I drink a lot of water, and so I carry a water bottle with me everywhere. My favorite bottle is a 0.7L insulated one that I have 4 of now (they were on sale…), but it’s not easy to use while cycling because of the screw-on cap.

With the exception of a glass of juice every now and then or an energy drink when I’m about to fall asleep at bad times, I only drink water. Water is free, and so like many others who drink water I carry a water bottle with me everywhere. Some months ago I found an awesome water bottle on sale, a 0.7L insulated bottle with a screw on cap. This bottle is simply awesome for its ability to keep water cold, to the degree that I can put ice cubes in it at 6AM, bring it to work outside in 30 degrees Celsius for 7 hours (with refills) and still have ice cubes left over when I get home at 2PM. However I much prefer the cap style of my Nathan water bottle as it’s much easier to use while cycling. The screw-on cap of the insulated bottle is a pain to get open and drink from without stopping, which is the single downside of the bottle. I tried finding an alternative that would do both, but with no luck. Even ignoring the fact that the alternatives I did find aren’t available in Norway (and would cost a lot to get here), I couldn’t find any bottles that did everything I wanted. The Camelbak better Bottle Insulated would be perfect, but the limited capacity (0.5L) made the price to get one here unreasonable. Kleer Kanteen’s Wide Insulated bottle was a little bigger at 0.6L, but has no sports cap (yet). Then there are the ThinkSport bottles, which are a whopping 0.75L and insulated, but don’t have the best cap and are sold out (and frankly rather ugly, not that it matters). There are also other alternatives, all with various downsides that made them less than the ideal choice.

The solution came in form of a DIY project, as always. I bought the two remaining insulated bottles from the store and used the cap from one of them to make my own sports cap. I cut off the loop of the screw-on cap and sanded it down, then used a 25mm flat drill bit to drill a hole straight through the cap. I cut off the mouth of a normal bottle water bottle (that has a sports cap) and glued it into place in the hole, and added some electrical tape for good measure. The result is a new cap “adapter” that lets me use standard caps from disposable bottles on my insulated stainless steel water bottles, including sports caps. It still isn’t as good as the straw/spout system of the Nathan and Camelbak bottles, but at least I can use the bottle while cycling now.

UPDATE July 16th:
I was at a hardware store called Clas Ohlson today and picked up a pump that had smoe plastic tubing I thought I could use to make a straw system for my bottle. I cut off the piece that holds one of the tubes so that I could glue it inside the sports cap part of my DIY spout (so I could just get a new sports cap from a bottled water bottle if needed) and then cut the tube to fit the bottle size. It worked, but since the diameter of the tube was a bit large it took some work to suck enough air out to get water through it. I therefore found one of the replacement straws that came with my Nathan bottle and used it to make a smaller straw for my bottle. The end result works perfectly – I now have the straw system from expensive water bottles coupled with a sports cap on my beloved 0.7L insulated water bottle. Next step mass production?

UPDATE July 23rd:
Well the glue I used the first time around wasn’t a success, and came apart after just a couple of days. I redid the seal with a combination of hot glue and screws and it hasn’t failed in the week since. I also found a very nice cap on a small 0.33L bottled water bottle for kids in a grocery store, which has a built in cap cover that is perfect for protecting it from dirt since I use the bottle at work and it gets thrown around outside. I didn’t redo the straw on the new cap as it works well enough without it.