Got my MSR MIOX purifier today

“Excitement!! I odered an MSR MIOX water purifier from REI and I recieved it today. Here's some initial info:

Why I bought it (some of this dependant on if it works as advertised) - 1) I like Polar Pure but my wife didn't want me to use iodine for the AT next year. 2) According to the customer service guy at MSR, the MIOX creates the same chemicals that that Aqua Mira makes, without the shelf life or the 5 mins sitting there with a plastic cap in my hand. 3)I'm waaay over pumping and the space/weight requirements of a pump filter. 4)After the initial cost, just add salt - no filters to buy. 5)Compact package will purify large volumes of water (good for long distances or large groups).

Low Down:

It's about the size of a Mini Mag flashlight. The one that has 2 AA batteries. Nice and compact compared to my dusty PUR filter, a little bigger than my well used bottle of Polar Pure.

It's pretty light - 3.2 oz. Not much different than a bottle of Polar Pure, a vast improvement over the pump filter.

How it works - The purifier uses ordinary salt and an electrical current to create oxidents that destroy microorganisms (ie uses salt and electricity to create a chemical treatment). Electricity is from two CR-123 batteries (common camera battery). The package comes with a small bag of rock salt. The rock salt is placed in a small compartment in the purifier. If you look at a pic of the MIOX, the compartment is the fatter, larger black end. A mesh screen keeps the salt in the end. To use the filter you unscrew the fat end w/ the salt and fill the red part w/ water by pouring or dipping. The salt chamber is screwed back on and the MIOX is shaken 10 times to create a brine solution. The MIOX is held upright, the salt chamber is removed. While holding the unit away from your face, the purifier's activation button is pressed (once for 0.5 L, 2 - 1L, 3 clicks - 2L, 4 clicks - 4L). When the green LED turns off, pour the solution into your water container. Shake your water container. In the kit there is a container of test strips that are used to indicate the concentration of oxidents. After 10 mins, a test strip is dipped in your water bottle and read as OK or not ok. If not ok, add another batch of oxidents. If ok, water will be treated for viruses & giardia after 30 mins total contact, crypto after 4 hrs (typical wait times for most chemical treatments).

Obviously, since I just got it today, I havene't had a chance to use it yet. I have a trip coming up and I'll give a field report in a few weeks. The test strips seem like a drag and I expect I will leave these and this step behind after becoming comfortable with the unit's ability to create the solution. We'll see...

Peace. MM.”

“Thanks for the info MM!

Please keep us updated as you use it! I've been reading about this thing for some time now.”

“My brother in law has a non-chlorine pool that uses salt and electrical current to decontaminate the pool water. Must be the same technology. The salinity of the water is about the same as a teardrop. When you open your eyes it doesn't hurt. Sounds like you shouldn't have an issue of a high salt intake since it's low salinity and you'll be sweatin' like a mutha.”

“I am curious about the effectiveness of this new gadget.

I don't like the wait time, having to keep up with the salt and the test strips. The weight, not pumping, and no taste are appealing.

I will be waiting for your report.”

“Sounds good!”

“I checked it out. Sounds pretty good. Would bring the weight down a little. rocksalt can be heavy, how much do you need for...lets say 3 days? 10 liters maybe??”

“Not sure, D. I'll keep track of how many liters I get out of a salt chamber full of salt.”

“Hey MMonster, Thanks for the info. Keep me updated. Yo bear!”

“I just got back from my first trip using the Miox Purifier (5 days backpacking in Grand Canyon - trip report soon). I have a mixed review right now. The unit is highly cool and, when it worked, it worked well. The problem was that I could only get it to work incosistantly at best.

Now, let me be more specific. I didn't test or try the unit at all before I left. I just packed it in my pack and took along my Polar Pure as a stand-by. The first few times I used it it worked fairly well, but had a few instances of "Low Salt." The gizmo has idiot lights on it to tell you if there is too much or too little salt in the mixture to make the solution - a solid red light for too little salt. No big deal, initially, and I got enough purification solution to purify 11 liters of water out of a capful of salt. Initially, I was very excited about its perfomance.

