Posted: 1/20/2015 10:26:40 PM EDT
| Whether it be for a brief interruption in well supplied water and no generator for your pump, a water main break from your city water, etc...water is arguably one if not the most important prep. How do you store your water? Isolated storage tanks are great but it's very tedious to empty, clean, and refill your water stores every six months, five years, or however often you opt to do it. How many people utilize storage tanks from your main water line that then feed an expansion tank or the rest of your house? I'm looking at doing so and need details please! |
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I live in suburbia and have city water. Our water plan is constrained by how much space we have available. I currently store three 55 gallon drums as well as a dozen'ish small containers ranging from 2 gallons to 5. The smaller containers mostly serve as more transportable water for BO or giving to family. I realize this is a small amount for most families but its better than nothing and would hold us over for a couple of weeks if we rationed properly or a few days of semi normal living. The drums sit on an elevated (~30") platform above my sump area in my basement, The space is essentially 'wasted' so to speak so the extra effort to build the stand improved space utilization. As an added benefit the extra height improves siphon function. We have a drain in the basement floor right by the stand and I plumbed in a fill fitting and valve right in the storage area making water rotation a breeze. Rotation takes about an hour (guess because I never actually timed it) if I use a siphon and about 1/4th of that if I use a powered pump, It should be tended during the drain to make sure the drain is keeping up. I do put pure bleach in the barrels as per the Clorox recommendations although as long as its rotated within 6 months it shouldn't be a problem. There is minimal light and even during the summer it doesn't get above 70 down there. We also keep one of these Aqua Pods for each tub. We would use them only if we saw a disaster coming. Honestly I got them because they were not that much money and looked like a good idea.
We are not TEOTWAWKI people just looking for a plan that would get us by a few weeks if we needed it. If it ever came down to it we would run out of water (~few weeks) well before we would run out of food (~month or so with plans to go to 3). I would supplement with water I could acquire during the incident or with rain collection tarps. We have an assortment of filters I bought here and there that could be used to get water from a local stream although I've never actually used any of them  . Also since we are adjacent to farmland I would be suspicions of any runoff.
Thats what I got! Hopefully its all just a waste of effort and money! I know many here have thousands of gallons stored away but we are just simple suburban folks. |
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Large tank under the house...few barrels and 6 gallon cans in the shed...bunch of bottled water. Just got my artisan well repaired ...with manual pump for when the water table drops.
Three different katadyn hand pumps and a 10 L drip filter. Plus bleach. River 1/4 down the road... Posted Via AR15.Com Mobile |
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You can get some old water heaters and plumb them inline with your house system. They would be kept constantly rotated, always fresh. If I had the room, this is what I would do. In the mean time, I keep 2 generators that can pump water from my well. I have plans to replace the well pump ASAP (it is old) and install a hand pump beside the submersible. I also keep about 50 gallons of water on hand in the house, have a lake 200 yards away.
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We are rural and have a well. 220volt, pulls about 12 amps. If it goes down I run 200' of heavy duty garden hose to the neighbors, shut off the water to my well and run off his until I get mine fixed. If his is broken we reverse the system. The next time I rent a deep trencher I will put in 1" pvc line between our properties with shut offs on each side, so we can skip the garden hose. If power fails for a couple of hours, we always have at least 10 1 gallon jugs of distilled water for our humidifier that we can use for flushing toilets and washing hands. We always keep at least 4 5 gallon jugs of water for our drinking water cooler, so 20 gallons of drinking water should last a while. If power fails for days I have a generator specifically to run the well and my shop. I have lots of extra 5 gallon water bottles and 1 gallon water bottles and will fill them when I have the generator/well running. Since they are portable I can fill a 5 gallon jug and my neighbor can carry it to his place for his supply. |
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Even if you plumb something into your main system you should have something separate. Contamination of the primary system will contaminate your storage. I am on city water and have some smallish, 5-7 gallon, containers filled. also tend to fill plastic bottles and stick em in the freezer if there is space. The place I rent also has a well that might be put into use and a spring house that would have some water available but it is not set up for constant use anymore. Lately the rain has the springs in the yard keeping the yard flooded as well so to some extent there are all kinds of options with the spring house but it would require filtering and same with the well. As I am getting set up to deal with drums of gasoline I am also setting something up for drums of water. With the puppies I need to store more water and it will be easy to deal with the drums if set up the first time right instead of filling stuff and not really being able to easily deal with it. |