The need for a ready supply of fluids to combat dehydration during strenuous activity is well known. Commonly, people who are working or recreating take periodic refreshment breaks to hydrate themselves. However, such refreshment breaks might not occur frequently enough to properly hydrate a person performing strenuous activities. Hydration systems for hydrating persons during work and/or recreation activities have grown in popularity, including participation in non-team oriented sports such as biking, hiking and running, etc. where refreshment breaks may be more difficult to accomplish.
Maintaining proper hydration levels can require the regular ingestion of fluids. Several portable devices have been developed to meet this need. Some devices include containers of rigid or of semi-rigid construction. These devices, such as aluminum canteens and plastic water bottles, are reasonably light, durable and inexpensive. However, they are often awkwardly mounted to a waist belt or in a pocket of a back pack, and thus typically require a user's hand for manipulating the container to access the liquid.
More recently, portable hydration devices have been developed that include a flexible, bag-like (e.g. soft-sided) reservoir to store fluids. This type of reservoir is often configured to be worn on a user's back with a short drinking tube and mouth piece to provide hands-free access to the fluid.
While some improvements have been made in such bag-like systems, the reservoirs of these systems are often expensive and difficult to clean due to their construction. Flexible or “soft-sided” reservoirs (e.g. bladders, bags, etc.) are typically constructed from two sheets of high grade plastic that are bonded or welded together along their edges to create a bag with water-tight seams. These bags then have components attached to them for filling and dispensing fluids, such as an input port with a large threaded neck to fill the bag which ice and water, and an output spout with a bonded or welded drink tube. The resulting reservoir is typically a water-tight, though expensive, assemblage of fused or bonded parts. These assemblages usually have many internal seams and corners that are difficult to clean with conventional methods. For example, these collapsible bags typically include small voids or traps that are difficult to clean and often require accessories for facilitating proper cleaning (e.g. a hanging rack, etc.) to permit cleaning fluid access and/or air circulation. In some cases, the difficulties associated with cleaning the bag tend to outweigh the usefulness of the hydration bag as a desirable system for providing hydration to a user.
Also, soft-sided bags usually take the form of a cylinder or conform to the shape of the container or pack when filled with a fluid. As the fluid is emptied from the bag, the bag tends to slouch or shift resulting in shifting of the weight on the user and/or distorting the shape of the pack. The soft-sided bags also tend to be cumbersome to fill with a fluid due to their lack of rigidity. In some cases, a user may freeze the filled bag to form a “cold pack” or the like, and the bag may take any of a variety of undesirable shapes when frozen, depending on the configuration of the bag during the freezing process.
Such known reservoirs also tend to have a fluid delivery passage from the reservoir leading to a tube or the like for delivering fluid from the reservoir to the user. However, such fluid delivery passage devices tend to have certain disadvantages. For example, in soft-sided bags, such known fluid passages are typically formed in a wall of a bag and tend to become blocked, kinked, or otherwise at least partially obstructed by other wall portions of the bag or the pack as the shape of the bag changes during use. In reservoirs having semi-rigid or rigid constructions, the fluid delivery passages may be integrated with a fill cap of the reservoir and sealed with o-rings or the like that tend to leak, or tend to interfere with installation or removal of the cap from the reservoir.
Such known reservoirs of hydration devices also usually include a flexible tube for delivering the fluid from the fluid delivery passage to a mouthpiece for the user. However, the tubes typically used in such devices are often unrestrained and tend to become twisted, pinched, tangled, etc. with other objects such as portions of the pack or nearby obstacles encountered by the user (e.g. tree branches, etc.). In devices where the tube is restrained, such restraints are typically in the form of separate clips (e.g. attached to the pack or the like) that may become lost, degraded, catch on external objects, etc. and result in additional cost and operations during manufacture of the hydration device.
Another feature of the known hydration devices is the mouthpiece. It is desirable that the mouthpiece acts like a valve configured to open and close at the user's command to provide access to the fluid in the reservoir. These mouthpieces often include mouth-actuated valves that are sometimes referred to as “bite valves.” However, such bite valves typically have certain disadvantages. For example, conventional mouthpieces typically used with hydration devices often “leak” or otherwise undesirably dispense fluid under certain circumstances that may be encountered during normal use. For example, when pressure is applied to the reservoir (such as when the user “leans” on the reservoir, or “stacks” other objects on the pack, or vigorous or abrupt movement of the reservoir, etc.—particularly with soft-sided bags), the pressure created on the fluid may be sufficient to overcome the pressure-retaining capability of the bite valve resulting in leakage. Such leakage tends to have adverse effects such as “wetting” the pack or other moisture-sensitive articles on the user or stored in or with the pack, and reducing the available volume of fluid available for hydrating the user, etc.
Therefore, it would be desirable to provide a personal hydration system having a reservoir that is easier to clean and maintain, and that is less expensive to construct than current bag hydration system devices. It would also be desirable to provide a fluid delivery passage on the reservoir that avoids obstruction by the pack or the reservoir and that does not interfere with installation/removal of the fill cap. It would also be desirable to provide a reservoir that includes a tube retention structure for routing and retaining the fluid delivery tube. It would also be desirable to provide a lockout device for use with the fluid delivery tube to prevent leakage from the mouthpiece when fluid withdrawal by the user is not desired. It would be further desirable to provide a lockout device that is operable by a single hand of a user for enhanced convenience.
Accordingly, it would be desirable to provide a personal hydration system having any one or more of these or other advantageous features.