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
