Water Contest

[Rotte]

Contest concept:

It has been fairly dry out West this year. We had a little rain and a break from the fires here in Wyoming and down in Colorado, but stream levels are down and some creeks are just empty. Hay prices are through the roof. This drought and Joezilla's Amazon thread had me thinking about collecting water--survival priority #2. In an effort to share water collection knowledge and prompt a little practice, I'm doing a giveaway based on water collection. Let's have some fun.

The Rules:

1. Contestants must read the rules (see below)
2. Contestants must be 18 y/o and able to legally own the Prize (see below).
3. The Prize will be awarded by random selection from a list of successful entries.
4. A successful entry shall consist of a documented attempt, with photographs, of the Contestant's effort to procure water using a 'survival collection' method or technique, well designed and executed. Contestants must explain the technique or method used, the amount of water collected, and the time required to collect said water. (Please note, there is no requirement to collect any water, just to document the attempt and degree of success or failure.)
5. Purchasing water or using tap water does not constitute a survival technique.
6. Any water collected must be deemed potable by the judges. (That would be me.)
7. Contestants may make multiple entries using different collection techniques.
8. No entries will be accepted after 04 Sep 12. Winner will be selected 04 Sep 12 sometime around 1800 MST, unless the judge is still at work or is eating dinner, in which case, the drawing will be a bit later.

Example entry: "I used a solar still made from a tarp over some sage brush mixed with urine to collect water. ***Picture of my still*** I collected about 1/2 a cup of murky fluid after 6 hours ***Picture of nasty looking fluid***. It tasted horrible and I puked it all up. ***Picture of puke on lawn*** At least it was wet."

The Prize:

ESEE RC-6 with MOLLE compatible survival kit/sheath. Cool pouch with kydex sheath. Has several pockets, diamond rod sharpener, and RAT ferro rod. The RC-6 is in very good shape. This knife and kit have ridden in a truck for a bit, but are otherwise unused. You win, I ship it to you.

Game on!

Successful entries:

1. RescueRiley
2. RescueRiley
3. gadgetgeek
4. gadgetgeek
5. Pitdog
6. Pitdog
7. RWT
8. Mr. Green
9. Mr. Green
10. Mr. Green
11. Mr Green
12. Mr Green
13. Mr Green
14. Munky88
15. Munky88

 

[imaginefj]

Woohoo cool thread!

 

[buckmaster96]

i may be able to get something together tomorrow

 

[Rotte]

No rush, ya got a couple weeks. Of course, in a survival situation you have much less time...:concern:

 

[kgd]

That is really cool of you to offer the contest and wonderful price Rotte. What a great thing to kick start and motivate activity in this forum. That is one heck of a prize and I look forward to seeing some of the entries (the ESEE-6 is a kick ass knife and that package that comes with it looks marvelous)!

 

[Rotte]

No entries to date, but still plenty of time left. I'm getting on the motorcycle and riding off for a week, so I may not have access to the 'net/Bladeforums. I'll check back in next weekend at the latest.

 

[RescueRiley]

Great Contest brother, and very generous.

I set out today with the idea of making a solar still, things didn't turn out as planned. But Here's what I came up with

managed to dig a whole in the sand with a clam shell, bout 2 feet deep by 3 ft across (my nephew helped.)

next i placed a container in the bottom and ran a tube from the bottom of the cup to the surface and propped it off the sand as a drinking tube.

than I filled the hole with vegetation and a few pints of sea water

a plastic sheet was laid over top the edged covered with sand and weights, and a small stone was place in the middle of the sheet to provide a low point for condensation to run down into the cup

than I let it sit to attend to other things..of course after i left the site, we had a tremendous sundden downpour of rain which lasted a solid hour (just my luck) I figured the still would be destroyed

I returned back some where between 3 & 4 Hours, and instead found a happy accident. my solar still had become a rain catch LOL catching almost 2 liters of rain water.

incidentally do to the high humidity I did get some yield into the cup from the still as well. (though not much)

I;ve had little success with solar stills in the past, but had Hih hopes for this one, But you can;t beat mother nature, and in this case for the imaginary survivor it actually worked out better, as water yield from encatchment (at least in this case) was far greater than I could ever expect from a still.
THanks for looking.

 

[Rotte]

Had to laugh with you on the convertible solar still/rain catchment device--beautiful.

 

[RWT]

now you have me thinking...........................

 

[RescueRiley]

Same day Attempt 2

Since I had some Time to kill I decided to try another method of water production thistime relying on the respiration of plants.
(of course this was also affected by the storm) but not as much as I originally thought.

I selected a leafy benign plant (in this case a large old maple tree) and place a clear 55 gallon drum liner over a large bundle of its leafy branches

I placed a small stone in the bottom to create a gravitational low point, than wrapped tight at the top with 550 and duct tape, from my kit. I than put a small hole in the bottom and fitted a section of tube for drinking in, and sealed the perifery with duct tape.

Obviously when I returned the rain had come the same as with the still but sa you can see in the pic there is a good bit of condensation inside the bag

and we had again collected a fair bit, Approx 10 oz in 4 hours

Originally I had suspected that the majority of the yield had come from capillary action. due to the rain running down the branches (this is still likely the case as the yield was so high) however when I removed the bag from the branched approx 95 pct of branches and all leaves where bone dry,

In conclusion I did yield water from both methods, However the rain really made the results impossible to judge
I;d like to play with these more in various weather conditions to see how the results vary.

