[Closed] Upcoming bike'n'camp trip - water purification?

I just drink it. Never known anyone get anything nasty from drinking stream water

I know, just want to be safe!

Try this http://welshridething.blogspot.com/2011/04/water.html

Seriously, where are you going? Any hill/mountain stream in the UK is perfectly safe to drink out of.

Alternatively, use puritabs in your camelbak/water-bottle. Much easier to carry than a filter system.

Bear has the solution if you're worried 😯

I fancy one of these, attaches to all popular models of hydration bladder, is rated for military use, looks good to me
http://www.backpackinglight.co.uk/product433.asp?PageID=40
this filter means you don't have to mess about with pumps and puri tabs etc, just fill the bladder from
the source and drink as normal.
The issue of getting water borne viruses depends on many factors, for the majority of UK bikers , the wilderness experience means riding in farming areas, where chemicals and manure frequently make their way into waer sources, for the sake of 30 odd quid you migt as well know you have good water and not hae to go home early with bad guts!

Seriously, where are you going? Any hill/mountain stream in the UK is perfectly safe to drink out of.

Even the ones with the dead sheep or cattle poo area 50m upstream ?

I use Steripen if in doubt but to be honest in Europe I normally risk it just pick a fast running source and check for dead critters upstream.

allthepies - Member

Seriously, where are you going? Any hill/mountain stream in the UK is perfectly safe to drink out of.

Even the ones with the dead sheep or cattle poo area 50m upstream ?

Exactly what I were thinking

yuup -even the ones with dead critters in upstream. 50 m below them its dilute enough not to worry. Dunno what yo think you will get from a dead sheep anyway.

I have never known anyone get anything from drinking UK hill streams

So by that logic then surely then any hill/mountain stream worldwide would be fine.

I'll be in the Highlands. The stream at Ben Vorlich yesterday looked crystal clear, but I'd rather be safe.

I know one risk is e.coli, but there are lots of other contaminants I'd rather not ingest!

Thanks for the links, I'll check them out.

I went walking round Annapurna many moons ago and used tablets to purify stream and river water which is also used as the local sewar system, me and the missus had no problems at all in the five weeks we were there.
We loosely travelled for a week or so with a couple of guys who were using a filter purifier system, both got very bad giardia and were still suffering over a week later when I bumped into them in Kathmandu. In the UK you should be fine, just check upstream 50m or so for dead sheep.

Allthepies
No because in some parts of the world bugs are endemic in the water supply - having said that I have drunk from streams all over the world with no issues including in cholera areas.

Use some sense about where you drink from but I know lots of folk who usethe streams and I have never heard of anyone getting sick in the UK.

Giardia is the main risk. It is present in the UK but its a small risk in low lying areas where a lot of sheep graze.
Cryptosporidium is the other major risk. Read up about them if you want

Leelovesbikes - E coli is not a risk in the UK apart from very occasionally water supplies have got contaminated at bothy sites from peopel crapping upstream and too near the stream.

Cold winters kill the bugs

In the highlands - forget it. You risk is effectivly zero once above the intensivly farmed land

Wow! It's a shame that people worry about this. Water doesn't get much purer than in the Highlands.

You pay good money for highland spring water in waitrose 🙂 filterd thru the finest scottish bogs

Chorine tabs in case you take any water from dodgy source?
[url= https://www.oasiswaterpurification.co.uk/collections/water-purification-tablets/products/travel-and-camping ]Water Purification Tablets[/url]

TJ - When I was a kid a french friend of my mother's insisted on buying mineral water before we went on a walk up Alva Glen. We spent most of the walk taking the mick about how needless buying water was. On the way back we walked past a Highland Spring photo-shoot by a water fall in the glen!!

If you are in UK and high enough, most of the time you should be OK, if in slight doubt boil water, if you are still not sure I can recommend purification tablets from lifeventure. I have used them before (though rarely) for camping, they are quite good. One set for cleaning water, one set for neutralising taste from first set. Saves a few quid on a full filter system.

Have spent my life drinking out of streams and nearly always felt safe. The times when I have felt less so are after long periods of hot, dry weather when a lot of streams either dry up or become a trickle. I remember one trip in the Lakes when we had to come down to find a domestic source as it was proper hot and people in the party were looking iffy for heat stroke and everywhere we cast about for water had become manky looks dribbles.

A kit appeals to me for times like that when I'd feel happier drawing from clean looking standing water, or for when travelling in flatter more built up areas doing a bit of crafty behind a wall bivvying on a road trip and you don't wanting to go announcing your presence by knocking on a local door for water.

