Martin
02-02-2011, 07:55 AM
I have been asked by Klause to review the Travel Tap by Drinksafe Systems which I mentioned in my video report from my solo Dartmoor trip in November.
I got the Travel Tap from Backpackinglight (http://www.backpackinglight.co.uk) and took delivery about a week before my trip. I decided to use it as my primary means of water purification as I find boiling water a real hassle and I don't paricularly like Steritabs. According to Backpackinglight the Travel Tap:
"Instantly removes:
Taste and taint
Chemicals
Herbicides
Pesticides
Purification chemicals
Sediments and heavy metals
Proven to remove waterborne disease causatives, Bacteria , Protozoa including Cryptosporidium , Giardia , E-coli , viral disease causatives and Anthrax immediately"
Which means it is perfect for Dartmoor where the streams and rivers are normally pretty safe to drink as they are but you can never be sure that there's not a dead sheep submerged 50 yards upstream.
In my video, I suggested that the Travel Tap has limitations, which it does. Basically, it is slow to filter water. It can easily take five minutes to filter a litre of water which means that you are tempted to squeeze the bottle harder and harder to force the water through the filter just that bit quicker. This causes the dirty water to squeeze through the seal on the lid and potentially contaminate the clean water you have filtered. Of course, five minutes isn't a long time and is quicker than boiling and cooling water and you can have fresh clean water all day long.
On the second occasion that I used the Travel Tap, which was also on Dartmoor, I found the same problem. I was staying in the accomodation at Okehampton Camp, which is the Army camp on the moor. In the block I was in, the water from the tap was very brown and I wanted to fill my 2L Platypus pouch for the walk that day. I wasn't sure where the water came from, if it came from a storage tank or if the pipes were a bit rusty so, to reduce the risk of a bad stomach, I thought I'd use the Travel Tap to be sure. Once again, the amount of time it took to even half fill my pouch seemed like an age, meaning that I gave up and eventually finished filling up straight from the tap and took a chance with the consequences. Therein lies the problem in my opinion. If a product is to be useful, it should be easy to use. The Travel Tap is very simple in principal but in practise is a pain in the neck as it takes so much time. It wouldn't be so bad if you could fill it and leave gravity to do the work but you need to invert the bottle and squeeze if you want to fill another vessel with clean water. Of course, you can drink straight from the bottle as it is a 'sports bottle' design, but as someone who doesn't drink enough when he's walking, this is not ideal as I tend to leave the bottle in my pack until I stop.
In summary, the Travel Tap is a simple drinks bottle with a water filter built in. It is very slow to filter water and wouldn't be suitable as a filter for more than one person. If used simply as a drinks bottle, I think it would be ok but you would get good neck muscles through all the sucking you need to do to get a decent amount of water through. Things won't get any better either as the filter gets slower as it gets more and more clogged.
Martin
I got the Travel Tap from Backpackinglight (http://www.backpackinglight.co.uk) and took delivery about a week before my trip. I decided to use it as my primary means of water purification as I find boiling water a real hassle and I don't paricularly like Steritabs. According to Backpackinglight the Travel Tap:
"Instantly removes:
Taste and taint
Chemicals
Herbicides
Pesticides
Purification chemicals
Sediments and heavy metals
Proven to remove waterborne disease causatives, Bacteria , Protozoa including Cryptosporidium , Giardia , E-coli , viral disease causatives and Anthrax immediately"
Which means it is perfect for Dartmoor where the streams and rivers are normally pretty safe to drink as they are but you can never be sure that there's not a dead sheep submerged 50 yards upstream.
In my video, I suggested that the Travel Tap has limitations, which it does. Basically, it is slow to filter water. It can easily take five minutes to filter a litre of water which means that you are tempted to squeeze the bottle harder and harder to force the water through the filter just that bit quicker. This causes the dirty water to squeeze through the seal on the lid and potentially contaminate the clean water you have filtered. Of course, five minutes isn't a long time and is quicker than boiling and cooling water and you can have fresh clean water all day long.
On the second occasion that I used the Travel Tap, which was also on Dartmoor, I found the same problem. I was staying in the accomodation at Okehampton Camp, which is the Army camp on the moor. In the block I was in, the water from the tap was very brown and I wanted to fill my 2L Platypus pouch for the walk that day. I wasn't sure where the water came from, if it came from a storage tank or if the pipes were a bit rusty so, to reduce the risk of a bad stomach, I thought I'd use the Travel Tap to be sure. Once again, the amount of time it took to even half fill my pouch seemed like an age, meaning that I gave up and eventually finished filling up straight from the tap and took a chance with the consequences. Therein lies the problem in my opinion. If a product is to be useful, it should be easy to use. The Travel Tap is very simple in principal but in practise is a pain in the neck as it takes so much time. It wouldn't be so bad if you could fill it and leave gravity to do the work but you need to invert the bottle and squeeze if you want to fill another vessel with clean water. Of course, you can drink straight from the bottle as it is a 'sports bottle' design, but as someone who doesn't drink enough when he's walking, this is not ideal as I tend to leave the bottle in my pack until I stop.
In summary, the Travel Tap is a simple drinks bottle with a water filter built in. It is very slow to filter water and wouldn't be suitable as a filter for more than one person. If used simply as a drinks bottle, I think it would be ok but you would get good neck muscles through all the sucking you need to do to get a decent amount of water through. Things won't get any better either as the filter gets slower as it gets more and more clogged.
Martin