ALso so far for me if the weather provides Rain encatchment is the best bang for the buck. (but that;s a big if in many parts of the world)

If i get more time I'd like to try something else, and would love to see what other folks have come up with as well.
Thanks for looking, and for the great thread idea.

 

[RWT]

I have a plan with a catcus and a sponge. I have no idea if it will work or not but I will give it a try this weekend. I could just run down to the stock tank, but what fun is that?

 

[gadgetgeek]

Well, my first attempt has not fared at all, so far I'm pretty much dead if I can't get some water by tomorrow
First attempt: Dew catching

Just strung up my GI poncho to try a dew catch, as its usually pretty wet in the mornings here. Either I woke up too late, or it was a light dew, caught nothing but bat crap, so either way, the water wouldn't have been good anyway!

Second attempt, Solar Foliage Still.

started this one at about 1400h while doing some "jungle" clearing in my yard (some kind of shrub thing that's been slowly taking over the front yard) filled the bag loosely half full, got lots of condensation on the bag, but not enough to really form drops. Got about a teaspoon and a half of water though. Ran out of sun too quick. I've left it, and I'll check it tomorrow.

Might try some more active methods tomorrow, if I can scrounge the materials. Funny how little you can find when you want it. But now that I've started, its bugging the crap out of me that I can't get water.

 

[Brian.Evans]

I have a couple things going, and I'll post them in about 36 hrs or so. I didn't have time to do them today during sunlight hours and I'm on shift all day tomorrow. It won't be exactly like a survival scenario, but maybe I can get water.

 

[gadgetgeek]

Water Attempt day two.
This is what I had collected by about 1300 h today

It wasn't too bad smelling, and tasted fine. I didn't drink any though, didn't trust it that far.
This was what I had collected by about 1500 (including earlier) its cloudier because I tried to spin cycle the bag to extract more water, got more dirt as well (that is what made it through the bandana)

By then there was a pretty major silage/ fermented plant matter smell going on, not too pleasant.
Biggest problem was getting the water off of the leaves, there was probably another 50ml of water in the mush by that point. The other bag I tried for today was a green trashbag. got hot enough to sweat the leaves, but not enough to get any real water happening. even worse than the clear bag yesterday.

 

[RescueRiley]

Nice job Guys.. I'm going to attempt my methods again today (maybe this time it won;t rain)

 

[Brian.Evans]

I will post pics tomorrow because they are almost all on my camera not my cell, but my dew collection failed. I even got up early. Hopefully my solar still works today. I guess we'll see.

I want to try the vegetation still as well. Does it require a deciduous tree, or can I use a pine/fir tree?

 

[pitdog]

I've wanted an ESEE 6 for so long that I have to give this comp a shot !!!

I think this is one of Allan "Bow" Beauchamp's ideas. Two bottles one filled with Bear Gryll's favourite...Urine, the other empty:

Duct tape them together and cover the empty bottle over with soil or as I did a towel etc. The idea is that the sun evaporates the urine turning the water to vapour which then condenses in the cooler shaded bottle. Hopefully you then end up with clean water in one and all the nasty residue in the other !

I'll update later with the results !


Thanks for the chance buddy, very generous prize and great idea for the contest !:thumbup:

Well the bottles have been sitting in the sun for two days now and as it's not the nicest thing to have sitting on your lawn I decided to pull the plug on it today. The results were quite disappointing, as you can see from this pic there was a lot of condensation going on but the actual amount of water it yielded after two days is very little !
For those wondering, yes I did try it and apart from a slight taste of the gatorade that had been in the bottle the water was fine....just very little of it !

 

[pitdog]

Another source of water are tree fibres. If you strip out some of the layer just beneath the outer bark you will find it's full of water.
I used a Cedar tree for two reasons, 1. Because I know they are safe and 2. Because I know that the tree will easily heal from the damage I caused.
With the small amount I took from the tree I was unable to wring any water from the fibres as such but you could feel they were soaked so chewing on them would probably provide you with some fluid. If you extracted a much larger amount of fibres I'm quite sure you could wring some water into a cup or other container.

A word of warning, you might want to use one of your more substantial knives when prying the bark off, using your dainty little Bushcraft blades for this might result in a broken tip. I used my sturdy JK Hiker~

 

[RescueRiley]

Good stuff Guys, allot of good ideas here, I reattempted my still and bag yesterday, (not for the contest as I already attempted them) but just to see what I could get. the still was zilch in about 4 hours, The transpiration bag did better, so I decided to leave it overnight to see what it will yeild, I'll ck later today and post back,

What I really wanted to do was attempt to de-Salinate ocean water by building a fires heated still.
But I won;t have time for this competition, Im going to attempt it next time I'm at my brothers, as he has bpth ocean water, and a fire pit. If and when I g get to it I'll post a seperate thread.

I'm leaving tomorrow for a fam camping trip, So thanks to all contributors.. Things like this are great opportunities to learn by doing and by watching other people do.

Allot of good stuff here, Good luck to everyone

 

[Rotte]

RR, have a great trip. Thanks for playing.

Pit, you are more man than I am.