My family and I have a pretty decent supply of food and supplies stored away in case SHTF…..but one thing we don’t have a decent supply of is water.  Since we live out in the country and have a well, I really never thought much about it…..until our well pump died on us last night.  Then it became pretty obvious that if we had no water for a few weeks, we would be in trouble.  Luckily we have several gallons of drinking water to get us by for a few days until the well gets fixed…….

I have a 15ftx15ft room in the basement filled with out prepping supplies........should I make room for some 55gal drums of water? Should I stock up on several of those 5gal camping water containers from Walmart?  I would like the water to be in small enough containter that I can transport it upstairs to where the kitchen is.  A 55gal drum of water is great, until you need to get the water somewhere else.

Any ideas would be great!!

Thanks

What kind of well do you have?  You could explore options for using it without power.  Bailor bucket, Simple Pump, solar pumps.  Storing a few 55 gallon barrels would be good no matter what.

To keep it on the simple side, we have a couple of 55 ga. food grade plastic containers setting on skids off the ground in a storage bldg.  I believe they take up less room than several 5 gal. containers.  When water is needed we use a super syphon to draw water with.  This water would only be used for flushing, washing and general water uses.  Not for drinking.  I'm sure others will chime in with useful ideas that they have found to be effective in their AO.

Good points about non potable water.  For potable water we use the 1 and 5 gallon jugs, and periodically rotate them out in a FIFO method.

You're on a well. Fire up the generator!

Get a 55 gal drum for toilets etc. Fill it with the well before a storm or the first time you run the generator after the power is out.

No need to store a ton of water in your scenario IMO.

My first recommendation is having spare parts for your well pump control, and know how to install them, and how to identify which part went out. Pressure switches and starting capacitors (that are mounted in the control box instead of the pump itself) are cheap and easy to replace. And then have a way to power your well pump w/o grid power. 

After that, connecting inline tanks to your system is ideal as posted above. It constantly circulates your "stored" water. 

Next best is 55 gallon barrels and a way to get water out of them.

Keep on hand at least a few smaller 3-5 gallon containers for transporting your water where you need it in the house.

It's around 50ft deep, with a 1hp pump at the bottom. I would love to figure out a way to switch it over to a manual pump if I had to.....but I'm guessing that with it being so deep, that would not be easy to do .

My pump is a 2-wire pump that's wires directly to the pressure switch at the holding tank.  The capacitors are down at the pump....there is no well control box on my setup.  If I ever end up burning the pump up, I'm going to have them switch it over to a pump with the external pump control box.

Is it 50 feet to the water (head) or to the bottom?  If the head is 25 feet or less you can use a pitcher pump.

I use a 1000gallon water tank that is fed from gutters off the shed.  A little rain fills that sucker up.  I use it regularly for watering trees and plants to cycle it, but would not hesitate to lightly filter it.  Keep a screen over fill spot to keep things out of the water.  I also regularly keep a number of cases of water bottles and regularly cycle those for work.  I like to use industrial stack shelves for putting things like cases of water bottles on and stored food.

I have 4 3500 gal tanks with there own pump that I irrigate out of and are kept topped up buy the well. Turn 2 valves and it feeds the house.
It's 6 month's worth if I keep watering the trees.
If SHTF and the solar well stopped and the replacement pump stopped I still have plenty for a very long time.

PVC well Bucket.

I made one a few years ago.  Last Spring our pump went out.  Since I was going to have to pull the pump to replace it, I did it the day before and used the bucket.  It worked as advertized.  Got about 1.5 gallons of water each time I dipped it to fill 5 gallon buckets.

Used the 5 gal to fill the toilet tank, wash and cook with.

In a pinch it worked and was cheap.

At 50' you should be able to pull that by hand if you needed to.
There are several affordable hand pump options that you could put on the shelf and install if you needed it

As far as the smaller storage containers, is there anything better than the blue 7-gallon storage cubes you can get on amazon prime for around $17 each? I thought about picking up several of those to keep on hand also.

Sorry...I meant 250 feet deep, not 50 feet deep . Type-O

I redid my well with poly pipe 380 feet deep just so I can pull it myself.
I pull it with my jeep over a wire spool going very slow with a spotter for problems.
4 wheeler works also.
I got tired of waiting on the well guy and paying him.

