UKC

I'm off on an overnight jaunt to Dartmoor in a few days and have both kids with me this time round so will need to use more water than when I am on my tod/with just one.  In the past I have carried a fair whack in and had a Water-to-go filter bottle to use if we run out, but never really needed to use it.

I'm interested to hear what others use to replenish water whilst on the moor, any suggestions?

Is it just one night, or more? I've had the kids out and just boiled water before. Not the best for nice cool drinking water on a hot day but good for dehy food and a single overnighter where you just need that little bit extra. 

I've also in the past used a UV filter that kills bacteria (99.99% apparently). It attached onto the top of my Nalgene bottle and worked a treat. 14 days at a Kyrgyzstan basecamp with a water-source filled with all sorts of dead yaks, sheep poo and the like around. Not one of us got sick. In fact, one of our party came on the trip with a dodgy tummy and improved throughout! Go figure

With the amount of shite on Dartmoor, I'd definitely want to treat any water! If you're camped near a source, boil it and put it in a bottle then put the bottle back in the water to cool it down. You can probably carry enough fresh water for the first day and then re-stock overnight for the next day. I've used a platypus filter on some pretty stinking water before and always been fine but that sort of filter doesn't get viruses; boiling is the only sure-fire way, otherwise you're looking at both a filter and treatment to make sure it's safe. 

When we take kids out Ten Tors training we use chlorine based purification tablets. We make sure they carry tablets which are appropriate for the treatment of 1 litre to make dosing idiot proof.

Given the amount of livestock up there I think it's a worthwhile precaution.

Just the one night.  This combined with Paul's suggestion of boiling water then putting it back in the stream to cool off is a good shout.  Also back up steri-tabs as TNM suggests (if I didn't throw them all out of my kit at the last sorting - bloody hundreds of the things from rat-packs!).

My Water-to-go has the same guff about 99.99% of everything killed and I've used it in the past without a serious hull-breach occuring.

My lad and a couple of mates did a few days there last week. They used a Sawyer squeeze filter for all their water. Just one between them to refill bottles etc. 

If it's just one night I just usually carry enough water in for drinking, cooking, brushin teeth, morning coffee and about a litre spare, with the kids carrying their own bottle - I have a good chat about the importance of rationing it out which they're pretty good at now. My pack is super heavy, but theirs is mostly water, a teddy and their sleeping bag

However, the wife tried to spoil things last week when we were out by thinking I'd pack her water too... 'ermm no'  Got to the camping spot and turns out she only had one of those sealable mugs full of hot water on the way in. Had to boil some on that occasion.

For years and years (from mid 1960s until the late 1990’s), whenever I camped in the mountains, away from campsites in the UK, I used Sterotabs with water straight out of a nearby stream, with no ill-effects - despite proximity of sheep etc, pissing and crapping in or near the stream.

Treating water? I always treat it well

When out with the urchins I take a LifeStraw and a plastic cup to use it from.  Adds a little ritual to the trip which they love, and I’d rather not ingest bacteria and viruses than ingest ones that have been inactivated by chemical treatment or heat.

For tooth brushing I believe you can screw a bottle of dirty water to the input and collect clean water from the output whilst holding or propping it up. Not tried that myself.

It’s not total virus removal but about 1:10^5, if you’re really worried filter then boil.  I don’t, I just pick springs mostly above the sheep.

The LifeStraw is also my new BFF when I go for day long 20-30 mile walks around the north pennies, as it dramatically drops my pack weight.

Many years back I worked on the rebuilding of one of the Army Camps on the moor. First thing to sort was the incoming services, inc the water. I got to read the report on the spring water which was to supply the camp and I was staggered by the amount of sheep sh*t (aka coliform or something like that?) In the fresh spring water. The water treatment plant was expensive!!

Best bit on the build was needing to sort some suitable big lumps of granite to form the stile leading out onto the moor. I got to clamber around in the now closed Merrivale Quarry to find the right huge lumps. The lovely chap then loaded them with the most antique looking little crane you've ever seen. Building stuff is nothing like as much fun now.

Oh yes, boil and cool it. Summer or winter.  In winter it's not necessary but putting the water in a sigg and that inside the sleeping bag as a hot water bottle gives a surprising amount of cheer on a cold Dartmoor January night!

