Is Hydroblu still a viable company with good products? Amazon reviews are terrible

wildfireexpert - February 24, 2022

Gear

I looked up the Hydroblu Pressurized Jerry Can Water Filter online and the most recent reviews on amazon were terrible.  Has this been sold to another firm?   Are the smaller products still recommended?   Thx

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It seems like you are referring to the most recent Amazon review by someone named Lee E. on the Hydroblu pressurized jerry can.

Some of the grievances that user states in their review include the product not pumping correctly, when attempting to contact the company was MIA by phone and email, that the company was purchased by another company, that checking the parent company’s website you can’t find anything about Hydroblu and Hydroblu is no more.

This was very shocking to me because Hydroblu makes great products and is a good company. I went ahead and visited hydroblu.com and it did in fact open up to their website (so they are still around), I found their phone number and called. On the second ring a very nice lady answered and I talked to her (so they aren’t MIA and they do answer their phones). She told me that Hydroblu was purchased by a company called Hoggan Scientific in 2019 but Hydroblu still is it’s own company and hasn’t seen any change in quality control. 

She said that if the filter is still within warranty, they will replace it for anyone having an issue with it, but that is rare. Most of the time it is by user error and she specifically stated that the pressurized jerry can sometimes gets user error by over pressurizing. 

To me this sounds like one bad review of someone who doesn’t know how to use the product, doesn’t know how to contact the company, and decided to take it out on an Amazon review. The pressurized jerry can does have 4.5/5 stars on Amazon with 74 ratings and 5/5 stars on their website with 34 reviews. It should be a solid product if you take the time to learn how to use it and not over pressurize it.

Now on a personal note, while the pressurized jerry can does look like a cool contraption, the various moving parts of the pressurization process does leave it open to more ways to break. So be aware of that and don’t make it your sole water filtration system during an emergency. For camping or every day use it would be a nice addition though.

 

Excellent work and fast effort doing all of this to verify, Gideon. Kudos.

 

Thanks for the well researched response!    I’m one of the “sawyer mini” people.   I started with a Lifestraw for each family member back when they  became available to the general public.    Since then, after doing a lot of research, the sawyer mini sounded like a far superior product.    I have multiples in our emergency supplies and buy them when on sale.   Until I read your article on this site about hydroBlu, I’d never heard of them.   Will need to check it out.

 

The Sawyer Mini and the Hydroblu Versa are incredibly similar. The only difference we saw and why we recommend it over the Sawyer is because of the better flow rate. No need to toss out the old Sawyers, but if you are in the market for a new one consider the Versa if it is around the same price.

 

Good to know!    Thanks again for the detailed explanation.  Much appreciated.   

I have Sawyer mini’s and lifestraws scattered everywhere (on purpose) since I figure clean water is the most important redundancy.   The Berkey is in case we ever have to use the neighbor’s pool water.    We can not only give this elderly couple some Sawyer mini’s, but can provide them with safe water in return for using their pool as an emergency water source.

Do y’all have any “newer” info about using chlorinated pool water?   Quite often in SoCal, that may be the only source in an emergency.    I’ve done a lot of research, but haven’t updated my research since about 2014.

 

Swimming pools usually contain multiple things in them that are okay to drink if you happen to swallow a mouthful when swimming, but can be toxic and harmful in large doses like if you were trying to survive off of it. It’s best to use pool water for cleaning, bathing, or flushing the toilet, but if you do need to drink pool water, you will need a filter that handles chemicals or distill it.

There are some issues with these water treatment methods though. Filters that are able to filter out chemicals usually are expensive and have lower life spans like the 500 gallon Sagan life filter . Distillation is very energy intensive, requiring a lot of fuel, and solar distillation is very slow.

A filter like the Sawyer Mini will filter out dead skin cells, bird poop, and  bacteria, but won’t be able to remove the various chemicals used in treating pool water.

Try storing as much clean drinkable water as you can, collect rain water for more drinking after filtering, and save the pool water for bathing.