“Have a drink with me….” Said Harald Charters of General Ecology as I passed his stand at the Crick show. Now that’s the sort of invitation I like “….of Canal Water” At this point as the News of the World used to say, it was time to make my excuses and leave. Except that the eager Harald had me in a vice like grip and carrying a length of plastic tubing attached to something like a large blue oil filter in the other hand marched his unwilling victim to the murky waters of the marina. The water looked like the stuff you’d be worried to see leaving your body let alone entering it but as he pumped it though the filter what came out look clear and clean. Demonstrating just what an editor will do for his readers, I drank. It tasted, well, like the stuff that comes out of plastic bottles not the chlorine flavoured stuff that comes out of taps And despite following my glassful with a large curry that night I lived to tell this tale. The General Ecology systems replaced the faintly bleachy taste of purifying tablets with an in-line purifier which, as your reporter found, cleans up the water as it flows though it. It’s not a carbon filter of the sort you’d use in a filter jug at home (there can actually harbour bacteria if the water is left standing in the too long) but a sub micron purifier which can remove bacterial impurities down to 0.1 microns size. It uses surface absorption to remove particles down to 0.06 micron – which means oil based contaminates (such as pesticides) and heavy metal pollutants. It’s been independently lab tested, and it works. For narrow boats there’s a compact purifier unit which can be mounted under the sink, a separate drinking tap (no point wasting purified water on the dishes) and the necessary Hep20 connector. Its costs £175 and the replacement filter (needed very 500 gallons) cost £45 If that sounds costly remember you get clean, pure testing, bug free water – and if your tank runs dry, then you can just connect your water pump straight into the canal.