Or indeed let it freeze overnight like I did once. Was only forecast >0, but Buxton has weather all of its own. One bu88ered Trailshot cartridge later....

Or indeed let it freeze overnight like I did once. Was only forecast >0, but Buxton has weather all of its own. One bu88ered Trailshot cartridge later

Watched an interesting YouTube video on why hollows in limestone areas can be some of the coldest places on earth

https://youtu.be/Jjzw2V6rlHw?si=JgzwgqM0kULTnYfC

Catrike16 wrote: ↑Fri Aug 18, 2023 8:32 pm I mean it looks a pretty dark colour and grim in places, so wheres best and where to avoid?

Dark like peaty? Clear but dark brown can be  (quite) safe, especially when it comes directly from a spring.

fatbikephil wrote: ↑Sun Aug 27, 2023 10:04 pm chlorine tablets are the only sure fire way of killing everything.

Chemical agents may not be able to access microbiol life sat in pores of particles.
So, here too, water with particles still hold a risk when treated with chlorine or iodine.

I mostly use Micropure Forte drops only. When the water's murky and full of particles I tend to filter it through a used tea bag before adding the drops. I don't know if that's stupid, but it seems to work. In all those years drinking all sorts of lovely mountain spring and horrid dead animal puddles water, I never picked up any illness, once treated with Micropure. I not always treated what I drank and from more than 35 years of doing so, I picked up a tummy bug on four memorable occassions.

riderdown wrote: ↑Sat Aug 19, 2023 12:46 am Rainwater isn't clean, nor is the puddle it sits in

It must be extremely unlikely to pick up an illness from drinking collected rainwater (if the container/puddle it sits in is clean). Probably one of the safest options out there.

Little note from a trip;
It (rain) has helped my girlfriend and self across Iceland, when an extratropical cyclone moved in 4 h ahead of the forecast and we had to find a sheltered spot with no water nearby. We collected water in cups, pan and lid from the tent fly. Due to the raging storm it was full of sand, which sedimented lovely. Later on the same trip we fetched meltwater from snow out of puddles on pillow lava. We didn't treat the water and stayed healthy.

To be as safe as possible and to "kill all nature in your water", you'd need to filter it (hollowfibre and carbon-ceramic element) and add chemical treatment. Will be safer than drinking tap water and probably even safer than bottled water... oh... and don't forget to boil it for 20 minutes too

We collected water in cups, pan and lid from the tent fly.

That's fine if your tent fly is perfectly clean and hasn't been treated with those chemicals they use to make nylon water repellent...........

If you pack your kit away damp after it's rained it goes mouldy, where do you think the mould comes from?

riderdown wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 12:10 am

We collected water in cups, pan and lid from the tent fly.

That's fine if your tent fly is perfectly clean and hasn't been treated with those chemicals they use to make nylon water repellent...........

If you pack your kit away damp after it's rained it goes mouldy, where do you think the mould comes from?

See, I approach such questions differently.
How likely are the chemicals of my tent going to leach into the water running of the fly (,one that has been used many times before) and have a high enough concentration to harm me?
How likely is a mould going to do harm to me and how likely will there be enough mould to pass my acid barrier (stomach) and wreak havoc in my body.

See, I go bike riding where, every now and then, cow, sheep, goat, chamois, fox, wolf, deer and many other sh*ts get flung up by my tyres and may land where you don't want it. If I were to worry about what you mention above, I'd better stop riding bicycles offroad altogether.
How about activity in the ozone levels we (Switzerland) had two weeks ago? The carcinogenic UV ray when enjoying the outdoors?

Better stay in, huh?

Yeah, it's not just about being exposed to the relevant viruses, bacteria and protozoa but there's the level of exposure, usually referred to as the "Minimum Effective Dose". A single bacteria is highly unlikely to cause a reaction, your body's defences are just going to blat it. It's when there's enough individual bacteria that your defences become overwhelmed. (That's basically how vaccination works - the innoculation dose is usually deactivated so that it can't do harm but there's enough left so that your body recognises it in future)

As an example: if you were thirsty and came across a water supply that looked clean but there was a sign stating "Warning! Lead pipework" would/should you drink from it? The answer, surprisingly, is yes*. Lead poisoning doesn't happen from a single litre or whatever of contaminated water but from continued exposure over months and years. The near entirety of Roman water supply from pipes to tableware was either lead or had a high lead content. Those bodies found from the Franklin Expedition to find the NW Passage had high amounts of lead not as commonly believed because of the lead solder used for their tins of food leaching into that food but from their water purification (sic) system which was a repurposed steam engine.

Depending on situation (fuel availability, time, temperature):

Coarse filter to remove sediment or leave to stand overnight.
Heat to at least 65C for 30 seconds or so

If you can't do that:

Coarse filter
Micro filter + chemical treatment like Aqua Pur


*I'd clean everything thoroughly ASAP though.

whitestone wrote: ↑Thu Aug 31, 2023 12:25 pm (That's basically how vaccination works - the innoculation dose is usually deactivated so that it can't do harm but there's enough left so that your body recognises it in future)

When it was invented/discovered (very interesting story), it was kinda like that (kill the cell but keep the immune response triggering part). Nowadays some vaccines still are being produced like that and many others are based on purfication (of the immune response triggering molecule, very often glycoproteins), keeping only the immune active part but destroying and removing the other cellular elements especially DNA (or virus genome). Some vaccines are genetically engineered and some even just rely on spontaneous mutation of the pathogen).