Steripen in Action

A while back I posted about Kim’s intent to purchase a Steripen water purifier to take with us traveling, including hikes.  Two weeks ago was our first chance to use the little gadget on a hike to Goat Lake.  While this isn’t intended to be a complete review (I have no water quality data other than we didn’t get sick……but don’t know if we would of if we hadn’t used the pen), it is intended to be a quick review of using the pen in the woods.

First off, the unit is light.  Kim carried it as compared to me carrying my normal water purification system that weighs about 2 lbs.  In this case, I was much happier.  Kim didn’t get the Adventurer model (the one with the solar charger) so this one came with its own soft case for traveling.  Kim cut out the instructions just to make sure we had them with us on the trail, this being our first use.  It’d stink if we didn’t use it right, got sick and then blamed the pen when it was user error.

Using the pen is frightfully easy.  Hold a button and it turns on.  Press a button and the light blinks, letting you know it’s ready to dip (green=good, red=bad, pretty simple).  When immersed in water the unit starts purifying with UV light and also turns on a visible so you know it’s working.  In our case we use Kleen Kanteen water bottles, not the normal Nalgene wide mouth bottles.  This made holding the unit into the water a bit more difficult, but still workable.

As our bottle was 40oz compared to the rated 32oz of the Steripen, we ran it twice.  Most of the time it was no problem, but once I wasn’t able to keep the light bar in the water enough and got the red signal.  Waiting a minute reset the Steripen and then on for another try.  It was probably safe with only running it once at the 32oz setting, but it only took another minute.

The unit is easy to use and understand once you get the hang of it.  I fear dropping it in the water though as the narrow mouth jars make you have to pinch the top for a minute while purifying.  That would not be good.  I think this pen will serve us well on future travels and hikes and I’d like to get the solar charging kit possibly as the pen uses the CR123 batteries that are sometimes a bit harder to find abroad.  I give it a thumbs up.