MIOX sucks!

“It does work, but a bit complicated and awfully inconvenient. If you are an ultralight soloist with time on your hands and don’t mind the cost ($130), the MIOX might be for you. In fact, the thread on the MIOX where the company jumped in and helped out and kept us informed was one reason I decided to try it. I own other MSR products and have been very happy with them. With the MIOX, I already returned it to REI for my refund after one weekend trip with it.

I was at the Manistee River Trail over Memorial weekend. I had carefully read the instructions and tested one quart of water beforehand at home. I needed water for myself, my son, and on the next day also for my wife who joined us a day later. I first used it at Slagle Creek, a clear stream that feeds the Manistee. Since I was near camp, I took two Nalgene quart bottles and one 96-ounce container back to camp to deal with it.

I got errors in getting it to provide a solution approximately half the time, meaning I on average tried at least twice to get a good batch. With the 96-ounce I needed four clicks and got a low battery indicator two or three times. I never did get it to work on four clicks so I did two clicks twice. This is the first day of use, so unless they provided bad batteries with the product, it was some other quirk with the unit. And it never gave me a low battery indicator on two clicks.

So you wait ten minutes and then use the test strips and see if they turn purple. They did not, so I had to make a second batch for each container. Another ten minutes, and the test strip came out okay.

The next day I used Manistee River water to do three Nalgene quart bottles. Again, I got errors. I discovered some of the salt had been depleted, so some of that is me learning how the product goes thru salt. After I put in more salt, I still had trouble getting a solution, with the salt being too dry or not enough water to make a batch, but ultimately I got it to work, again two tries on average for one success. After the ten minute wait, again the test strip was no good so I had to repeat the whole process again for each quart. Again, after two doses the test strip came back okay. All this took about a half hour. I could have pumped a couple gallons in that amount of time. I was so fed up I did not even try the 96-ounce container on this second day. I got out my pump filter and retired the MIOX.

I’m a gearhead and thought about keeping the MIOX anyway, but I could not think of a single reason, especially given its price. Its main strength is its weight, supposedly 3.5 ounces, but a few more if you include the extra salt, test strips, and stuff sack. Plus technically you are supposed to wait a second ten minutes and test the water again, which I didn’t bother doing. Plus you need to splash some of the water onto the lid and splash it around to disinfect that. Then there is the matter of whether you wait a half hour (giardia) or 1-4 hours (crypto). How convenient is any of that? With a pump filter, all you do is pump and immediately drink, which is what I am back to.”

“which is the same thing i came too before when I first heard about the thing. Seems like a great idea, but it's expensive and you have to wait. I'm spoiled with instant water from my pump and lucky that almost all of my hiking is in areas where there is a good, debris clean and clear water source.”

“And you get tired of fumbling with the thing screwing and unscrewing the unit each time to add water, with the strap from the top to the bottom that holds the unit together being a quarter inch too short, to make the process that much more annoying.”

“Interesting. Thanks for posting your experience.”

“The price and cost turned me off to the unit as well.”

“After seeing a MIOX demonstration, I now like the concept but am wary of the lag time between treatment and safe consumption for water. I think it may be the future of water treatment, but I'll wait for some of the bugs to be worked out.

Thanks for your review.”

“You saved me from wasting my money. Those are the kind of problems you don't want to deal with on a trip. Thanks Blisster.”

“THanks for the input.


Here's a question.


One week of canoe camping.


HIGH VOLUME USEAGE.

3-5 gallons a day.


What (other than boiling) is the most efficient high volume pump.

I was look in a Cabela's catelogue. They have a gravity fed bag (3 gallons or so) that you hang from a tree limb. The water drips through at about 1 gallon per hour and fills your container.

Anyone use one of these?

Any pump filter ideas? Wieght and size aren't big isssues.”

“I dunno Lee. I always packed in water for week long canoe trips or refilled in route where available and kept the PUR hiker as a backup.”

“The PUR Hiker pumps a litre of water pretty fast (less than 3 minutes), but you'd pretty much burn thru a cartridge with the volume your talking about.

How many boats? How much can you carry with you?”

