UV Water Treatment

Never heard of these til recently, do they work well?

When they work... I tend not to invest in things that result in people coming to me for help when the item fails on the trail. There is a short list of items on my "do not waste money" list. The steri pen is on it. What would the hikers with failing battery operated devices do if I didn't always have a filter handy for them to borrow?

Of course, that is just my (frequent) experience.....

I took a SteriPen for one trip a few years ago and then returned it to REI. In fact, after one day, I put the thing back in the pack and used my backup Katadyn MicroPur tablets. The switch was too stiff for my fingers and, once I got it on, the UV lamp cycles kept aborting before they were finished. And that was with my electrical engineer son at streamside with me carefully reading the directions!

If you must use it, be sure to take extra batteries and a backup method of some sort!

By the time you add up the weight of the SteriPen, extra batteries and the required wide-mouth water bottle, you're far better off to take a Sawyer Squeeze.

I'm with Lori and OM on this one even though I have used a Steripen for four trouble free years. Over the years I have become increasingly wary of electronic gear in the backcountry. When something electronic goes sour there is not much that can be done to fix it. Mechanical stuff, on the other hand, may possibly be repaired in the field. The Steripen, spare batteries and a wide-mouthed stirring bottle can actually weigh more than does the Sawyer Squeeze. And, the Squeeze can be used as an unattended gravity filter; the Steripen requires you to kneel on the ground and stir water one liter at a time.

I think Ive heard enough heh.

Thanks guys.

One caveat - if you need to kill viruses (which shouldn't generally be the case in North America), then most filters including the Sawyer Squeeze will be lacking. The SteriPen will, however, kill viruses.

Late last month I took a group of 11 backpacking and climbing in Colorado. I brought my Sawyer Squeeze and someone else brought a SteriPen. There were also a couple of pump filters. I didn't bring my SteriPen since we had such a large group and feel it is better suited for one or two.

Well the battery turned out to be low in the SteriPen and he did not have a replacement, so it was a door stop for the trip. I had set up the Sawyer as a gravity filter and it really got a workout such that it had to be cleaned several times with the gunk that was tried to put through it. The pump filters didn't seem to be much of a favorite as evidenced by only being used by their owners and not all the time it appeared.

To be accurate, UV doesn't kill a darn thing. It scrambles the DNA of the organisms in the water, so they can't breed to critical mass in your gut and cause you to become ill.

I take a pump filter with a good prefilter for areas likely to have murky sources. When water is relatively clear, out comes the lighter, more multi-purpose gravity filter.

At certain wavelengths UV is mutagenic to bacteria, viruses and other micro-organisms. At a wavelength of 2,537 Angstroms (254 nm), UV will break the molecular bonds within micro-organismal DNA, producing thymine dimers in their DNA thereby destroying them, rendering them harmless, or prohibiting growth and reproduction.

“Never heard of these til recently, do they work well?”
Incredibly well. The steripen is awesome. I know of no quicker way to filter.

“I tend not to invest in things that result in people coming to me for help when the item fails on the trail.”

These are old steripens that have now been improved for years --- if bought at a legitimate store. The buttons are easy to push.
Also, people fail to read directions. The most common error is people push the button when the steripen is IN the water. The button is to be pushed BEFORE water insertion.

“The Steripen, spare batteries and a wide-mouthed stirring bottle can actually weigh more than does the Sawyer Squeeze.”

It depends on priorities. If you’re tired of screwing, unscrewing, connecting, squeezing, disconnecting, then steripen is easiest. Also, if you let the Squeeze dry out, it takes considerable amount of time just to get it going like it once did--- which is almost impossible on the trail. Keep the Squeeze damp and its new weight (4oz) is heavier than a steripen (3.6oz w/ batteries). Also the steripen will disable viruses and deals with icy water with no problems!

“ the Steripen requires you to kneel on the ground and stir water one liter at a time.”

I guess you could do that. Lately I’ve been walking and stirring.

“When something electronic goes sour there is not much that can be done to fix it.”

This is true for mechanical filters also. They can go sour. Bring chlorine dioxide tablets for backup; it’s only a few grams--- just got to wait 30 minutes to 4 hours.

I carry my opti on my belt and the bag in the side of the backpack. So it’s extremely easy to stop, fill, stir, and drink every couple of hours. The filter people need time to assemble, reassemble, and dissemble. So for speed, steripen is the fastest. You can even stir while walking! Get those 30 miles in. It feels great.


-The mountains were made for Tevas
-Barry

Uh, no. Those are recently purchased ones. I'm not alone in my bias, either, and pretty much done with 'em. About half the folks I've talked to (hiking groups total in the hundreds) who have tried them returned them and got filters due to failure.

“About half the folks I've talked to (hiking groups total in the hundreds) who have tried them returned them and got filters due to failure.”