TandemJeremy - Member
yuup -even the ones with dead critters in upstream. 50 m below them its dilute enough not to worry. Dunno what yo think you will get from a dead sheep anyway.

TandemJeremy - Member
Leelovesbikes - E coli is not a risk in the UK apart from very occasionally water supplies have got contaminated at bothy sites from peopel crapping upstream and too near the stream.

Cold winters kill the bugs

have a look at this report [url= http://dwi.defra.gov.uk/about/annual-report/2009/Significant%20drinking%20water%20quality%20events%20in%20England%20and%20Wales%202009.pdf ]DWI 2009 incidents report[/url] and search for coli or coliform.

Also, if a little bit of dilution was adequate to remove all the contaminants a rotting corpse would generate, water treatment plants would not be required. Think about what you are writing. You are likely correct that a highland stream would be mostly safe to drink.

In answer to OP - the Clear2Go you link to specifically states '*This product is not a water filtration device'
The FAQ is rather vague as to what it actually removes from water.

Puritabs etc will kill bacteria but to remove Giardia, Cryptosporidium etc you will need some kind of physical filter too. Crytpo. is a risk in areas with livestock nearby, so as mentioned above being high and away from sheep/ cattle will reduce this risk.

The most effective method is as already stated to boil the water. This will kill any bacteria and also Crypto. etc. It will not remove harmful chemicals, but neither will adding puritabs. adding these after boiling will not make the water any safer to drink, but would help by providing a residual disinfectant in the water (like the chlorine in your tap water) which may be reassuring if you were carrying or storing the water for a while.

In the water utility industry, the general recommendation to customers if there is a risk of microbiological problem with the water is to boil before use.

Hope that helps.

Thanks Matthew, the sensible, reasoned advice I was looking for.

Was in a group backpacking in Devon where a few drank out of a very clean crisp stream and got Weils disease.

TJ - cold isn't very good at killing bugs; I store mine in the freezer...

Well if you want to put stuff in your water and / or boil it feel free. its completely unneeded. I used to live in a house with an untreated private water supply and I know someone who does now. I have drunk straight from the streams for decades and so have any thousands of other folk. I have never heard of anyone getting ill from a highland stream

There is a huge difference between lowland rivers and highland springs / streams

I don't know where on earth you think coliforms can come from in a highland stream - although as I say one stream by a bothy did get contaminated by people not following the code and crapping close to teh water upstream of the bothy

Matthew - you got any actual experience or information about the highland streams we are discussing or not? Or just paranoid disinformation.

leelovesbikestoo - Member
Thanks Matthew, the sensible, reasoned advice I was looking for.

Mountaineering Council of scotland advice

What to do:
Collect water from upstream of all habitation and don't drink untreated water from farmland or ‘inbye’
land with intensive livestock around
Collect from a source of running water with a reasonable volume or an obviously clear lochan fed by a
running stream
If in doubt, boil the water before drinking or use sterilising tablets, solutions or filters
Always wash vegetables and salads in boiled water
Don’t be casual about toilet functions – do it away from water sources and camping/bothy areas. See
the MCofS advice leaflet on sanitation “Where to ‘GO’ in the Great Outdoors”

Matthew - you got any actual experience or information about the [b]highland streams we are discussing[/b] or not? Or just paranoid disinformation.

leelovesbikes - sensible and reasoned because it's what you want to hear? TJ's advice was sensible and reasoned too, it just so happens that because he suggests that water purification is not required in Highland Scotland you think it's unreasonable.

matthewlhome - bloddy hell!! I've never read such ridiculous scaremongering. I would happily drink water from Highland streams for ever more, safe in the knowledge I'll never get an infection. TJ's right: many, many remote Highland homes, camp sites etc. take their drinking water direct from streams without treatment. We're not talking about the Thames here. And as you said yourself: "You are likely correct that a highland stream would be mostly safe to drink."

Lee's off to Ben Vorlich, which is surrounded by Highland streams. A little bit of common sense on which source you pick and it's fine.

many, many remote Highland homes, camp sites etc. take their drinking water direct from streams without treatment.

My parent's house is one of these, though it comes straight from a spring. Tastes great. Although a piped water supply arrived in the area is was not plumbed into (partly for taste but mainly for cost) until recently. They only took it up last year when they completed turning their steading into a holiday home and the insurance required so many tests to be done on the water if they were to have paid guests that it worked out cheaper to use the piped stuff.

