Best way to clean your Camelback Hose using household Items

Drinking water is super important, on average a person should drink a minimum of 2L of water a day, more when you work out or are out in hot conditions. When I work as an Outdoor Instructor in the hot Australian bush I usually find myself drinking up to 5L per day. Over the years I have tried using bottles to help replenish my H20 but as time went on I found myself migrating to the camel back.

The reasons behind the move are that I could carry greater capacities of water, use up less space than bottles, I could wear the Dromedary as a pack by itself and most importantly I didn’t have to fiddle around pulling water bottles out of my backpack whenever I found myself dehydrated. All I had to do was put the nozzle in my mouth and slurp away.
Over the year I found myself using the Camel back a lot. So much so that the hose started to become brown. At first, I thought it had something to do with the exposure to the sun. I found myself very surprised one day when I was at a festival and I saw a bit of slimy dirt peel away from the inside of the pipe. At that point, I knew it was time to give the pipe a good clean.
I already knew there were tools I could use to clean the pipe but that would involve buying specialized equipment which would probably cost $30+. Also seeing as I move around a lot I would most likely use it once and then lose it. I decided to look around the house and come up with a simple, cheap and effective way to clean the hose out.

First of all, I went straight for the hot water treatment, I boiled some water up and then poured it into the pipe itself. (be careful not to spill boiling water on yourself. I found the best way was to close up the sink, pour hot water into it until the hose was submerged and leave it there for a while. In most cases, it will get rid of a fair bit of dirt and best of all it will sanitize it, seeing as I haven’t washed it for quite some time there was still a fair bit of slimness remaining.
I next proceeded to use Bi carb soda and Vinegar. Using these 2 together not only is great for cleaning the hose but also fantastic for use in the house. They fizzle and literally scrape away heaps of the nasty slime. To make it work pour bi carb soda down the hose first followed by the vinegar, Make sure you are using it over a sink because it will literally erupt everywhere if you don’t and then just close let it fizzle away on the inside.
At this point, I was already pretty happy with the results, but I still thought I could get the hose cleaner. So I rummaged around the house and found some string and paper towels.
I made sure to grab string that was longer than the hose and all I did was thread the string all the way through the hose and once it was all the way through I tied a small piece of paper towel to the end of it and pulled it through. I found this worked really well getting rid of majority of the slimyness from inside of the hose. Also I learnt that when threading the string through the hose suck air through the other end of it to create a vaccum. The string will thread through really quickly and easily.