Click the link I posted ...  I'm not talking about a home wood burning stove.

 

 

granted that is a very efficient wood stove, your initial statement of a few twigs for 10 gallons of water was just a bit misleading... Looks like an open flame with firebrick.

granted that is a very efficient wood stove, your initial statement of a few twigs for 10 gallons of water was just a bit misleading... Looks like an open flame with firebrick.

 

Jeez....   1 gallon of water...

oh Snap, My bad!

 

It's not even expensive.

Household bleach has a rather short shelf life --  

Not really.

 

And if you smell bleach in the water after the maximum anticipated contact time is complete, you are good whether the bleach degraded or not. If you don't, add more bleach and repeat.

 

I drank critter infested water for over a year with no filtration. Sometimes puddles, sometimes mud squeezed through something. Disinfected with Iodine or chlorine. Problem is that doesn't always work on certain cysts or recalcitrant bacteria, but I never got bit and never knew anybody that got bit. Boiling won't help those, either. You are either going to have to pressure cook or run through micro-filters. Or use some serious sterilization cycle.

 

The best bet medium term is to find a good source with no mustilids upstream and no suspicion of abuse with biological waste. As far as pollution is concerned, not really a big concern in our country for short-term use. You can shake up your canteen to aerate the water (stripping) and open and quickly sniff. Even safe levels of VOs (gasoline, dry cleaning, etc.) will be immediately apparant as well as SVOs (fuel oils, BPA, etc.) Unfortunately, you can't determine the presence of metals but serious levels for short term use are unlikey and most water purification filters will address all of them if necessary.

I meant to say you need as much energy to heat one gallon of water to boiling, regardless of how you do it. How much fuel you need depends on the efficiencies of combustion and heat transfer. Can you really boil a gallon of water with "a few twigs in 10 minutes"? That would be amazing.

Look up the bucket stove (made from steel bucket). I don't know about a gallon in 10 minutes with a few twiggs, but a quart in 20 minutes with a few ounces and constant attention is doable.

I've done some research on these stoves. Thanks, Phosgene. The design is obviously efficient, which is what it's all about. Still, they're not magic.