believe they are either 32 ounce or one liter you can get a they come two to a box and they're only you know about eight bucks so you can do that or you can go buy a one liter platypus and they're around eight or nine dollars as well you can also get these in 2-liter the other complaint that you're going to see is people say oh man this thing just doesn't flow enough you know I need something that flows a lot faster well if you're out on the 80 or PCT for weeks and months at a time I just don't know where a couple minutes really makes that much difference but hey to each his own so step on up to the squeeze the other complaint they have is well man this thing this thing just clogs up you know it's just a piece of crap it clogs up well you know what if you back flush this with the syringe that they give you then you're really not going to have a problem that is you know a self-created problem and it's not a fault of the manufacturer if you're in filtering a lot of sediment through your filter crappy water you're gonna have to back flush it a lot more other than that you know it's it's your problem now the way I backflow I don't carry the syringe just extra weight something else for me to lose I don't need it and the reason is I just have my nice clean filter water here in my smart water bottle plug it right back in reverse flow give it two or three good squeezes get a nice flow through there and I back flushed my filter and I'm good to go again the other complaint that people will say well is this thing is just when I carry it up in and higher altitudes or when I'm hiking backpacking in the winter it's just too cold and I put it in my pocket to keep it from freezing so it will work and then it leaks water all over my pants pocket or in my pack or whatever well the first thing you want to do is after you filter waters you want to shake this thing out really good on both ends get as much water as you can out you got this nice little tethered cap right here you cap it off like that there are people on YouTube that say okay well we need to make a cap for this so it doesn't leak so we're going to take this water bottle and we're going to cut this end off and then we're going to take this cap and we're going to superglue it on the other side and then we'll screw it in to here and that will cap it all off well okay or you can just go to the hardware store and get this little green cap here and plug it on the end and no more water leaks no more looking like you peed your pants or your packs got a big leak in it you go to the hardware store and get these they're just a screw protectors and 3/8 is the size that will fit and you get three of them for ninety-five cents and that takes care of that so that's my other little hack for you guys that are hiking up in cold temperatures so anyway that's how I do it I like the smart water bottles for a couple different reasons number one is that cap you can also get this cap on the propel bottle the same thing as just white the other reason I like these bottles is I like the diameter of them here's a Nalgene I thought big old bottle and these slide really nice into the elastic side pockets of all of my packs they're nice and quite easy to grip obviously this isn't going to work in the winter for you because they freeze and crack and stuff and and that's where your now jeans going to come in to play but the now jean ways huh three to four times the weight so you know whatever works for you use it but that's my system I hope you guys picked up something here I made just to hear what you have to say because I can always learn something if you liked what you saw here don't forget to give us a thumbs up share it with all your buddies and above all leave me a comment so you guys be safe and I hope to see you out on the trail and we'll see you down the road adios

Channel: TheGoatMumbler

Views: 248,613

Keywords: SAWYER MINI, SAWYER SQUEEZE, WATER FILTRATION, BACKPACKING WATER FILTER, HIKING WATER FILTER, BEST BACKPACKING FILTER, WATER PURIFICATION, SAWYER WATER FILTERS, HYDRATION PACKS, HYDRATION FILTER SYSTEM, ULTRALIGHT BACKPACKING, ULTRALIGHT WATER FILTER, MSR WATER FILTER

Id: ZTYgeGy5p3A

Length: 12min 24sec (744 seconds)

Published: Tue Jul 19 2016