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The single most essential need for survival is water. Most people know that we can live for several weeks without food, but no more than several days without water. The body begins to shut itself down once it has reached a threshold point of dehydration, and even advanced medical care may not be enough to keep you alive. So being able to obtain adequate drinking water is one of the most important aspects of any survival or preparedness plan. Plans for water should include two phases: 1) having sufficient stored water for the number of people in the household for as long as it would take to acquire it by other means, and 2) other ways of getting potable water. The usual reason one hears for storing water is to have it available until the day the power comes back on for your well pump, or the municipal water supply is re-established. That's important to do, but what if the power doesn't come back on, or the municipal water supply is interrupted for weeks or even months? Considering the recent instances of violent weather and flooding, this isn't such a remote scenario as people have supposed it to be. So any plan for water needs to include alternate ways of providing it, as well as having stored water. In addition, the stored water will last longer if it can be supplemented with other sources.
Stored water The usual recommended amount to store is two gallons per day per person (this includes both drinking and sanitation). If you have a large family, or anticipate that other family members will descend upon you in an emergency, you may be looking at a lot of water. A few gallon jugs of store-bought "spring" water is not going to be sufficient. Moreover, water is heavy. More than one storage tank came crashing through people's ceilings in the days when it was common to have a tank in the attic. So consider where in your home it would be safe to store sufficient water. This may mean storing it outside the home, which brings up considerations of wintertime temperatures. Look around your home and property and think it out. If your house is built over a crawl space, or you live in a mobile home on blocks, the space under the structure may be a good place for water storage. It's on the ground, so there's no worry about weight, and the temperature is likely to be around ten degrees above the ambient outside temperature in the winter (this is based on my measurements of several mobile home and house crawl spaces during the past winter). Gallon plastic containers of water might still freeze, but they wouldn't be likely to break if handled carefully. Rigid plastic containers wouldn't be suitable, nor of course, would glass. The best storage place is probably a below-ground basement that doesn't freeze in the winter, and has either a concrete or earthen floor. Of course, in many parts of the country, basements are either not possible, because of the high water table, or uncommon because of the cost. Perhaps you might be able to build a root cellar, and use it for water storage as well. If none of these options is possible for you, and there simply is no place to store any reasonable amount of water, you need to think even more strongly about how to obtain water after your small stored supply runs out. If you can store larger amounts of water, what will you keep it in? You can purchase large containers for water. Many of the survival and emergency preparedness sites sell 30, 55, and 60 gallon tanks. Commercial tank suppliers sell even larger ones meant to be buried or mounted aboveground. They all have a similar problem. They are not prohibitively expensive to purchase (depending, of course, on what you mean by prohibitive). But they are extremely expensive to ship. I found a source for 5-gallon jugs similar in appearance to the ones sold for the storage of kerosene. Unfortunately, the shipping would have cost more than the jug itself. Even in large quantities, the shipping was a substantial percentage of the overall cost. One option is to drive to a tank supplier and pick up the tank or barrels yourself. Even if you had to rent a truck for the purpose, you might find it cheaper than paying for commercial shipping. Or a group of people might go together to purchase several tanks or barrels, and one member of the group could pick them up. Another possibility for indoor stored water is the type of carboy used by home winemakers and beer brewers. These are available in both glass and PET plastic (known as "Better Bottles"). The Better Bottle website has a list of dealers around the country, and most of the online homebrew suppliers also sell them. At this writing, I've found 5-gallon Better Bottles for prices ranging from $21.99 to $29.99 each. Shipping to my zip code was in the range of $10. Shipping from one company, however, was only $13.00 for ten of the 5-gallon carboys, so again, a group purchase makes sense if you can't find a local supplier. If you want to buy tanks or barrels, look on the net under "water tanks", "water barrels" and "rain barrels" to start with, but here are a few companies I've done business with (again, except for a few products offered through Amazon, I have no monetary or personal connection with any companies that I link to):
Where do you find barrels, other than the commercial suppliers? Look on craigslist and ebay. My four food-safe barrels came through craigslist, from a man who had access to olive oil barrels. They required heavy cleaning to remove the film of oil, but they are now ready to use. Two additional barrels had held car-wash cleaning chemicals, and are only for non-potable use. You can also obtain food-safe 2 gallon containers for free, or a very nominal charge. Fast-food places and grocery store and convenience store deli counters buy cooking oil in 2 gallon jugs, and often these are just thrown away. Because they are stacked for shipping, they may come in a cardboard surround that makes it possible for you to stack them after you refill them with water. The only real drawback of these jugs is the heavy-duty cleaning required to remove every trace of their former contents. Plain household detergents won't do the job; you need something specifically labeled as a degreaser. Once they are very well cleaned, however, they make excellent water containers that can be stacked in a corner (though you want to be aware of the combined weight of all that water). If you consume a lot of soda, or have friends who do, empty 2-liter soda bottles are a great way to store water. One great advantage is that they will withstand multiple cycles of freezing. In fact, you can reduce the amount of electricity your refrigerator uses in the winter by leaving several 2-liter bottles outside overnight to freeze, and then putting them on the top shelf of your fridge (so the cold air will fall down through the cabinet, cooling as it goes). Clear PET bottles can also be used for Solar Water Disinfection (SODIS). How long can you safely store water? Sterile water, stored in a sterile sealed container, will last indefinitely. Most of us won't be starting out with that situation. Even commercial drinking water is not sterile, though it is treated to kill germs. There are two steps we can take to make stored water last as long as possible. First, get the container as clean as possible. Wash thoroughly with very hot water and detergent or soap. Rinse equally thoroughly with very hot water. Turn the container upside down to drain. Wash the lid or cap just as carefully. Then fill the container with water from a known dependable source (like the municipal water supply or a tested well). Add two drops of bleach per gallon of water, cap the container firmly and store it away from light (to prevent the growth of light-dependent organisms like algae). Acquired water, or How to get water after the stored water has run out If you live in a city and have no way to get out, your options may be limited. Even so, rainwater should be available. In the country, you may be able to tap into sources of groundwater, such as springs. And there is always the good old well, assuming you have some way to get the water out of it. Rainwater collection may be as simple as putting a trash can under a downspout, or as sophisticated as some of the systems in Australia and New Zealand, where residential rainwater collection is taken for granted. My home has seen the whole range of products, beginning with a simple v-shaped piece of metal along the top edge of the mobile home, that the manufacturer was pleased to call a gutter. It never worked well, it had no downspouts, and by the time I had true gutters and downspouts installed, most of the water was pouring off the roof along the entire length of this trough. The rest of the water poured out of the openings at each end of the trough onto the ground, turning it into a sea of mud. Even barrels placed at the corners of the trailer didn't help much, because when the rain first started, the flow of water wasn't strong enough to send it into the barrel--it just trickled down the side of the trailer. When the rain came down hard, the water spurted far out beyond the barrel and made a mud pit of the surrounding yard. Now there are proper gutters on the trailer, and a 55 or 65 gallon barrel under each downspout. The barrels for potable water are equipped with first-flush diverters; the other barrels have simple filters to help keep debris and insects out of the water. This was a year-long project and we're not finished yet. But the amount of water we can already collect is astonishing. The roof runoff from a rainfall that deposits one inch of water on the ground will completely fill a 55-gallon barrel. The next phase of the project is to put gutters and downspouts on the storage shed and the chicken house. The barrel on the chicken house will keep their watering trough full, and the ones on the storage building will drain into the drip irrigation system for the garden. None of this will require electricity, and none of it is beyond very simple tools and mechanical ability. I've created a tutorial to show one of the barrels and its first-flush mechanism. |