I initially heard about the H2gO from a Soldier Systems Daily article on April 9, 2013. I immediately bought into the Indigogo campaign which promised to deliver the system used in the MSR Miox into a more user-friendly unit with a flashlight, storage compartment for salt, an internal rechargeable battery, and a solar panel. The H2gO is everything I want in the “purifier” market; it’s portable, easy to use, and requires little outside supply or disposable items besides salt. Are you near brackish water? I haven’t tried it yet, but I’d put dollars to doughnuts this would create your chlorine solution with a slosh of brackish water and not need any additional salt! I still recommend mechanically/physically filtering your water to remove small detritus, but the H2gO is perfect for the biological components I’ve never had a sustainable answer to.
On a full charge the battery will provide for treatment of approximately 150 liters of water. Though the settings will correctly dose chlorine solutions for 1, 2, 3, 5, and 10 liters you can easily add doses to make for appropriate solutions. Using the three setting, then the five setting, to achieve an 8 liter solution, for example. Whether you’re purifying one liter or 5 gallons it will take approximately an hour for the added solution to kill biological contaminants in your water. The buttons on the face sport incredibly intuitive pictographs leading you through the process and telling you how long to press the buttons for what effect. The kit comes with test strips to tell you if there is a high enough concentration to feel good about the water; there’s no way to tell for sure the quality of the water so the strips instead test for how high the chlorine level is. I wouldn’t use them every time, but if I was especially suspicious that a water source might be biologically contaminated and couldn’t find another better source I would be happy the strips are there.
I salute Rodney Herrington, Aqua Research, and his faithful for pulling together a tech wonder bordering on magic. There have been unbelievable delays due to equipment loss, manufacturer change, helping those living in the wake of natural disaster, and plain bad luck. I received my unit the first week of January and I feel it was worth every moment of that wait and I look forward to the chance to buy additional units on the open market.
– MW
Tags: H2g0 Purifier
That’s pretty neat, I have the UV wand but its limited to making exactly 32oz, and is less effective if the water is not clear. This however fixes many issues I have with many items on the market.
Huzzah for gear reviews! This looks mighty interesting. Thank you SSD!
I got this through Indiegogo as well. The unit is very compact and easy to use.
The actual chemical process of “turning salt into chlorine” is simple so there is very little that can go wrong. I like it.
Worth the long wait!
What’s the recharge time with the solar panel?
Because there are so many variables at play (time of day, cloud cover, solar flares, angry gods, etc) it’s hard to give a hard number here, but the manufacturer states that solar charging supplies 5 L of safe water for every 1 hour of charging.
I saw these at the Outdoor Retailer market in 2014, very interesting… I’m keen on getting one now to use with the MSR pump for a full system.
Clean it and go it over with the H2Go system.
I’ve used a miox for years,but the 123 batteries are a pain. I was really looking forward to this when they announced it, but the change to internal rechargable kinda sucks compared to the original AA concept. With the AA it still could have had a charging port, you could have used a solar battery charger to keep multiple batteries charged, or you could carry spare batteries that are cheap and easily available that damn near everything uses. Now you have a proprietary battery that fits exactly one device, and bricks the gear when you can’t replace it because of an updated model orthe company is out of business. Great! Designed obsolescence in a survival item! SDU-5E strobe anyone? Cause I got a box of them!