However, later in the trip I experienced instances where I couldn't get the unit to make the purification solution because of repeated "Low Salt" errors. I would shake it up, press the button, get the error, try again, same result. During these times it became useless and I returned to using Polar Pure.

Now that I am back home I have found that I left out one step when trying to make the solution - cleaning the water resevoir between uses. Will this make a big difference? Not sure, I'm going to talk to MSR about it and I'll let you know what they say. I can say that it does seem to be consistantly producing solution here at the house when I rinse it with water each time. But then, I don't need it to work here at my house, I need it to work in the backcountry.

I guess I'll need to field test it some more before I give it a final verdict. I'll update what I find.”

“What about a trip report too? Anxious to hear about both....”

“Milemonster,

Did you take a look into the salt chamber to see if you had used up a signifigant amount of the salt and therefore it might be taking more shakes to work? Did it have problems after you added more salt? When the salt is dry it can soak up all of the water, although that would more likely trigger a high salt warning. Did you look into the chamber after shaking to see if you had some water left? If none of these sound likely, please call us at 800-531-9531 and we can help troubleshoot your unit for you.
Thanks, and sorry for the inconvenience this caused you on your trip.

Rick Klug
Sales Support ]
Cascade Designs”

“Thanks for the response Rick. It's always nice when the support folks chime in. Like I said, when the unit worked well it was supper nice. When I had the trouble I tried just about everything - I added salt, I wetted the salt, I used an over-full water chamber, I used under-full water chamber, etc. My first response, however, was to check the salt chamber. There was salt in it, but I added to the 2/3 full level. Still got the error. I tried the unit here at the house again today with good results.

The bummer was that I was on a desert hike and, thus, didn't have many instances dispersed in time to actually use the unit. Over a 5 day trip we needed to purify water three times, doing about 10-12 liters at a time. The third time was the time I had the major trouble.

I have another idea about what might have caused the problem. I'll call the support line tomorrow.

Thanks again for the help.”

“D@MN! That's some service!!

Big Brother watching us? hehehe”

“No kidding. Two points for Cascade designs.”

“I wouldn't doubt if this place was the homepage for a lot of peeps "up there". There's a veritable bevy of knowledge here!”

“10-12 liters with Polar Pure? Did you have to prepare maybe 3 liters, refill bottle, wait an hour, prepare 3 liters, refill bottle, wat an hours, etc? That would suck big time.”

“to say nothing of a bevy of whack jobs and innuendo”

“lol HOI”

“I resemble that remark!”

“Exactly, Dayhiker. I put the PP bottle in my pocket for added warmth so the bottle would go as far as possible.”

“That bites. That is the biggest downside with PP. A single person traveling with water sources every couple of hours (AT) is ideal for PP. Other situations don't work near as well.”

“I just talked to customer service at Cascade Designs and those guys were great. The lady I spoke to consulted a whole team over there and really spent some time on it. They were unfamiliar with the problem I was having and wanted to research the unit in case other folks have a similar problem. The final verdict was for me to ship the unit back to them so they could research/test it. In the mean time they will send me a replacement unit. Sounds fair enough to me. I'll update when I test the new unit.”

“Cascade Designs has a great customer service dept. I have a Sweet water filter (don’t buy one they’re garbage) that stopped working. I sent it back to Cascade Designs and they basically replaced the entire filter for free. It only took about two weeks from the time I mailed the filter to when I got it back.”

“Latest Update:

Just another pat-on-the-back for MSR's customer service. I sent my MIOX unit back to MSR so they could check it out. They called me the other day to let me know that they recieved it and were shipping me my replacement unit. And "they" is the same friendly person I've talked to every time. She said that she hand delivered the unit to the research folks and she would call me when they had an idea of the problem it was having. She called later in the day with a few more questions re: the circumstances when it malfunctioned.

I'm further impressed with the customer service. This lady has called me several times. I don't equate "we'll send you a new unit" and that's it with good customer service. After having a difficulties just having them send me a new unit wouldn't make me feel very confident. If I don't have confidence in the product and feel like I have to take Polar Pure on trips anyway, then I would feel like there is no point in taking the Miox in the first place. However, knowing that my problem was relatively unique and knowing that MSR is spending some time trying to determine the source of my difficulties, I have renewed confidence in the product. Kudos to MSR/Cascade Designs.”

