I’m currently home for a couple days during my thru-hike and am doing some furious reworking on my pack. I have a quick question. What is the weight of water. By the oz is the best measure but I can make extrapolate from any measurement. Started out with a 55 lb pack, dropped it to 47 lbs by Neels Gap, 37 lbs by Franklin, and am currently working on getting it under 30 lbs. Thanks for any help in advance.
Sleepwalker
Now lets see, in Ohio, Land of the Lime, H20 is 1/2# to the cup. I guess if you filter it water weighs less and if you add bleach it weighs more since bleach is heavier than plain water. I like mine extra heavy with Cytomax Orange.:cheers
Bushwhack
1 quart of water weighs a little less than 34 ounces. Rule of thumb is about 2 pounds per quart.
nycman50
I have heard about 2 and 1/2 pounds per liter (which is about one quart). So I would imagine that the precise answer is somewhere around there or the 2 pound mark as nycman50 says. If you want to be really precise, go to the supermarket, get a bottle of water, take it over to the vegetable section, weigh it exactly. The bottle should tell you how many fluid ounces and fraction of a liter or quart it is (with just fluid ounces, you can figure it out). Now if you really want to be precise, buy the water take it home, drink or pour out the water and take the container back and weigh it. Do a little subtraction and a little mathematics and bingo, you can arrive at weight of water by the liter, quart, or whatever measure you want. By the way, the weight per volume of water changes depending on the state the water is in (i.e. gas, liquid, or solid). Liquid water is the heaviest for a specific volume, solid (ice) lighter for that same volume, and gas (steam or water in air) still lighter and it’s weight varies with temperature of the air and with the psi it is experiencing. Look up a weights and measures table in your dictionary to help with number of quarts per liters, etc, etc. It will help a lot if you are trying to be really precise. I’d be interested in the number you come up with. :cheers
Maintain
Nycman50 is right. Water weighs 2 pounds per quart (about one liter). This is a really good question. I did a little research and here is the result:
We would like to provide the following brief primer on weights and measures in order to eliminate confusion and to help people compare quantities and prices of coconut oil offered by various suppliers. In everyday trade (at the grocery for example) we see a wide variety of items which are sold based on two different systems of measurement. Some items are sold by weight and some by volume. Produce, for example, is sold by weight. One pound is equal to 16 ounces. Liquid products are typically sold by volume which is measured in pints, quarts, gallons, etc. This volume measurement is also given in fluid ounces. A fluid ounce may be equal to an ounce by weight (avoirdupois) or it may not, depending on the density of the substance being measured. The density of water is taken as the standard and is equal to 1. One cup of water would equal 8 fluid ounces and would also weigh 8 ounces. Eight fluid ounces of other substances (depending on whether they are more or less dense than water) would weigh more or less than 8 ounces. A cup of rice crispies would have a volume of 8 fluid ounces but would weigh much less than 8 ounces since the rice crispies are much lighter than water.
So this precisely answers the question. :cheers
Maintain
Sleepwalker,
One oz is .02957 liters
1 Liter is 1 Kg
There is about 2.2 lb per Kg
So… 0.0652 lb per oz
The Engineer
Thanks for all the answers… it is very interesting to see how people arrived at the different answers and using everyone’s measurements actually came out to be very close to each other. I take a ton of water with me and at the moment my pack only weighs 26 lbs but I usually carry about 6.52. lbs (100 oz) of water to start out the day with. I think this is more than anyone I have met on the trail yet. However, I think they put themselves to close to dehydration.
But thanks again for all the responses. This forum has been great to answer specific questions. Now if I only hadn’t started my trip with what I thought was 5 days worth of food that I spent 14 days eating with at least 5 days left I’d have been OK.
Sleepwalker
Its not so much about the weight as it is how much to carry and when. I found that if I drank one qt.before I left camp and then carryed two more, I could normally make it to the next source. If I knew I would be eating lunch soon I might carry a little more to chock down the peanut butter. There’s nothing worse than drinking your last qt. for lunch and having no more water for the afternoon. Just plan your water. The weight of water is irrelevant. You cant change it. But you got to have it !!
Virginian
I started every morning with a 2.5L water bladder and a 32oz Nalgene bottle full of H2O. It would last me most of the day and I usually had to fill up right before reaching a shelter or campsite so as to have enough water to cook with. 100oz isn’t too much to carry unless you don’t mind stopping every 2-3 hours to refill.
Nooga
Wow…there are some really complicated answers in here… Within a negligable difference…One Fluid Ounce of water weighs one weight ounce. 1oz=1oz
-Howie
Hungry Howie
1 liter of water has a mass of 1 kilogram, but who really cares about the metric system
Bill
The old saying goes Pint’s a pound the world around. But actually it’s a little more. To be more precise, water at 70 degrees weights something like 33.37 ounces per quart.
Peaks
Water id 62.4 lb/cu ft. There are 7.46 gal/cubic ft. The rest is algebra. But hey, I use the dehydrated kind anyway :>
Saluki Dave
it is what you carry the water in that makes all the difference.
one empty 32 oz nalgene container weighs 10 ounces.
one empty 32 oz playtypus container weighs 1 ounce.
it all adds up, so i’d rather be carrying around 2 or 3 ounces than 20 or 30- plus the weight of the water.
grizzly adam
Haven’t you heard the old rhyme about water weight: “A pint’s a pound, the world around.” Heard that as a child and that’s how I always remember it.
Janey
It is better in you than on you! Hydrate in the morning and when you stop to get water. Then carry just enough for the next supply. Water got heavy last year in PA when it was 12 to 20 miles between water in the summer. I carried 6 liters (12#) a couple of times in PA. Ugh!!!
Papa Smurf
About the weight of water, I can’t believe that even the most diehard ultralight hiker carries Nalgene bottles. I know that Nalgenes are practically bombproof or whatever, but they weigh significantly more than a regular old plastic soda bottle. You could get a couple of quart-sized Poland Spring Bottles, tear off the label, and you’d probably save upwards of a whole (gosh!:nerd) pound (depending on how many Nalgene bottles you would otherwise carry).
Anyone care to refute that? I’d like to know why, because I plan to bring these lighter bottles with me on my own thru-hike. If I can save a pound right out of the starting gate, then yeah :tongue for me!!!
Kineo Kid