“Lee, you are on the right track. Either the larger Pur will hand pump fairly fast, or a gravity filter. I've no personal use with the camp sized ones, but a few years back the trail crew on Isle Royale used one and they were happy with it. Just be sure its not by SafeWater Anywhere. I tried their personal gravity filter summer before last and it clogged hopelessly on the first trip. That's probably why I got it on the sale shelf at 70% off.”

“Thanks for the input.


To clarify. We will not be moving from location to location. There will be six of us stationary on an island basecamp on a Lake in Maine for 6 nights.

It seems that packing in that volume of water is impractical.(30 gals or more?)

Maybe i'll order the gravity feed from Cabela's and take a look at it.”

“Lee normally when I've canoed with a group that size we bring 2 or 3 filters.”

“I know when I rafted the Colorado last summer, we were a big group and they just treated the drinking water with bleach. They used another substance whose name I can't remember (began with a "c", cadmium?) to settle the floaties.”

“Not cadmium, it's a lethal heavy metal poison. Possibly carrageenan?”

“Sounds like the batteries were bad. Batteries that are supplied with any product are suspect. They are usually an inferior brand and storage (heat/cold) is not controlled. The inventory is not rotated (duh) so many times the batteries are nearly shot when product is purchased.”

“I agree the batteries with a new product might not be the greatest, but again the batteries were not the issue in treating one liter (2 clicks) in 16 to 18 times AFTER it signalled low battery on 4 clicks.”

“I don't follow your logic. If the low battery warning comes on isn't that an indication that the unit is below normal operating parameters?”

“The first time I saw this thing I though, "WTF? Who wants clean water to come down to a set of batteries?". I have to carry enough batteries for the GPS and headlamp. I don't even think ultralighters would go with this overpriced gadget.”

“That is too bad Nigal, I had an extra Miox I was going to sent to you.”

“LOL! Good one.”

“i'm using the aqua mira drops now and they do the job for me”

“Miss Anne, the unit works by applying an electrical charge (provided by the batteries) to a salt water solution (you keep rock salt in the unit, and get the water from your lake or stream in the field). It creates a stronger solution for a larger volume of water by charging it longer. You tell it by clicking a button. Two clicks, a quart. Three clicks, a half gallon. Four clicks, a gallon. Those are the choices. It then provides a green light to tell you it successfully created the batch. It has other indicators if it failed, primarily not enough water/not enough salt, or low batteries. Even with low batteries, according to previous thread, you have 30% power which gets you thru the trip. So it somehow failed on the batteries providing an extended charge to do a gallon, but it never gave me a low battery indication after that when trying to do a quart 16-18 times (I was getting the low salt indication about half the time). This could be borderline batteries, or it could be some other quirk. These were Duracell batteries, and what reason did MSR have to stock these batteries (they are some camera size, I forget exactly which and I've since turned the unit in) before having this product? So I'm not sure the batteries were that old or that big of a part of the problem.

This is just my experience. Go ahead and give it a try, and post your results. Hope you have better luck than me.”

“Nigal, I think in the previous thread an MSR rep said the batteries should service about 200 quarts, so backups should not be necessary. If you have one of the new white LED headlamps that last 50-150 hours depending on the model, again extra batteries are not necessary. You are on your own with the GPS.”

“So you got a low battery warning purifying a gallon of water, but you thought it would purify 18 quarts of water with the same battery?

I would not have made the same assumption.”

“Miss Anne, I guess I am not getting thru. If the unit didn't have the power to charge a quart, it would have told me. Again the whole thing was brand new, day 1. But I'll give you the last word.”

“Well, you know these things...

Water, batteries, salt, electronics, germs...who knows?”

“Blister,

I am the Cascade rep who chimed in the last time. I'm sorry your experience with our product was a hassle, and I am hoping you could talk with one of our product specialists so we can minimize this type of situations for future customers. I'm out tomorrow, but if you would e-mail me your contact info rick.klug@cascadedesigns.com, it would be great if Lisa can get some feedback from you. I did read through the postings, but did you ever try it with new batteries? We've had a few people send theirs back with problems, and with few exceptions, a new set of batteries did the trick.

Rick Klug
Cascade Designs
Sales Support”

“What does a guy have to do to get an Amen? Where is my (Nigal's) free Miox?”

