Salinity and water filters

[Tony L]

Just a few weeks away from my trip from Flamingo to EC. I'm going to bring a small hydrometor with me and record the salinity at the sites we are staying at along the way. I know that the salinities can vary A LOT depending on the time of year, rain, temp etc. I found this PDF from NPS.gov

http://science.nature.nps.gov/im/units/sfcn/docs/water/salinity.pdf

 

Looks like the average salinity (in ppt) from north river in the dry season is around 8.1 ppt as opposed to the open ocean which has a salinity of around 35 ppt.

 

I also was going through my gear closet and found a katadyn micro water bottle filter (This is how the whole idea started).  I talked to the company and they said at those levels I should expect to get at least a few gallons to up to 10 gallons of water from the filter bottle.  OF course I'll bring my normal water just in case. 

Has anyone tried using a water filter on their trips?

 

Tony  

[yakmaster]

My understanding is that "regular" water filters will only stop solids, so they will not remove the salt. What the folks from Katadyn may be saying is that after 10 gallons the filter will be unusable. But I wasn't a party to the discussion, so you may be right.

 

Katadyn makes several models of portable desalinators/watermakers which use a membrane for reverse osmosis to get the salt out. You're talking near $1,000++ vs $50 for the water bottle. Whole different game.

 

Though I do know a guy that picked up an army surplussed Katadyne watermaker for under a couple of hundred bucks...you gotta look! There's some out there now   http://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nkw=pur+watermaker&_sacat=0&... 

No endorsements made ;-)

[Tony L]

Ha! You're right - They emailed me back and said neither would remove the salt, just the microorganisms and sludge in the water.  I still will bring it as a backup just in case.  Thor Heyerdahl and his crew cut their fresh water with about a 1/4 seawater to replace salts lost to sweating.  I also figured I could boil Ronzoni 3 min pasta in it without having to worry about using my drinking water.

Thanks!

 

[Swamp Hunter]

You could collect rain water during the rainy season but during the winter its hit and miss and we could go weeks without any rain. 

[Kim Gass]

If you are on less brackish campsites  you can just boil your pasta in gathered water without prematurely aging your filter.

Been doing that a long time and it doesn't involve a filter at all.  Also pure oatmeal calls for salt and guess what..Nature supplies it. I still carry the recommended allotment of water. But everytime I wind up washing gear with the freshwater at the end. .After all it would be a total waste to pour it on the ground.

This approach does NOT work well for coffee..lol.