Swiss 20 Liter Black Water Bag

So the story behind these is that they are old, surplus Swiss military gear. Switzerland is neutral and afraid of all ze Tschörmäns, le Francois è Italia - so they they keep their military stocked and ready, and these are the bags that get thrown out because they are regularly replaced. They have once been sold in the "liqshops" in Switzerland for 10$, but these shops have mostly closed down. Ever since, you could get them in Europe at the usual 4x4/trekking/outdoor shops, around 20€. We bought 2 of them roughly a decade ago and used them on all our camping trips. This is definitely the best and most sturdy balck plastic bag you can buy. Ours were repeatedly forgotten on the car (2.5m) when departing, and the first Stop sign made them fly. Never any damage. And, these things NEVER leaked, even when full. You can stand on it 100% filled, nothing happens. There a 2 versions of these, the newer ones (the ones we got here on US amazon) have a metal mesh under the opening (the cone-like structure you see on the photo). Handy to keep the big dirt out... Well, it's military equipment, so not luxury. That means: they taste like rubber, and the water in it does the same very quickly. You can try what we did over the years in Germany, dropping 2-3 packets (not at once) of Kukident (a 3rd teeth cleaner) in there - you'll never get rid of that completely. We accepted it, it's our shower. And, one really big downside of this is the spout, though. It's just a mess to shower with this thing, you always need one hand to push the button, and then you're fingers will hurt long before you're clean. Solution 1: cut off the spout, drill a tab, screw in normal water fitting, 1/2 inch or so. That's what I did one of our sacks, work perfectly. Now you can add a useful showerhead etc. Way better...But, be sure you're capable when doing this. The thread size is Swiss, so forget about Metric, Imperial, Pluto, allofit. It's not normed, you won't find it in hardware stores. If you mess up, you have some rubber waste. So solution 2: go on German ebay and buy an adapter ("Schweizer Wassersack"). Some people make these, and they fit tightly on it, and have a good 1/2" or whatever thread on the other side. I bought mine from "wuestentauglich" for roughly 40$ (yes, that's 2x the price of the bag). Works perfectly. So why am I writing this on US amazon? We relocated to the US, and our bags stayed in Germany. But camping is great here, so we got some again. New rubber taste, same old thing. Brought our adapter, everything else is pretty similar.

Love these things, they do smell, and if you don't use a water filter with it it will taste funky, but for all intensive purposes, it's super tough, can be used to warm water, holds 20 days of drinking water at 64oz ration per day, and the price is great. Water is a serious thing, your pipes can break, things can go wrong, and if you don't have any stocked you'll be in for it in an emergency. This is the best despite the cons, get a good filter in combination and a few bags and you're set to fight back in a bad situation. If taste, and smell are something you're concerned with then this may not be for you, if you have a survival mindset and can look beyond that you'll find yourself with an extremely high quality survival item.

Exactly what I was hoping for. The value here is exceptional. It seems like there are a ton of options out there in the 50$ range and some really cheap options that are reported to have only single use functionality. I think this is the gold standard. Well made and durable, I'm sure it will be accompanying me on many a trip. For this money I was expecting a limited use bag that i'd be pouring from a the nozzle. I didn't expect a spout with a valve... the fact that it even has a valve was shocking in itself, let alone the fact that it's a pretty good quality ball-bearing type valve made of solid and rugged feeling hard plastic. The handles are pretty decent quality nylon rope with soft rubber sleeves for painless handling. My only issues were minor. It's made from a vinyl like rubber that you'd find in tire intertubes (but much, much thicker) so the water can sometimes taste a little plastic-y. I'm hoping that a few more uses might wash some of that issue away, but I'm not holding my breath. Sun exposure probably doesn't help that problem at all, so stick it whatever shade you can find (who wants to drink warm water in the hot sun anyways). I suspect that eventually this bag will dry out and crack and fail. I'm not worried that this will happen anytime soon, or anytime before I've gotten my value's worth ten times over, but it's worth noting. This will definitely not be a family heirloom (despite this, if stored away from direct sunlight I could see myself adding a full one of these to my earthquake kit) I think primary use is for dry area base camps or car camping. I wouldn't voluntarily trek this thing into the back country with me on foot as it weighs in the area of 1-2lbs dry but it's been great for car camping. All in all, i highly recommend this bag. Update: I've now gotten a few uses out of this and I can say that the acrid rubber taste does dissipate significantly after a few rinses.

The description clearly says it's for potable water, but the text you can't read on the small product photo says "nur fuer trinkwasser" which sounded like "not for drinking water" to me. It also says "solo per acqua potabile". Hmmm. Google Translate says they both mean "for drinking water only", so I guess the description is right! Very strong smell. It will be fine for dishes and washing up, but probably not palatable for drinking. My rating was not based on which words were used on the label, but how suitable the bag is for its labelled purpose. I thought others might be confused about the label so I posted what I found when I looked it up. Hope this is all helpful. It's very sturdy but it's not really suitable for drinking water unless you like that rubber hose taste!