We didn't do very much yesterday, so today I'm going to tell you about our new water filter... the Lifesaver Cube!
I did go down to the waterfront and get a photo of the bridge before it started raining...
The Miramichi Bridge.
We know from RV'ing in Mexico that most drinking water that you buy there is purified. And it's easy in Mexico to purchase 18 liter (5 gallon) drinking water containers, and that's what we did when we were traveling the country with our first motorhome Sherman. But of course we had a lot more room in 28' Sherman than we do in 19' Igor!
And, while the drinking water is fairly cheap in Mexico, you still have to buy it and it adds up over the long term. And, we want to continue into Central and possibly South America and didn't want to be searching for drinking water all the time.
So I did a bunch of research into the various water purification and filtration systems, and decided on the Lifesaver Cube.
Ruth, with our Lifesaver Cube.
The Cube is actually smaller than it looks in the photo above. It holds 5 liters (1.32 gallons) of dirty water. You can fill it up anywhere... lakes, streams, or any water taps whether marked potable or not. It has a small hand operated pump to pressurize the system, and then the water is forced through the filter to come out totally drinkable. The filter is good for 5,000 liters (1,320 gallons) of clean drinking water. And the optional carbon filter removes chloring or heavy metal tastes as well.
We've tested the system for a week now, and it does what it says. We tested it with heavily chlorinated city tap water, and it definitely removes the chlorine taste.
The Cube is not cheap, but we found that none of the alternative systems are cheap either. It costs $207 CAD, or $130 USD.
We had three issues. The first two were with regard to shipping. The Cube is manufactured in the UK, but they have a US distributor. The website lists Canadian prices, but because the item ships from the U.S., we had to pay $52 CAD in customs tax to get it up here. We bought ours from the distributor, and I was a little frustrated with that. In hindsight, it would have ended up being cheaper to buy from Amazon US, and have it shipped to Canada.
Next, we had ordered a spare pack of carbon filters because they don't last as long as the main filter. They messed up on shipping them, and they still haven't arrived at our daughter Lindsey's, although they are on their way. We will have to pay Lindsey to ship them to us in Ottawa.
The second problem was with a very minor water leak at the tap. It comes with two spare o-ring gaskets for the tap, and when I used one of the spares the leak disappeared. Very odd because there didn't appear to be anything wrong with the original one.
The distributor was extremely helpful though, and refunded us $107 CAD due to the problems. They also were willing to send us a new tap if it came down to that. So even though there were some screw ups, they did everything they could to help us out. So, had we bought from Amazon, we would not have had the excellent after sales service that came from the distributor.
Here is the link to the distributor site...
And the Amazon site...
Despite the initial problems, we think we're going to be really happy with the purchase.
We had a very wet afternoon.
We ended up parked overnight at the library. They had a big, quiet parking lot and we could pick up a strong WiFi signal from the van. I was even able to watch the Blue Jays game!
Today, we are headed north to Bathurst. The rain has stopped, although they are still calling for a shower this afternoon. We're going to go for a walk here before we head out.
Here is our route so far since we left Lindsey's on Tuesday...
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Record low deal on this 9' x 12' RV Patio Mat.
And in Canada...
Great idea on the cube, and glad you got a bit of a refund for your trouble! Hope it continues to work for you for a good long time. And that you see the sunshine soon! We have plenty of that in NC right now but could really use the rain; wanna trade? ;-)
ReplyDeleteSo far it seems to be working fine since Kevin changed the "O" ring. We are sure that it is going to get lots of use over the coming years.
DeleteWe did get to see the sun yesterday and today is supposed to be a nice day too just a little cooler. Hopefully some rain will come your way soon but not all at once, as in a hurricane!
That looks like a good unit as well as a good buy. That's a lot of water per filter. That's about 264 garrafones at 18 pesos max (now) that would come out to 5200 pesos. Sounds pretty good to me!
ReplyDeleteFor the traveling that we want to do, we really do think that this will be a good buy.
DeleteIt should save us some money by having it rather than buying and filling the big garrafones, plus we don't have to spend time looking for a place to exchange or refill it and those garrafones take up a bit of space which is something that we lack in Igor.