The Vehicle - Up To OverLand Spec

Extra Fuel...     Drinkable Water     First Aid Kit

Water is essential whatever way you travel and in certain environments it is important that you carry quite a lot. From what I learnt through my research getting hold of good drinking water was easy in some areas, as bottled water or water sachets where readily available. In other places it would prove hard to find water let alone a drinkable source. So it was obvious that I would need to be able to carry a large amount of water for two reasons. One so that I could go long periods with out having to finding a good source and two so that I had enough for a least a good few days when travelling in places where it was not available. I again decided to use jerry can style containers, which are made of plastic. Working on the principle that in hot conditions 1 person would need 10 litres of water a day for all there needs, then I reckoned that 3 jerry cans, 60 litres should be plenty.

The other thing that became obvious was that I would need some way of purifying water sources. As tap water can’t be trusted in a lot of places and I might have to use natural sources like rivers or wells at some point. So I needed a system that could take out particles of mud and rubbish from the water and kill any harmful bacteria that might cause me to be ill. I first looked at the hand pump water purifiers that you can get to take hiking in remote areas. They did the exact job I deeded but would require a lot of physical effort to pump 60 liters. So I wanted something that had a pump to do the work. When I had a look around to see what was on the market, all the units I found where every expensive or didn’t quite meet my needs. So I decided that I would put a system together of my own, based on the filtering specification of the pump water filters for hiking. I sourced all the water filter parts from a local company that supplied systems to filter borehole water. I then sourced a 12 volt high pressure pump from a marine chandlery. I then bolted in to a backboard and connected it all together. This produced a system that could be run from the 12 volt power in the Land Rover and would be able to filter a lot of water quickly and to the right standard. Unfortunately by the time it was finished it cost no less than some other systems on the market, but it at least did exactly what I wanted.

As an added precaution I also took along water purifying tablets to use in situations when I might think that there was possibly harmful bacteria in the water.

So far the water purifying system has been working great, and pumps around 16 litres a minute. It produces clean, clear water with no nasty taste or smell. I have used it with river, well and tap water sources. At least it is slowly paying for it’s self as I don’t have to keep buying bottled water.