“Milemonster,

This is probably not the issue you had with your unit, but I wanted to get some info out into the world concerning changes we will be making in our instructions.
Samantha just got back from a focus group that was reporting back on how people were using the product when following the instructions. It seems that our instructions state to invert the unit 3 times and to avoid over shaking...You shouldn't have to shake it too many times, but we are probably going to amend the instructions so people give it a good downward shake while the pen is inverted, so that as the screen becomes somewhat clogged, enough water passes through to create a good brine solution. It is also ok to shake it a few more times then three (10-12).

We also have a few nalgenes of Grand Canyon silt & tannin filled water being sent up to Seattle so we can do some tests with usage over time, and ways to deal with any screen clogging or issues that this type of water may be causing.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Rick Klug
Cascade Designs
Sales Support”

“Milemonster,

This is probably not the issue you had with your unit, but I wanted to get some info out into the world concerning changes we will be making in our instructions.
Samantha just got back from a focus group that was reporting back on how people were using the product when following the instructions. It seems that our instructions state to invert the unit 3 times and to avoid over shaking...You shouldn't have to shake it too many times, but we are probably going to amend the instructions so people give it a good downward shake while the pen is inverted, so that as the screen becomes somewhat clogged, enough water passes through to create a good brine solution. It is also ok to shake it a few more times then three (10-12).

We also have a few nalgenes of Grand Canyon silt & tannin filled water being sent up to Seattle so we can do some tests with usage over time, and ways to deal with any screen clogging or issues that this type of water may be causing.

Thanks for your patience and understanding.

Rick Klug
Cascade Designs
Sales Support”

“They got specific water for a specific problem and are analyzing it based on Steven problem. That is too cool.”

“very cool. i have lots of new respect for you guys at MSR, not that i didn't have any before.”

“Again, I say -- Now THAT'S service!!”

“Not too shabby.

Rick - I remember the directions saying to invert the unit 10 times, not three. I'll try the "solid shake" when I try out the new unit. So the growing consensus is a clogged screen, huh?”

“Milemonster,

I am speculating that, so I wouldn't call it a consensus, and there are always other possibilities. This has been tested in severe conditions by non-employees, so we are fairly confident it's not a basic design issue. You did everything we would have suggested, so even though the instructions need work, they are ruled out. The random element seems to be the water source. It could be a clogged screen not allowing a good brine solution, or it could be something related to the dissolved content of the water. This is what we are going to test, and we will inform folks as we learn more.

We were lucky in that a retailer in Tucson already had a trip planned to the GC, and we asked him to get us some samples to look at.

Rick Klug
Cascade Designs
Sales Support”

“Anything new with the MIOX?”

“I got the replacement from MSR, but nothing besides that. I haven't had a chance to do any more field testing.”

“All,
We are still testing these, and initial tests don't support one of my hypothesis which was a clogged screen. Another thing we are checking is whether very tannic or mineralized water will prevent enough salt from dissolving to allow the chemical reaction. We can create these conditions in the lab, but we need to look into how this affects usability in the field. This is likely to be an addition to the instructions, but our microbiologist is out for a few days, and we will be figuring something out over the next two weeks. It may be as simple as only using it in the one liter mode for very tannic water, letting tannic water settle for a period of time, or carrying a small amount of clear water to load the chamber.
This has been tested in tannic water and dirty water, so it's not your everyday average bog that will cause this fault. I will update as I hear more.

Rick Klug
Cascade Designs
Sales Support
800-531-9531”

“thank you and please do keep us updated. i appreciate that you take the time to inform us of this kind of stuff and what you are trying.”

“We can send him FLorida blackwater for testing purposes! Can't get much more tannic than that!”

“treebait...yea...the stuff in the ocala basically killed the filter on my new HIKER...”