“Rick I appreciate your input once again, but I am more than a little surprised at your suggested remedy. (Miss Anne, score one for you!) First of all, the unit should come with fresh batteries. That many are bad? Second and more important, the unit claims to provide a low battery indicator. Evidently you are suggesting that that feature doesn't always work, but may provide a low salt indicator when low batteries are the real problem? (Again it did successfully prepare batches for about 8 quarts AFTER it gave a low battery indicator for a gallon attempt, without another low battery indication.) I am afraid that does not give me a great deal of confidence in your product. No I did not try new batteries, if I can't believe the unit's indicators what is the sense in that?

I will be glad to provide Lisa with whatever she needs. In this case, I already returned the unit to the REI (Northville MI) this past Tuesday, so I am not sure if my continued participation is feasible, or if I am interested. It sounds like some kinks need to be worked out. It wouldn't hurt either if the price came down.

Again, MSR is a great company, I've owned several of their stoves (whisperlite, rapidfire, dragonfly, pocket rocket, and superfly), pots, and frypans and they are all excellent. I have sent my stove in to MSR on two or three occasions and they generally come back fixed and in better shape than when I sent them in.”

“Smoke and mirrors if you ask me.”

“"guy"? - "Miss Anne"? I never would have guessed!”

“If you call me the Energizer Bunny, I will slap you.”

“I will keep this thread at the top of the list until rickk sends Nigal my free Miox.”

“bump :-(”

“Interesting. I saw a Scout leader trying to use the MIOX while I was on patrol over the weekend. He kept getting errors the whole time I was there. He kindly explained what what going on, but it was all new to me.

I anticipate there will be more robust versions of this product in the future. I understand the military uses this type of system a lot.”

“I talked to Lisa Lange from Cascade Designs as Rick Klug recommended. Actually this was a couple of weeks ago but I’ve been a little busy, until the other thread gave me a kick today.

Anyway, Lisa and I talked about the MIOX for over a half hour. She further elaborated on the batteries. I am apparently mistaken about using Duracell, she says they would have likely been Maxell (the first battery they shipped with the product), and they have had several issues with Maxell, both in terms of battery performance, and company responsiveness. I got the impression they have totally abandoned their relationship with Maxell, and they are going with the Surefire brand. She says no problems with Surefire. Our military has used it extensively and has given the product and Surefire batteries a thumbs-up. I told her I’ve never seen Surefire batteries in stores in my area; she said find them on the internet and they are relatively cheap. I tried to ask about Duracell (my favorite) or Energizer (the other most popular brand). She seemed to only know for sure about Maxell (bad) and Surefire (good) with the MIOX as that had been her focus, but she had started to inquire about other battery companies as backup and had developed the impression that Duracell “was head and shoulders above the rest.” Bottom line, the unit gave me Low Salt indicators on fresh batteries on day one but Lisa is blaming that on the Maxell batteries I had, evidently claiming it would not happen on Surefires or another top brand.

Now the mineral content issue. This has been causing the company its greatest concern and amount of feedback. They had tested it a lot before market, and thru all of this they have not yet come across anything to cause them to change the product, but she thought they would need to clarify the instructions to some extent. As background, the unit is more sophisticated than you might think; it doesn’t ignorantly give X charge to 2 clicks and Y charge to 4 clicks. It has sensors that are sensing the brine content of the water and adjusting the length of time it charges, and also the amperage, as necessary. So their product has to balance the different water literally around the globe, and again, according to Lisa the US Military is happy. The other thing the product tries to do is to avoid over dosing if necessary (in my mind, to a fault). I read the thread from last fall about brackish Grand Canyon water, but I thought that living in Michigan it wouldn’t apply to me. Wrong. The Manistee River is tan colored, which is from tannins in the water, that is what neutralizes part of the dose, causing the unit to need a second dose or a higher dose in the first place. I am no water expert but now I am wondering where in America would you get by on the unit’s basic dose. If you go to the same places frequently, you would learn what the unit needs quickly and cut through a lot of this. Again, the instructions: they say shake it ten times and avoid overshaking. Lisa says the new instructions will suggest if you have trouble getting a solution with tannins in the water or other minerals you might have to shake it more, perhaps as much as 50 shakes. Another of her suggestions is to take a little vial of pure water (an ounce or two) from home (perhaps even distilled?) and you know you’d get a good batch quickly. Bottom line, the product is balancing a number of factors, the company still feels it is doing its job well, and has no plans to alter the product, but to elaborate in the instructions. My limited experience suggests that users will likely find the basic dose too small in most places and quickly learn to start with a stronger dose.

