Boiling cooking water?
Question. Do you guys filter all water before you boil it for cooking or do you scoop right out of the stream and pour it in the pot to boil? Just curious.
Thanks
Bringing water to a full rolling boil is enough to disinfect it, so I don't trouble to filter cooking water unless it's turbid or has floaties in it.
I always know where I am. I'm right here.
Yes, but mostly because the water comes out of the same bottle I'm drinking out of most of the time. Water has to come to a full rolling boil for 5 minutes to be considered safe, not just reaching a boil. That's a lot of extra fuel usage for sterilizing water...I'd rather just filter it to be safe.
You should hold a roiling boil for at least one minute to kill Giardia and other shagnasties.
http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drin...e/giardia.html
Here is a better link for camping: http://www.cdc.gov/healthywater/drin...treatment.html
The recommendation is still a rolling boil for 1 min at lower elevations. I had always heard 5 min in my boy scout days. Can't hurt to go a little longer!
What Kevin said. No need to filter water if it's going to be boiled.
To keep sanitation procedures KISS...
I only collect water with my 'dirty water' container, and the water from the dirty water container ONLY goes to the filter. All water I use for cleaning, cooking, and drinking only comes from the 'clean water' container.
The only exception is when 'dirty water' is accessed directly from the source for cleaning (such as swimming, rinsing sweaty cloths, dipping a bandanna into cool water to cool off, etc).
OK, rolling boil for 1 minute... I don't usually time the fuel on my alky stove that tightly anyway, and I usually leave the pot on until it burns out.Originally Posted by pickNgrin
CDC's recommendation is extremely conservative, partly because it takes into account the fact that a lot of people don't actually know the difference between a simmer and a true rolling boil. WHO's recommendations are a lot more liberal:
Although some authorities recommend that water be brought to a rolling boil for to 1 to 5 minutes, the WHO GDWQ recommend bringing the water to a rolling boil as an indication that a high temperature has been achieved. These boiling requirements are likely to be well in excess of the heating conditions needed to dramatically reduce most waterborne pathogens, but observing a rolling boil assures that sufficiently high temperatures have been reached to achieve pathogen destruction. [Link above, p. 13]
I don't think I've boiled water above 2000 metres since I moved back East in 1984.
I always know where I am. I'm right here.
No. Often don't for drinking either.
I'm not lost. I'm exploring.
I don't pre-treat water I'm boiling anyway.
"It's fun to have fun, but you have to know how." ---Dr. Seuss
Don't carry a filter so no.
I am not young enough to know everything.
Yes and no.
It depends on if have excess treated water on me or not.
What you want to know is if its necessary
The answer is no
Heating water to rolling boil is adequate, anything more is just extra
I dont because for a lot of meals, drinks, I dont need or want them to be at boiling temps. So I use my energy filtering the water ahead of time, and just heat it to the temp I need for the food or drink I'm about to consume. I think this saves fuel, and wastes time filtering. It's what I choose. HYOH.
It would be nice to think that all water in the mountains is clean and good to go, but a recent photo on Guthooks FB page of tp in a creek should turn you off that thinking. The busier a trail is the more chance the water has been fouled, IMO. Personally if it was coming out of a spring, at my feet, I probably wouldn't treat it at all. Other wise I use a sawyer squeeze and if I'm boiling I only have to just get it there and don't have to wait 1,2,5 or whatever the current teaching is for a rolling boil. Saves fuel.
"He was a wise man who invented beer." Plato
212 degrees isn't the magic number. Most bacteria and viruses are dead at 140 degrees; to be extra-safe, 180 degrees is sufficient to make water biologically safe to consume. Once it reaches a rolling boil, it has been at 180 for probably 2-3 minutes.
"I haven't been everywhere, but it's on my list." - S. Sontag
Years ago my wife and I met a hiker named DocDel, or maybe DelDoc, anyway, a doctor from Delaware.
He said that 180 degrees was an adequate temperature to bring your water to that would make it safe to consume.
I asked him how to know when it reached 180 and he stated that if the bottom of the pot was covered in bubbles you would be good to go.
I cook with filtered water. You filter for a reason.
Just one more documentation that bringing the water TO a boil is sufficient, anything more is most likely overkill and just adds a "margin of safety". I just bring my untreated water to a boil and go for it - never had any illness that I attributed to contaminated water in well over 30 years of backpacking.
From: "Wilderness Medicine, Fifth Edition" by Paul S. Auerbach, MD, MS, pages 1377-78.
" The boiling time required is important when fuel is limited. The old recommendation for treating water was to boil for 10 minutes and add 1 minute for every 1000 feet in elevation. However, available data indicate this is not necessary for disinfection. Evidence indicates that enteric pathogens are killed within seconds by boiling water and rapidly at temperatures above 60* C (140* F). In the wilderness, the time required to heat water from 55* C (131* F) to boiling temperature works toward disinfection. Therefore, any water brought to a boil should be adequately disinfected. An extra margin of safety can be added by boiling for 1 minute or by keeping the water covered for several more minutes, which will maintain high temperature without using fuel, or by allowing it to cool slowly. Although the boiling point decreases with increasing altitude, this is not significant compared with the time required for thermal death at these temperatures. In recognition of the difference between pasteurizing water for drinking purposes and sterilizing to kill all microbes, including spores, for surgical purposes, many other sources, including WHO, now agree with this recommendation to simply bring water to a boil. Because of scant data for hepatitis A, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the EPA still recommend boiling for 1 minute to add a margin of safety. Other sources still suggest 3 minutes of boiling time at high altitude to give a wide margin of safety."
Last edited by Lyle; 09-22-2016 at 08:15.
Adding to this, in much of the eastern United States, lack of rain has and is creating several problems, drought being one. Fecal material in the forest is not able to break down quickly without some precipitation, if it comes in torrents, it can be carried downhill, which can impact otherwise good surface water sources. Spending a few minutes filtering water, even for cooking purposes, reduces the potential for fecal contaminates reaching you. Its a personal choice, some never filter, some filter all the time. Having suffered through some bad water experiences, I prefer the safer route of filtration.
I'd put pre-treating your cooking water firmly in the "belt and suspenders" category. And that's fine if you're willing to tote the fuel, or put the extra wear/use on your water treatment system.
I'd long ago read the quote Lyle provided in post 18, and since then I no longer waste the fuel on a rolling boil. Especially if you're simmering rice or pasta, that's ten or twenty minutes at very high temps for anything biological.
On a long hike, you not only need to consider fuel consumption, but the life of your water treatment method. You're only going to get so many units out of whatever you use before it runs out, clogs up, or breaks.
"Throw a loaf of bread and a pound of tea in an old sack and jump over the back fence." John Muir on expedition planning
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