Water transport with frame bag

[LiMoDad]

Hi,

     I apologize once again for my simple minded questions but I have no resource besides these forums.  There is not a whole lot of winter bikepacking going on in my area.  Ice fishing,  snowmobile's Yes.  Bikepacking No.

     I'm wondering how everybody carries their water if they use a frame bag?  I saw on Jill's blog she was using a  bottle insulator attached to her handlebar.  

[Eric]

When its not full of food or other junk I can put 2 insulated quart sized cases in the top section of mine.
They eat up allot of the space inside but you can usually fit 2 in one depending on your bag/frame

Neve-r-rest might have something to add to this...

[LiMoDad]

When its not full of food or other junk I can put 2 insulated quart sized cases in the top section of mine.
They eat up allot of the space inside but you can usually fit 2 in one depending on your bag/frame

Neve-r-rest might have something to add to this...

Thank You.  My frame bag does indeed have one of those top sections.  Seeing as it was hand crafted in Alaska by the finest of artisans and constructed of the most durable of materials  I'm sure it will work perfect. 

[neve_r_est]

Yea, I had Eric design my frame bag to hold two Fourty Below 48oz bottle coozies.

I'm messing around with a frame mounted hydration system, which so far, works as poorly as any other hosed hydration system. I'm using 1liter soda bottles inside the coozies, they're over 100grams lighter than the 48oz Nalgene bottles and if they freeze solid they are repaceable at most gas stations. I've got two hoses running out of the cap, one for siphon and one for vent. Both are inside a 3/8" thick neoprene hose cover. No valves.

The theory was that the valve is usually one of the first things to freeze, eliminating the valve fixes that one. With frame mounted rigid bottle(instead of a bladder) and vent hose, the water should gravity feed back into the bottle as soon as your done drinking, hence not freezing in the hose.

Sounds good right? Now if that only worked....blowing back into the hose should clear it of water (especially with no back pressure due to the vent), but I still end up with frozen hoses. Maybe I need a bigger vent hose. The good news is I did a winter camp last night to test gear, 24hours in -18deg F resulted in a 1/4" layer of ice in the bottles, but otherwise an unfrozen water source remained.

DG

[LiMoDad]

Saw the picture of the set up on your site.  Pretty cool.

[Jilleo]

That is a pretty cool system.

I'm one of those people that needs to keep things really simple in order to have them work for me on long bike trips. I've given up on hoses altogether and bought one of those MSR bladders that has a small spout on the lid for easy pouring. That way, I can keep the bladder on my body inside of my coat, where it is most unlikely to freeze. I do all of my drinking out of a small bottle - 24 or 32 ounces. Small enough that I generally drink most of the water before ice builds up too thick. Then I refill the bottle with the bladder. In my mind, this is the simplest way to ensure the least amount of ice buildup per ounce, let alone a complete bottle or hose freezeup.

I keep my water bottle in an insulated OR sleeve on the handlebars simply because that's a great, accessable place to keep a bottle when a frame bag is filling up the triangle. The bottle holder probably has similar insulation value to just keeping a bottle inside the frame bag itself.