We concluded by recognizing that this unit might not be for everyone. There is still the wait time, one hour, or four hours if crypto is present. Where is crypto, no one can be sure. Lisa did say that it comes primarily from animals (but also people) and it is worse near farms, and that if you have a big lake or big volume stream you can probably count on the dilution effect; also, you might have a strong enough immune system and not be bothered by it. As an aside, I had read on one internet site (not related to the MIOX) that these types of solutions could also kill crypto in an hour but they must say 4 hours to satisfy the EPA. Lisa says that Cascade Designs’ own tests indicate that four hours IS required to penetrate the shell of crypto.

I told her I thought that if the strap that holds the top and bottom of the unit together were a wee bit longer it would be easier to screw back together, and she said that would be an easy fix to make. She was also aware of some feedback on the unit’s relatively steep price, but knew of no plans to lower it. In summary, she said they had shipped 5000 units out and had only a handful come back, and with only one of those was there a problem with the unit.

That’s about it. I’ll keep an eye on this and perhaps even reconsider a year or two down the road. Please post your experiences with it. Thanks.”

“This was interesting. Expecially so, since last December I was swimming several times in a large swimming pool(8 wide lanes wide x 25 yds.). The pool was treated with salt to achieve a salinity similar to the ocean. Nothing else was used to treat the water.

The MIOX device sounds as though it might be best for treating large volumns of water, but four hours of waiting would be too much for me while packpacking. Iodine pills work just fine. I have never noticed any taste from the iodine. Otherwise, I can always boil water. Hot water can taste good, especially if one is thirsty.

Besides the four hour wait, it appears to me that this device can use more field testing. Possible drawbacks for backpacking include the number of parts required, the opening and closing of the containers and the price. The unit would have to provide good service for a long period to justify the price. It may be able to do that.

I hope that this device proves itself to be competitive in the backpacking market. We can use more good alternatives for treating the water. Especially, as more and more water sources become contaminated. I read yesterday that three of the Lake Superior beaches at Duluth had been closed because of contamination. (Numerous other beaches there were open, but I feel suspect entering water that may be borderline.)”

“nowslimmer, you are right on with all your points and that swimming pool sounds interesting. But I am not sure it is good for large volumes of water, depending on how you are defining that, at least not quickly. The most you can do is a gallon at a time by giving it four clicks, but again if there are tannins you'd likely have to make two or more batches one at a time to treat that one gallon. If I ever ended up using one again, I would probably go with 3 or 4 clicks for a quart right off. As I said at the very beginning of this thread, if you have the money and then the time, the MIOX seems best suited to an ultralight soloist.”

“For large volumns I'm assuming that the technique can be applied to tanks of water, such as the military might use. Using multiple tanks they could afford the time for the reaction to take place as they prepare back-up tanks of water.”

“"The MIOX device sounds as though it might be best for treating large volumns of water, but four hours of waiting would be too much for me while packpacking. Iodine pills work just fine."

nowslimmer
07:58:12 PM
07/13/04

I'm pretty sure the four hours was to kill crypto, whereas Iodine doesn't kill crypto at all. It seems to me that the wait time for this product is very similiar to Iodine.”

“OK, just what is the "crypto" about which they are talking? I made an assumption, but now I can't locate a definition for it.

In treating water I like to kill everything that might possibly be present, so I normally wait for the full recommended time to expire.

One hour is almost twice the time for an iodine treatment.”

“Crytosporidium is a protazoan that causes cryptosporidiosis which is similiar to giardisis. Diarrhea, bloating, cramps all that good stuff.”

“nasty little bugger - it takes about 5 to 7 days generally for the symptoms to show up too. Usually comes from animal waste (poop).”

“Re: the pool. My brother in law has a brine pool. He adds a little salt once in a blue moon. It has the salinity of a tear drop. You can open your eyes under water with no discomfort. When MIOX came out I assumed it was the same technology.”

“Anyone want to buy some iodine pills? Willing to trade for matches, fire starter sticks, etc.

I did experience abdominal cramps for about 10 days several yeaars ago. It was not pleasant. The cramps started during some winter time backpacking.”