DIY Gravity Water Filter System Update

A couple of years ago I wrote up how we used a Sawyer Squeeze as a DIY Sawyer Gravity Filter. After I posted that article around the internet, a few people suggested that I modify it to make it lighter and work just as well. We’ve adopted those modifications, and although this system filters one less liter per fill, we’ve found that the reduced complication of the system makes up for it.

The suggestion was simple. Just switch all the water bags to CNOC Outdoors 3L Vecto Water Containers. With the 28mm nozzle bags, the Sawyer Squeeze water filter screws directly into the dirty water bag. Then you use the Sawyer Products SP150 Coupling to connect the Squeeze to the clean water bag. The Vecto bags come in orange and blue. We made the orange bag our dirty water bag and the blue our clean water bag. We also wrote on the bags “Dirty” and “Clean” to make sure nobody messes up in camp.

The Vecto bags work fine for squeezing the water through the filter if you are in a hurry. There’s no need to hang the bag to filter water if you want to squeeze instead. This also means that we can easily backflush the filter by squeezing the clean water bag. I’d usually do that once a day before emptying the clean water bag into our water bottles.

In camp, I used a small piece of cordage and a micro-biner to hang the DIY gravity water filter from a tree.

This one is an easy one to pull off and could be modified based on how much water you need to filter at once. CNOC makes a 2L Vecto in addition to the 3L.

After you get all the parts, here are the weights as measured on my scale.

If you want a simple gravity filter system that can also be used on the go as a squeeze system, then this is a nice setup. I already owned several Sawyer water filters, so it made a lot of sense for me not to purchase a different gravity filter system. But from what I’ve seen of others systems, this setup simplifies everything.

Here are a few more photos of it in camp.