Allison Corning wrote: > [Love my Camelback, but] there is one problem. The water tastes completely > nasty. I tried to dry it out completely and scrub the insides with that > little camelback brush, and I even tried a sterilizing chlorine rinse per > the directions, but nothing seems to kill the nasty green film that always > shows up inside it after it gets wet. Especially on hiking trips of several > days when it gets periodically emptied and refilled. Does anyone else have > this problem? How do you treat it? Others have mentioned that you need to aggressively remove the proto-slime between uses, and kill it with bleach solution. I had a problem similar to yours with my MSR Dromedary bags (a Camelback imitation), except the slime was brown. In my case, I believe the brown stuff came from using a long hose to fill the Dromedary bag (my dumb move). You might try this as a scrubbing technique: get hold of a couple cups of **clean** aquarium gravel and sluice it into the Camelback along with a cup full of water and a half teaspoon dishwashing detergent (Dawn is good). You want to make a gravel-rich slurry, so avoid too much water. Slosh the stuff back and forth vigorously for a couple minutes, rotating to scrub all the inner surfaces, preferably while watching TV. Dump the gravel/detergent/water mix out (clean and re-use later) and thoroughly rinse the Camelback, with the last rinse a diluted bleach solution (10:1 should be OK). **Leave a few traces of the diluted bleach in there.** To get rid of the chlorine taste, rinse the Camel back with clean tap water just before filling for your next trip. I think you will still probably have some slime towards the end of a multi-day tour, but this cleaning technique should minimize it. Note that I have not tried this, but I think it should help. -- Dave Kruger Astoria, OR *************************************************************************** PaddleWise Paddling Mailing List - All postings copyright the author and not to be reproduced outside PaddleWise without author's permission Submissions: paddlewise_at_lists.intelenet.net Subscriptions: paddlewise-request_at_lists.intelenet.net Website: http://www.paddlewise.net/ ***************************************************************************Received on Mon Nov 01 1999 - 16:49:13 PST
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