Pro Tip, Turn your Sawyer Squeeze into a Gravity Filter

For the past few years, the Sawyer Squeeze filter has become the standard in water filters for hikers, bikers, and travelers worldwide.  At just 3oz and with a filtration level of 0.1 micros this filter can handle up to 1 million gallons of water before it needs replacing.  With all that said the one downside of the filter is that it requires some arm strength and time to squeeze water through the filter.  This can be time-consuming when needing to filter a large quality of water between sources. 

A quick and easy solution to save your arms from tiring out, and also let you enjoy a snack while your water if getting filtered is to use it as a gravity filter.  The principle here is that gravity does the work, so you don’t have to.  For years I have personally tried different things to make my sawyer squeeze an effective gravity filter, quick connect hose connections attached to various bladders a fill hose that could put clean water into a bottle and a variety of other techniques always left me wanting a better solution. 

In 2017 we met a new company here in Portland OR called Cnoc Gear.  Owner Gilad is not only a design wizard of gear, but he is also a long-distance hiker and with that, he too sought a better solution for water capacity that could also work with a gravity system.  The Cnoc Vecto was the solution he developed to solve this problem. These TPU collapsible bladders come in 2 sizes 2L and 3L, their unique design has the spout places at the center of the bottle, and its wide mouth top with a slider makes filling these a breeze.

By using two Cnoc Vectos, the Sawyer Squeeze and the Sawyer Squeeze Cleaning Coupler, you can rig up an easy to use gravity filter to use in the field.  Personally, I have two different colored Vectos a blue and orange one, I keep my blue one for dirty water and my orange for clean water.  All I have to do is fill the blue bag, screw on my filter with the coupler, screw on the orange bag to the other end of my filter, hang it from a tree, fence, bush or whatever else is present and sit back and relax.

So before you hit the trail this next season, do yourself a favor and grab a couple of Vectos from Cnoc and a Squeeze from Sawyer and give your arms a break.

 Find CNOC Vectos and the Sawyer Squeeze here.