Remember the days of drinking water through a garden hose in the middle of summer? Well – not all water is safe to drink.
The Sawyer water filter is awesome! It is simple to operate, reliable, and is a great value. The biggest drawback of the Sawyer is using it with multiple people. It can be done but you’re either all sucking on the same straw or using a lot of time and energy filling small bags or bottles with dirty water and squeezing through the filter. I figured there had to be a better way to use this great filter.
However, you can easily adapt the Sawyer for bucket use. Once a hole is drilled in the supply bucket the components are assembled (instructions included) – and then the Sawyer is attached. That’s it.
Here is one of my most recent trials:
#1: Started with a bucket and threw in a bunch of dirt and added a couple gallons of water.
#2: Used a towel as a pre-filter to remove the larger particles.
#3: Towel caught a lot of crap. A finer pre-filter for capturing more of the larger particles would be suggested (coffee filters good for this).
#4: Below is the water ready to go through the Sawyer.
#5: Filtering operation in progress.
#6: Close up of the stream of filtered water exiting the filter.
#7: This is what the non-filtered water looked like sitting in the bucket.
#8: Filtered water is crystal clear.
I was pretty happy with the results. I was interested in seeing how well the water flowed from the bucket through the Sawyer as well as what the water would look like afterward. I was not surprised that the water looked crystal clear after all that is what is supposed to happen. The flow rate was excellent at around 5-6 gallons an hour.
I drank the entire glass of filtered water and found it had no off-taste and tasted like….well…..water. Granted this test was dealing really with only sediment and suspended particles in water. I have no way of knowing about potential pathogens or bacteria but I am still alive so I consider the test a success.
Remember, a solid water plan involves, storage, purification, and resupply. There are also some “just in time” solutions like the WaterBob bathtub water holder that can give you an extra 100 gallons if you have a few minutes notice to fill it. For all these ideas and more on water preparedness, check out this guide on water security.