This is extremely ironic. Over the past 2 years, I’ve met several people out in the backcountry with steripens. ALL of them love them. In my questioning NONE had a bonafide failure (changing batteries is not a failure).

The only hiccups I’ve seen is when someone pushed the button AFTER the steripen is inserted in the water.


There are always downsides to any water purification technique. We know there are several backountry Squeeze failures out there. So I always suggest letting people try both methods. I’ve used filters the longest. But since I’ve been in these here Rockies, steripens have been the fastest and easiest.

Plus with most filters (except First Need) you’ll never know if nasty’s are coming through (because of a broken cartridge). With the steripen you can at least see the byproduct of UVC light.

I shouldn’t say ‘never’. The filter cartridge can be checked by sending it off to some EPA-registered university.

Another steripen bonus is NO MAINTENANCE. NO PRIMING. All filters require religious maintenance to make sure they work the day you want them to.

Filter and steripen tip of the day: Use CLEAR bags-- not DARK bags-- for dirty water. Then you can see if you accidentally picked up gunk.

Steripens are very reliable. No bias here But I should likewise say First Need is also very reliable.

-Barry
-The mountains were made for Tevas

Barry, my experience with Steripen pretty much parallels yours. In my experience, most of the issues with failure to operate stem from pushing the button after the electrodes are immersed. Most other failures are related to using low quality or rechargeable batteries. I have fixed several Sterpen failures in the field by simply telling the owner to push the button and then immerse and stir. A couple of failures were fixed by swapping a brand-X battery with quality lithium cells. But, for long trips or for trips where I expect poor, dirty water, I prefer a pre-filter and/or filter and/or Micropur approach to the Steripen.

I have heard a lot of anecdotal tales of really high failure rates for Steripen units. I have never seen any hard data to back these tales. I suspect that if Steripen was as lousy as some claim, the company would have long since folded. Sure, there are some legitimate failures but IMO, most operational problems result from not reading the instructions. I know that this caused all the problems I had with Steripens.

It never ceases to amaze me that people will take untested equipment such as tents, stoves, GPS units and, yes, Steripens into the field; have them fail due to ignorance and then come back and complain about the gear while forgetting their contribution to the mess.

My UV experience is mostly with the UV Aquastar. Have also used the MUV and the Steripen...uh, the two-battery skinny one.

Even though it's bulky and susceptible to breakage, the first is the easiest to use because you agitate the water by inverting the whole container instead of stirring, stirring, stirring. Of the three, only the MUV failed (I returned three). So from my sample of N=1 I have no qualms about Steripen. I've just decided I prefer gravity filtering.

Cheers,

“…trips where I expect poor, dirty water, I prefer a pre-filter and/or filter and/or Micropur approach to the Steripen.”

Yep, that’s the downside of UV; I might be able to sterilize tannin water (up to clarity of lemon aid), but psychologically I can’t drink it.

“It never ceases to amaze me that people will take untested equipment such as tents, stoves, GPS units and, yes, Steripens into the field; have them fail due to ignorance and then come back and complain about the gear while forgetting their contribution to the mess.”

I don’t know why that made me laugh, but +1!

Thanx,
-Barry

My experience with the Steripen is limited to 2-3 trips, but it's similar to what Pika and Barry report. I have the Adventurer Opti model which has an optical water sensor instead of electrodes. This avoids the problem of some of the older models which couldn't detect being immersed in water if the dissolved solids were too low to detect using electric current.

Except, when I first purchased it and tested it at home, the UV light seemed dimmer than what I expected from photos and videos even with the room lights very dim. That's very subjective, but from my experience with photography, I could tell that the UV light was 1-2 stops dimmer than it should be. Then, someone on another forum reported noticing this and sending it to the manufacturer for testing. It had a bad bulb which was not emitting enough UV light to perform its intended function! The manufacturer sent a replacement unit. After reading that, I took it on a trip anyway because it was a winter trip in Michigan's UP which would be mostly 20F and below, and that's not the place for my Sawyer Squeeze filter. I didn't get sick, except for a mild case of diarrhea which may have been Giardia, or unrelated to the water I drank. I sometimes drink unfiltered water anyway, so no big deal. I did stay hydrated mostly by eating snow because access to flowing water was infrequent due to 4 feet of snow.

Anyway, after the trip, I sent my Steripen Adventurer in for testing, and it had a defective bulb too. I was sent a new unit with a bulb which is clearly brighter. A dimmer than normal bulb is something one of the quality assurance testers would've spotted easily. It's not clear if the bulb was made defective, or if it became that way during shipping. I like the Steripen, but I also have plenty of doubts. I usually hike in places where I drink carefully selected water unfiltered/untreated sometimes, and I just view the Steripen as optional insurance in case I need to drink from a more questionable source.