Might be a bit expensive for what you want but you could get a Sawyer Squeeze. Takes about a minute to filter two litres of water. Gets rid of sheep sh*t and bacteria won't do heavy metals or viruses.  

Forgive the basic question but is the issue that old school chlorine tablets don't treat it well enough, or that they're just out of fashion/make it taste weird? I don't hear them mentioned much these days. 

Like someone else commented on this, the tablets are standard use for the many many Ten Tors aspirants who trudge around the moor each spring.  They work just fine, and the youngsters don't moan that much about the pool water taste! On a budget and where it's less practical to boil the water, like where you are sharing the trangia with two others, the tablets are the best option.

I find the Chlorine Dioxide tablets have nowhere near as much of a swimming pool flavour as the straight Chlorine ones. They are more expensive though.

If you want to use the cheap ones you can mask the flavour by adding adding a dash of squash. There lots of concentrated products out there to keep the additional weight down.

Brings back some memories - Steritabs and Rise'n'Shine powdered flavouring! Liver fluke was the thing to avoid when I tramped the moors in the '70s, best not to take too many chances.

If it's any of you guys camped in the very summit of Gt Mell Fell today, then respect!! Wind is gusting over 40 at times and your tents are taking a right battering.  

Best of luck getting them down. BTW rain clouds are gathering.....😁

Well in the end we carried enough in so didn't need to resort to anything.  Useful discussion to have had though. 

Yes it was windy in Dartmoor last night too and I was reliving my youth in a basha as the kids had my little two man tent.  Luckily I'd aligned it so the wind just came straight through rather than at the side, but the only night in recent memory I've slept with a beannie on as my head was the first thing the wind met.  Lovely to be able to slide a foot out of from under cover to star gaze when I was having my mandatory 3.00 a.m. half hour of wakefulness.

Am I just dicing with death that I’d just drink out of the leats or streams.  I’ve swum in pools and rivers and never died from swallowing the odd bit of water.  In fact I sometimes wonder if my cast iron stomach is partly due to this and also the dog never got sick??

Cheers

Toby ( who has now jinxed himself to the worst stomach upset in history)

Ah Toby - hubris!

Chances are you will be fine but if you get it wrong it ruins your weekend. 

I think the downsides outweigh the minimal effort taking in mitigation.

When I was younger I used to happily drink from streams and rivers. I recall drinking from the Rattlebrook and then walking a little further upstream to find a dead ewe in the river with it's guts hanging out.

I quickly swallowed a puritab.

Not sure the sheepline exists on Dartmoor!

Walked on Dartmoor for years and never filtered with no ill effects....

But a few years ago I did pick up a really bad stomach bug after an over night trip. The cause was never determined but was either untreated water OR a pasty purchased from Okehampton station.

My brother was with me on that trip - he only drank filtered water and was fine. However, he also didn't ask for his pasty to be reheated....

I usually don't treat unless a) I'm with the kids (Sawyer is very good) and b) I'm in a busy area/near farms etc

Normally I don't treat water here in Scotland, but this is a hangover from the days when munros generally did not have paths.  Given the accounts of the popularity of camping on Dartmoor I would be rather keen to have some protection there.  I am looking into getting a filter now for those times I am near habitation or a munro redline route.

I find the SiS Lemon Tablets hide the taste of Chlorine (when i run out of Lemon/Lime Gatorade)

It's likely the ingredients like vit. C not just hide the residual taste of chlorine, but actually neutralise it.

So better add the flavouring well after the chlorine tab had enough time to do its disinfection work, as otherwise you might be just negating the whole disinfection, getting flavoured, but still dirty water...

Sodium salt of vitamin C (sodium ascorbate) is actually used in water sanitation works to neutralise residual chlorine after disinfection. You can do the same with any vitamin C tabs or powder. The reaction is harmless and pretty simple – Sodium ascorbate + Hypochlorous acid → Dehydroascorbic acid + NaCl + H2O.

Dehydroascorbic acid is pre‑vitamin C, metabolised back into vitamin C in your cells, so pretty harmless.

Intrigued.... Asking purely about weight aspect. Steritabs in little paper sachets are very light. A collapsible water bottle is pretty light. Wondering how the life straw is a lighter approach?

