Quoted:
I like the sawyer........I just dont care that it wont filter out pesticides and such
I like the just water filter......but it wont knock out Viruses
the First need filter looks as if it may do it all and is not a bad price
I want something that will filter out everything.......I know you can boil water and kill viruses(but what a pain) I worry about pesticides and such as well.....who knows what people dump in ponds and stuff. COme on guys we have all these so called survivalists and nobody can recommend a filter that will knock out all this shit?? lol :) I know viruses are not very common in our ponds, creeks and so on(correct?) but why take chances.....and the pesticides and shit just worry me.......you can filter all the water you like but if you got chemicals in the water your screwed.
Well I'm a First Need fan. Have used one for years now in water I know for a fact had Ghiardia, however its really not a bucket volume type filter. The gravity feed bag is pretty handy and thought about adapting that to say a five gallon bucket as needed, but then when you think about it, when we need these things how often will we have company anyway?
Instead, I've gone with a two phase approach dependent on starting water quality. A simple ceramic 0.2 micron filter for high volume filtering for cooking (cooking kills the germs) and the First Need for drinking with using a simple charcoal filter like you buy anywhere, Pur etc, for chemical removal. Its real easy to adapt those commerical charcoal filters that are threaded to about anything you want. I simply use those on my facets now, keeping spare filters, and have the adapters in my tool box for what if.
Of course, my fall back is always the First Need for drinking water. Filtering virus without a chemical treatment, IMHO is a big deal especially if hot stagnant water is involved. Cold water, not a big deal.
Anyway, the point of my post is commercial residential water treatment is a big industry now and prices remarkably low for the same technologies we pay big bucks for in a hiking or survival setting. It behooves us to take advantage of the technology and not pay so much attention to packaging. Its not that hard to have some tubing and adapters around.
Tj