Paratrooper Water Filter

[hancocs]

http://www.solutionsfromscience.com/?p=1483

Took the chance and ordered this today for my BOB and one for my Son for Christmas. Seemed like a pretty impressive little filter. Hard to wrong for $50.

[offdalip]

good luck with that.

It makes absolutely no mention of what technologies it uses to filter or purify water

[hancocs]

http://www.alibaba.com/product-gs/313619659/0_1_micron_paratrooper_dedicate_Portable.html


Here is a little more on the technical data.

[opsec]

Looks like the Chinese have copied Katadyn's technology. Ceramic filter elements tend to clog quickly. One way to slow that down is to have a prefilter on the end of the intake hose. You could buy one OTS and attach it to the end of the intake or you could engineer your own solution using open cell foam or some other filter media.

[hancocs]

This is a backup filter for me. My primaries are Katadyn's filters. And soon to be Berkey.

[offdalip]

0.1 micron is a good start, you are starting to get to the virus level. and like Opsec said, prefiltering 100 micron stage then 10 micron stage will make it last longer.
throw in some activated charcoal and you can get rid of the VOC's as well

[Beeherder]

My Berkey filter system says it filters flouride but what it filters is the kind that is added by municipal water systems NOT the naturally occuring variety that exists in my local water. So have added flouride filters by Doulton below the Berkey filters. Also had a couple of manufacturing failures from Berkey so am testing the Doulton filters as replacements in the Berkey.

When i purchased the Berkey it came with a "sport bottle" emergency filter supposedly capable of filtering ditch water. One of them in my GHB which goes with me whenever i leave home and another in the truck. Nice thing about these is that they store dry so freezing is not an issue. And with Opsec's alcohol coffee/can heater in the truck i can melt snow or ice if needed.

[spacecase0]

if you are looking for an alternative to the berkey filters,
this place is good, I have never had an issue with products of theirs
http://www.aquarain.com/
and here is where I get my fluoride filters at
http://www.crystalclearsupply.com/SearchResults.asp?Cat=91&Click=375

[hancocs]

http://www.amazon.com/Berkey-PF-2-fluoride-reduction-elements/dp/B002NVW9Z8

Beeherder,

Is this what you had to add to your Berkey?

[offdalip]

Hancocs,

The doulton filter cartridge Bee has uses activated alumina as the active ingredient.

Looks like
http://cart.berkeyfilters.com/berkey-fluoride.aspx?gclid=COPR7dyosawCFcya7QodT3lrHA
also uses activated alumina as the active ingredient.

Just to clear things up, active alumina, cation exchange, activated charcoal and anion exchange filters all filter
4 quite different and mutually exclusive types of contaminants. i.e. alumina filters will not get
rid of hexavalent chromium and cation filters will not get rid of fluoride, etc etc.

The other thing is they all have a limit to their exchange or absorption capacity and once that is reached they
will absorb no more contaminants. The limit is dictated by the total mass of active material inside the filter.

http://www.google.com/search?q=cation+exchange&hl=en&biw=1680&bih=887&prmd=imvns&tbm=isch&tbo=u&source=univ&sa=X&ei=c4W-TrmrBsu2twfRrfmsBg&sqi=2&ved=0CF4QsAQ

[hancocs]

Thanks Offdalip. That does clears things up.

[Beeherder]

Oh how i wish Beeherder had even half as much a clue as Offdalip or Opsec who i also expected to hear from. I was listening to a Doulton sales critter when unhappy about faulty products shipped by by Berkey. The Doulton critter claimed his product would do the job if added under the Berkey, so i purchased the  ceramic candle CN-SS 7 replacements for the black berkey filters and have yet to use them, see:

http://doultonusa.com/HTML%20pages/candles.htm

Was unable to find the flouride filter product on this web site, the invoice says: CN-B2-4 Flouride/metal reduction candle 4 inch and it is designed to go under the CN-SS 7.

In no way do i mean this to be an endorsement of any product by anyone anywhere, this is what i did. Your thoughts on the wisdom (or lack there of) of these choices are welcomed.

[spacecase0]

I figure that I only need the fluoride filter until the city water fails,
when it fails they will quit adding in the fluoride
so my gravity filter had no fluoride filter in it.
does that logic sound right ?

[offdalip]

I figure that I only need the fluoride filter until the city water fails,
when it fails they will quit adding in the fluoride
so my gravity filter had no fluoride filter in it.
does that logic sound right ?

I don't know why people freak out about fluoride. Most municipalities are
phasing it out anyways to save money since they know it is already in toothpaste.

I am on well water, I don't care about fluoride. But it does introduce a host of other problems.

First, you need to filter by size. Fine filters clog quickly unless preceded by rough size filters.
Next you want to out any organic compounds, pesticides with an activated charcoal filter.
Finally you want to get rid of salts, which are BOTH anions and cations in equal
amounts. A reverse osmosis filter will get rid of most of these or else a cation exchange resin followed
by an anion exchange resin or a mixed bed of bed resin of both (as used in water softeners) can help get
rid of contaminants

[spacecase0]

I am allergic to the fluoride (if that is possible as it is a poison), that is why I filter it out
it makes all my bones hurt when I drink to much of it even if I have filtered out everything else,
I use to use reverse osmosis and liked it,
but went for the aluminum chloride and then filter out the result for higher reliability of the filter.