Noted you need to wait 30 minutes (or whatever on instructions) with chlorine tablets so either you have to carry 750ml water while it goes to work or you have to wait 

On the weight side, are you comparing drinking directly through a straw when needed to carrying water that is being treated? How does that work for say cooking a rehydrated meal, do you rolling boil it 4+ minutes and not sterilise/straw in that case.

I'd always thought steritabs and collapsible bottle was the lightest approach. Not criticising/debating, I'm asking these questions in case I've missing a trick here!

It clearly weights more than treatment tablets so if you’re really pushed for mass it’s a no brainer, but when it comes to drinking you can use it directly without waiting for chemicals to work so never any need to carry water with you waiting for it to be sterilised.  There’s something great about the immediacy of accessing it.

Mind you after the accidental raw gulp I got from someone else’s wake swimming in a quarry…

I’ve not cooked with it but you can use a plastic bottle or a specially designed collapsible bottle to squeeze water through it for cooking or later use.

I much prefer the idea of not consuming viruses and bacteria to consuming inactivated ones so I don’t mind the extra weight.  It’s also great being able to take cold spring water and drink it directly whilst still cold.

Fascinating “every day is a school day” post, thanks.

I just hope my chemistry teacher doesn't find some daft mistake I might have made, that would be pretty embarrassing

Mind you, the reaction and its products might be a bit more complicated than that, given that vitamin C comes in both the ascorbic acid form and the sodium salt of form. Sodium ascorbate is usually preferred as it doesn't alter the water's pH as much, while its acid form's reaction with hypo makes it a bit more acidic and alters the products a bit, although both should be totally harmless.

If you wanted to be really pedantic, there are also all the other chlorination byproducts that might react differently, from chlorination of anything else that might have been in the water (like organics, bromine, et cetera), while the reaction with vitamin C might be a bit different with chlorine dioxide tabs compared to the classical sodium hypochlorite tabs (I didn't look that up). Plus the chlorine in solution is in a few different forms. But still, vitamin C is commonly used to neutralise bleach and residual chlorine in water works more recently (safer to handle than the previously used thiosulfates), so it's good enough for me.

Of course, there is always the nuclear option of just bringing it up to the rolling boil. Pretty much nothing (except of a few extremophile archaea and maybe some really hardy spores) survives that. No need to even keep it boiling for a few minutes usually – just the act of bringing it up to boil includes both slower pasteurisation and rapid almost‑sterilisation at once, unless at very high altitude where water boils at lower temps. The log reductions of most pathogens including viruses just after bringing the water up to rolling boil are quite enough to drink it safely, unless you need total sterilisation like in an autoclave for your microbiology experiments.

Except for prions, of course. But if you got prions in your drinking water, you got a much larger problem. There is a widespread prion disease outbreak in US deer, with the little infectious fecker proteins surviving for years in grass and soil after the deer salivates them out – thankfully deer to human transmission pathway seems to be either very rare or non‑existent. So far...

Needless to say, i am not eating any deer goulash anymore

If the Mad Deer Disease ever makes it into US cows, all the burger joints there would likely fold. That's before mentioning their mismanagement of HPAI (avian influenza) in their cow stocks in the first place, of course. But don't get me off about US hygiene malpractices, that would be a long thread...

Vitamin C concentrations are measured in Higher Chemistry practicals by titration with iodine.  The iodine is reduced to iodide by the vitamin C causing a colour change. Back in the days when we used iodine (what I used when I was backpacking in Canada in the early noughties) the elemental iodine would have been taken out by the ascorbate.    

Still a halogen, but just out of curiosity, what's the reaction products there?

Since iodine isn't used much anymore for water disinfection, probably not really much helpful, but still interested. Ta!

They don't treat it well enough. For example Cryptosporidium is chlorine resistant. Chlorine dioxide is a more effective option.

I was also of the opinion that I had a fairly robust stomach and never had problems drinking from streams, but then I read an account of someone who got giardiasis from wild drinking and suffered months of extreme discomfort.  That made me decide filtering through a sawyer squeeze isn't too much extra effort!

It was a simplification as "iodine" in water contains the triiodide ion which is the oxidiser.  Products, deoxyascorbic acid and iodide - which are colourless.  I have not had to treat water since iodine fell out of use (and we have first hand experience in this household as to why).  Had plenty of titrations since though.