Maintaining Your Hydration System

Hydration systems are fantastic for staying hydrated over the course of a day on the hill; the combination of capacity, ease of use and lightness makes them a real winner, except in one respect - they're harder to keep clean than a simple waterbottle, particularly if you're on a longer trip away from home.

Leave your system for a few days, particularly in warm weather, and you can be greeted by an interesting assortment of mould growth next time out. Not only does it look and sometimes taste nasty, but chances are it'll give you a gippy tummy too.

So, what's the best way of keeping your hydration system spangly clean and growth free?

You can make life a lot easier for yourself by simply running pure water rather than an energy drink or similar. The nasties love all that lovely sugar and electrolyte stuff, think petri dish environment.

Next, irksome though it is, try to make a point of rinsing out then drying your hydration bladder after use and before storage. It'll help to stop both mould growth and flavour tainting if you do use a sports drink of some kind.

Don't forget to run some fresh water through the tube and bite valve as well and empty them as thoroughly as possible before disconnecting for more efficient drying.

You can buy special frames to keep the sides of the bladder apart and ease drying, but a carefully bent coat hanger will do the same job for free. The bigger the opening, the easier it will be.

Top Tip If the opening of your bladder is large enough, you can use a fresh tea towel to mop up excess liquid and speed drying times.

If your hydration system's totally dry then you can store it in a normal cupboard or wherever takes your fancy. An alternative though, is to stick it in the fridge between rides or even in the freezer.

The low temperatures will inhibit or even stop the growth of mould and even give you a welcome Ice Cold In Alex frosting next time you fill up...

Top Tip If you use the freezer, be aware that some valves can be damaged by water trapped in the mechanism expanding as it freezes and cracking the valve. If your bite valve is a mechanical one with brittle plastic parts or springs, make sure it's totally dry before freezing.

A number of companies, notably Camelbak, sell cleaning tools which work with most bladders. Usually you'll get a long brush for the main compartment, a frame to hold it open for dryng and a long, thin, flexible brush designed to clean out the tube when things get proper nasty.

With a bit of ingenuity you can easily do without the first two, particularly if you have a bladder with a wide opening, however we've found the tube brush invaluable for scouring out the inside of the narrow, erm, tube.

Yes, you can fashion some sort of pull through and clean it like a rifle muzzle, but the brush is a far neater solution and works really well. Simply remove the tube from the bladder and pop off the valve then scour through from either end before rinsing with tap water. You can remove a lot of residual water by whirring the tube around your head, but mind other people - a tube in the face often offends....

Top Tip Don't forget to clean the inside of the valve as well. Most mechanisms can be dismantled for easier cleaning.

A good brushing and rinsing along with careful storage will deal with most problems, but when things go horribly wrong, it's a good idea to throw in a bit of chemical cleaning as well, partlicularly if you're dealing with hydratiion horticulture....

There are three obvious answers: one is to use a cleaning tablet specially developed for the job - again Camelbak are to the fore with their own brand cleaning tablets.

Another is to use a tablet cleaner sold to deal with dentures, which is significantly cheaper and very effective. Users report a pleasant minty fresh after taste with the right brand, though they can be embarrassing to buy in the first place.

Finally, check out the sterilising fluids sold to clean babies' bottles and teats. Simply make up the solution at the recommended solution and soak overnight then rinse thoroughly to remove the chemical taste before use.

Top Tip To remove entrenched mould, try using undiluted sterilising fluid. It usually works a treat. Make sure too that you get the solution into the tube and valve areas - fill the bladder then squeeze some through and out of the bite valve.

It's one of those areas where a bit of preventative maintenance goes a long way. Rinse and dry after every outing and either store dry or in a fridge or freezer and you shouldn't really have problems.

We'd still suggest a proper clean and brush out around once a month as well as when things get nasty. Don't forget the nooks and crannies either - it's easy to clean out the bladder and tube, for example, but leave a nasty black growth lurking inside the bite valve mechanism.

Happy cleaning :-)