You could install a high efficiency solar 11 gpm pump on 1'' poly (1.25 better but heavier) and it would be an easy pull.
I like pumps that my honda 2000 will run without any strain in a pinch.

this

We have 10 of those we dump and refill every 6 months. We also have a Berkley Water Filter if we need it, we also have a 55 gallon drum as well as 4 50 gallon rain barrels like others, seem to fill up with one decent storm.

I doubt I have photo.
Grundfos 6 SQF-3 SQFlex Solar Pump pulls 8.2 amps at 120 volts 3.6 gpm at 860 feet.
I have another that puts our 11 gpm but only 380 feet and I hope to place it in the same well this summer. 8'' bore hole.

The deepest well I ever delt with was 720 and is was a PIA.
No my water is at 360 I installed a pump capable of 650 to get it up over a hill for a future orchard and for tanks for a gravity feed system.

Besides a pitcher pump on our well.
I have
4 -6 gallon blitz water Jerry cans.
1-15 gallon barrel.(have a secondary but gotta clean it)
1- 70 gallon tank.
Few flats of water which we rotate.

Katadyn ceradyn drip filter. 4 other pump filters. Spare elements . Etc etc.

$17 is pretty high for those.

Wal-Mart and farm stores or even Target would have them. (Check the camping section.)

They aren't bad, but full they'll ~45 pounds so probably more than you want a non-adult male hauling up the stairs. 

If water isn't very deep you can easily and quickly pump by hand using a section or two of pvc pipe.

We keep 10 cases of 32 count water bottles, 10 3.5 gallon water bricks, 1, 1500 gallon rainwater catchment tank and one 65 gallon catchment tank. I also have several types of filters and  could draw water from a nearby large pond.

IBC tote and a Berkey water filter can fix you up with usable water for a considerable amount of time depending on family size.

2L soda bottles last pretty much forever and make for a very good amount of water for a multitude of uses, and are almost free.  I keep a few in the freezer, and move them to the fridge in cycles, makes it easier to keep both at temp when more volume is used up.  

Also much less loss if contamination occurs in a bottle.

For small water storage containers, I like LCI's/Skilcraft's military water cans that come in OD and tan. Orders from LCI over $50 ship free too. Used to be order 2 cans and that was enough but the can's price has dropped $3 so you have to buy 3 or pay $10 flat shipping.

I like them because they're very tough, easily stackable, and have plenty of vehicle mounting options. There are also a number of accessories that make them more versatile like spigots and jerry can holders/stands to more easily dispense from.

I keep 4 readily available in the house.

And, I can give an example where they came in very handy. Woke up one morning for work. Went to get in the shower and found I had no water, some sort of line problem. Had to shower before work so grabbed a can, the stand, spigot, and a pitcher and set them up in the shower. It was a cold "shower" but I went into work clean.

With any liquid I look at a system of containers.

Having several 5 gallon or so containers for water or gas is nice.  But I don't want 100 of em running around, well not for the cost anyway.

Being able to empty your larger container into the small containers is a good goal.  So a 55 gallon drum needs 11 containers.

To some extent I can also see getting a 55 gallon drum once I have 5 of the 5 gallon containers. 

Use up 25 gallons from the drum to fill the smaller containers, then when you refill the containers again it is time to fill the drum.

In some cases a lot of folks are liking the big square 300+ gallon water totes, I could see that somewhat if I had a good place to put them and they did not cost much.

For actual containers to get for water, I do like the lci stuff mentioned for having to transport stuff.

I have 3 of the aquatainers and use em for not hauling water but putting on the picnic table or whatever.  I consider their corners weak after reading a lot of folks saying that is where they fail if you haul em around full all the time.

One other container I like a lot for actual use is a 5 gallon coleman round cooler.  You can replace the spigot on it with common plumbing options and make a constant on if you want.

Back when I had a place with a well the well pump died.  Til I saw it done once I did not know how to pull it so I just hauled some water in from elsewhere.

For washing dishes in the sink I poured hot water in that coleman cooler and it kept the water nice and hot and I had room beside the sink for it to sit there and act as a sink faucet.  And being insulated I had warm water the next day as well.

For those that want to pick on my math of container sizes, get what works for you.

For gasoline I have some 2.5 gallon size cans, some 5 gallon size cans, and then could get into the drum size.

An alternative to water bricks, more capacity, stackable, spigot available. FDA approved and BPA free. At about the same or less price.


ULINE JERRICAN

I have the 2.5 gallon naturals at the shop for inert chemical storage. They are tough and well made.