“Milemonster, and all,

Final consensus at this time, is that when enough of the right solids are dissolved in the water, it can prevent an adequete dose of salt to dissolve in water, and cause the low salt situation. Again this is not your ordinary cruddy water, but cruddy water with virtually 100% saturation of dissolved solids. I don't recall how many times you tried to shake over and above the 10 in the instructions, but we have been able to overcome this problem by shaking it vigorously 50+ times. We will be adding this to our FAQ's and instructions in the future, in addition to recommending people carry a small amount of "cleaner" water to create the solution with if they are in areas like this. Lisa gave me a more scientific explanation then this, and I will try to have her explain in more detail if my explanation is in anyway lacking.

Thanks
Rick Klug
Cascade Designs
Sales Support”

“Thanks for the info.”

“I'm extremely impressed with the response on this. Never seen anything like it.”

“Worth a shot. And a good place for that REI dividend.”

“be sure and let us know how you like it.”

“Yeah, those things look interesting.”

“High dissolved mineral content plus heavy sediment level was the main issue with water sources in the Badlands in N.D. Rangers said the river water would ruin any filter. The question, of course, is whether killing any "bugs" in the water is enough to make some high mineral content water potable. Certain filters do remove organics such as pesticides; how they do on alkalinity, I don't know.

MileMonster, or others, how does the Miox compare overall to PolarPure or Aqua Mira in treatment time? Is it actually more convenient when you add up all the steps/shaking/waiting?”

“Miox and Aqua Mira seem to be about the same. Both weigh about 3 oz, take around 15-30 minutes to kill most nasties and up to 4 hours to kill the big nasties, and create oxidants to kill everything. Aqua Mira produces chlorine dioxide, I am not sure what MIOX actually produces, other than a "powerful oxidant". My guess is it also produces chlorine dioxide.”

“Oh, and Polar Pure and other forms of iodine don't kill the big nasties (Cryptosporidium) at all, no matter how much time you give them. Another plus to Aqua Mira and MIOX is their oxidation action actually improves the taste of the water, instead of ruining it like iodine. For all these reasons chlorine dioxide (Aqua Mira) is used by many municipalities to treat the "city" water.”

“i just put a couple teaspoons of unleaded in mine......

makes it interesting sittin round the campfire rippin farts...”

“What do folks think about the battery element for the MIOX? Is the power need at all a concern -- the true weak point in such a design? Batteries, even long life models, do fail -- usually when you need them the most. Not to mention the little circuits/chips they power.

My First Need certainly weighs a heck of a lot more and is quite bulky by comparison, but it also instantly produces pure water. I got a first-generation First Need filter after the experience of boiling a lot of water (mainly to kill endemic tapeworm cysts) on my first Isle Royale Trip about 25 years ago. It was the only filter that covered the full spectrum at the time. Made the second trip lots nicer, off-setting the extra fuel load of the first trip, but eliminating all the boiling/cooling time. When I had the chance to get a current model on a good sale, I didn't hesitate to buy another First Need. Does the MIOX claim of handling cysts include tapeworm?

I keep a little bottle of purification tablets (Polar Pure?) in my day pack as part of my emergency gear. No moving parts, no power requirement. If Aqua Mira does the same in the same amount of time, I'm not sure what the MIOX advantage is, but I am open to finding out.

BTW, whatever happened to that ultraviolet purification "pen" that came out a while back? Did anyone ever try it and find out if it made the grade in the field?”

“MIOX, since it only uses salt, can be stored as long as the battery will last - which for lithium batteries can be up to 10 years. You are right though that the battery is the weak point. Aqua Mira lasts for about 5 years if stored in a cool location (refridgerator), but no battery to fail in storage or in the field.

MSR's web site only says the MIOX kills "viruses, bacteria, Giardia, and Cryptosporidium". McNett's web site (they make Aqua Mira) does not spell out what it kills, but when I researched chlorine dioxide I came up with the same list plus the other benefits I listed. See: http://www.clo2.com/wtupgrade/drinking.html”

“In reviewing that link, it is interesting to note that should MIOX or Aqua Mira be used to treat a water source that is contaminated with phenols, it will create chlorinated phenols, those nasty chemicals that have plagued the timber processing industry.

Hopefully, there is not much phenol contamination in the backcountry, and if there is ever such a situation, the amount of chlorinated phenols produced would not be hazardous.”