You can't put anything in highland stream water other than whisky. It's the LAW!!! 😉
I was brought up near Fort William in a house where the water was piped in from a stream up the hill. It was filtered by... chicken wire! (to keep the "big bits" out. It varied in colour from 'tea without milk' to 'the piddle of someone very slightly dehydrated'. Occasionally there would be small twigs in the bath and sometimes shoals of baby freshwater eels emerged from the cold tap. Very exciting! 🙂 It tasted fantastic and as a child I couldn't drink tap water anywhere else in the country cos it "tasted funny".
Dad once went to investigate a drop in water pressure and had to remove a sheep's corpse from the 'sieve'. He didn't tell mother though...
I used only to get upset tummies when we ventured to the 'lowlands'.
Of course it's all nasty chlorinated stuff now 🙁

Check these out and if you have any doubts give them a ring and you will be 100% convinced

http://www.drinksafe-systems.co.uk/

Apologies if anyone thought i was trying to scaremonger.

I was just responding to two specific points from Tandem Jeremy which are incorrect. That of e.coli not being a risk in the uk and that dilution would solve the dead sheep problem.

I don't know where on earth you think coliforms can come from in a highland stream

There are bacteria in all waters, and as people have said drinking them has not made them ill. What will likely happen is that your body gets used to the particular composition of the water. As jojoA1 states - only getting an upset tummy when drinking a different water supply. This is the same sort of thing that happens when people go abroad.

As you have mentioned yourself Jeremey, the MCoS guidance is the most appropriate here, and they also suggest boiling the water, which was my advise as the most effective method of being sure the water was safe, rather than use the gadget linked to originally.

I did however forget that this was STW, and that advice from someone who is employed in the water treatment industry with responsibility for water quality would be incorrect 🙄

Thats right - your advice is incorrect! re read the MCofS guidence!

Boiling, purifying or anything else to highland stream water is simply not needed in any shape or form.

What experience do you have of the water in question? It is pure and clean - filtered thru the finest bogs.

I asked because I'm cautious:

My partner is an experienced renal nurse and has dialysed children with kidney failure for years and seen first hand the very real danger: Their condition is a result of coming into contact with matter contaminated with livestock faeces in the countryside and contracting e.coli. This then means life-long dialysis and possible kidney transplant.

Granted these are children but it's possible for adults to suffer the same, or more likely to pass this unknowingly onto children they are in contact with.

I don't have children, but many of our friends have small babies and my partner has young nieces.

I don't plan on going high enough to be above grazing livestock therefore I'm assuming the water could be contaminated.

I didn't want to start a debate whether one [i]should[/i] purify mountain water. I will, and I wanted advice on [i]what equipment[/i] to use. To suggest that there are no risks is irresponsible in my opinion, and advising that I should risk it is not sensible when I have expressed concerns already. If you think e.coli is not a risk in the UK I invite you to Yorkhill Children's Hospital in Glasgow to talk with the dozen or so kids currently undergoing kidney dialysis or waiting for a transplant as a result of contracting e.coli.

And how many of them caught e coli from drinking water from mountain streams?

"won't somebody think of the children"

🙄

What's the point in risking it?

Lee - Risk what? I think what we're trying to say is that where you're going the risk is so infintesimally small as to be not worth considering. Feel free to boil/purify your water but you'll waste a lot of gas/time for nothing.

In all my trips in the Highlands, purifying water was the last thing on my and my mates' minds. We were worried about important things like how much Tennent's and coal we could fit in our trail packs for a night in a bothy and whether or not someone remembered milk for the tea in the morning!

Back in the 70s I campewd at the Narnain Boulders on the Cobbler and used water from the main stream. The next morning I saw a dead sheep less than 100M upstream. No ill effects. But subsequent advice I was given makes sense - drink from the small streams and there is less chance of anything being in the water upstream.

In the highlands I've always drunk water untreated from streams above the last house/farm and never had a problem. My dad has been drinking from the streams/lochs in the highlands since the 1940s. He's still going strong at 83. Still does a bit of hillwalking. Never had a problem with water.

But if you don't feel safe doing what other people have done for decades get some tabs. I'm going to be using Katadyn MicroPur Purification Tablets for a USA tour this summer. Claimed to be "The Only EPA Registered Purification Tablets on the Market! And the only disinfection system effective against viruses, bacteria, cryptosporidium, and Giardia."

Viruses and bacteria are killed quickly. Cryptosporidium, and Giardia take from 30m to 2 hours to be killed depending on water temperature.