Sawyer Squeeze Filter demo, tips and tricks

hi there welcome to another episode of run hike explore today I'm going to be showing you how to use the Sawyer squeeze water filtration system this is the 1 liter 0.1 micron squeeze filter system I'll show you how to use it a couple of tips and tricks on collecting the water avoiding cross contamination of your clean drinking water and how to take care of the filter and keep it clean so it lasts a lifetime let's take a look at what's in this box so I've had this Sawyer squeeze filter for a while I happen to keep the box so I don't want you to think this is exactly how it comes from the factory in terms of how they pack it but what do you get you get all right the main thing of course is the filter this is the squeeze filter you can tell from the flow arrow this is where the dirty water goes in this is where the clean water comes out I'll show you how to use that this is the bag the actual squeeze bag this is what you would fill up with your dirty water we're going to connect it to the end of this squeeze filter and put the clean water in a clean bottle this is a little drinking cap they give you so if you want to just cap this off you can actually drink directly from from the end of this if you want to I don't typically use that and then this is the cleaning syringe I'll demonstrate how to use this you draw in clean water and then we're gonna connect it oops connect it to the the output into this and blast clean water reversing any dirty water out the filter but there's a few tricks to that or not really tricks but a couple of facts you need to keep in mind when you use it and we'll get to that in just a few minutes so this is about the best case scenario you'll probably find out on the trail when it comes to collecting dirty water you've got some fast moving water and it's got a little bit of a waterfall so to fill up this bag again this bag is used to collect the dirty water I'm just gonna hold it under this stream doesn't take long the force of the water will help expand this bag and now I have a bag of dirty water but let's go through a few different scenarios you're likely to encounter because you're not always going to see a perfect fast flowing waterfall like this when you're out backpacking or hiking and you need to collect some dirty water you might encounter a scenario where there's some movement in the water when you put the bag in there's really not enough force to like push the bag open or inflate the bag or to fill it with water so let me show you what you do there so if the water is not moving hard enough or fast enough to inflate or fill up the bag one trick that I use is you can inflate the bag first you don't want to put your mouth on this because we're gonna assume it's got contaminated water on it but if I make just a little like a little tunnel with my hand now that I've blown up the bag and inflate it a little bit let's go back to that kind of slow moving water and see how we do I've got the bag kind of inflated a little bit and when I hold it in the water now I can tell it's going up much better give a little motion there we go now it's not completely full you'll never get it but I never get it totally full but another way to get the water in there in slightly slower moving situation here's another trick that I use to get around the inflatable inflating bag issue and that is they take a water bottle with me I designate this as my dirty bottle and have no trouble filling this guy up go nice bottle of dirty water now I'll tell you one of the reasons I use this particular brand and you've probably heard this if you've done much research on the Sawyer squeeze system is the threads fit and work with the squeeze filter itself this isn't the only brand that does it a lot of to leaders a lot of other water bottles will but I use this because I like the smooth outside I can slip it in and out of my pack very easily and again the threads happen to fit so that's another easy way to get some dirty water everything you've seen so far is kind of a best-case scenario you might reach a situation like this where the water is just kind of clinging to the rock as it goes over and there's not enough flow for a true waterfall and obviously that gets a little tough to fill up you can see there's really hardly even a trickle going in there so one trick I saw out on the 80 you can put a little leaf here it works better if you get a fresh kind of stiff leaf and put a rock on it you can basically create your own miniature waterfall and then use that to look now that's a little better and it really depends on the kind of leaf you can find and variations of that I mean you get the idea you could probably use a piece of curved bark but the idea is stick something in here give yourself a small waterfall easier to refill your dirty bottle so of course when you're getting the dirty water you've got dirty water on your hands on the outside of this bag so before you go back and get near any of your clean bottles or the water filter itself get a towel get something and dry this off you don't want to go through all this hassle of filtering and cleaning your water only to have some drops from the outside run down and get into your clean water bottle and eventually ruin your trip with some contaminated water so now for the part you've been waiting for get your bag of dirty water got your filter and you've got your empty clean bottle this is not the bottle you used for any water collection this has been a pristine bottle that you've only had clean water in here's the filter you'll notice from the flow arrow you can tell which way to screw it on to your bag of dirty water you want to get it snug but don't over-tighten it you don't need to crank this thing down really hard just make sure it's snug and then when you turn it over its gonna take a little bit of water just to kind of prime this filter so the filter itself is gonna soak up some water but as you begin to gently squeeze you'll have clean water coming out now notice I'm holding it at an angle and the reason I'm doing that is if I hold it straight up and down there's an opportunity for some dirty water that I may have missed to come down on the outside run down and go into my clean water bottle if I keep it in an angle that's less likely to happen in fact the way I can remember to do that is you know back in the 1920s they redesigned water fountains so that they shot out the water at an angle instead of straight up and that was one of the reasons they were able to cut down on communicable diseases transmitted through water fountains so keep it in an angle that way any potentially dirty water doesn't come all the way down and go in so I keep a gentle squeeze on it and here we go clean water so you've been using the filter for a day or two and you want to clean it obviously as you're using this filter and the dirty waters flowing through the contaminants that is trapping or building up in the filter inside of here so the way you clean it out is you draw up some clean water in the syringe and then you blast that water reverse backwards through the filter again has to be clean water in this syringe if you back blast it with dirty water you've probably ruined the filter or at least made it suspect for future use so always draw in clean water which is what I have here and you want to get a full syringe worth all right now this doesn't screw on or connect in any way other than you just hold it together but when you do this the first blast is the most important one you want it to be firm and fast to blast out as much of the particulates as you can then when I say blast out it's just gonna the waters gonna run out but the first push is important because if you just if you ease into it what happens is the water creates these little channels of least resistance and then any future reverse flushes doesn't blast out the other areas because the waters just going to go through the paths that you kind of created with the slow push so remember first one do it quick and do it strong one more thing to note when you're cleaning out this filter you know I've said make sure the first blast is you know strong and forceful so that you get an even cleaning of the filter one problem I had on one of the earlier one of these that I owned is actually snapped I snapped off this syringe plunger you can tell you can probably see it's got some notches down here around it I'm not sure why those are there but they are a weak point and what happened is as I pushed it it just snapped so I think keep it firm and pressure but don't get so excited that you just you snap the whole syringe off hey thanks a bunch for watching another episode of run hike explore hope you appreciate the information that was shared regarding the Sawyer squeeze filter we covered the water collection scenarios you're likely to face when you're out in the wild and some tricks to overcome them how to use the filter without cross contaminating your clean water and how to clean the filter at the end of the day or at least every couple of days depending on how frequently you're using it and how dirty the water is so whether you're out there running hiking exploring or whatever it is you're doing make sure you stay hydrated that's important and remember it's your world go live in it you

Channel: RunHikeExplore

Views: 47,185

Keywords: sawyer squeeze filter, water filter, filtering water, camping, backpacking, trail running, water filtration

Id: RYS6WXxpYWg

Length: 10min 59sec (659 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 28 2016