Emergency Water Storage

One concern about 72-hour kits is that it may take longer than 3 days for help to arrive, especially as escalating disasters strain resources. I mention this because I have no idea how realistic the 2-week supply for water is. Will two weeks be sufficient to get water running and drinkable again? Well, it will depend on what happened with the disaster and what resources are available for dealing with it.

Given that, I still feel like two weeks is a good rule of thumb. It is probably not realistic to store more, as water takes a lot of space - much more than food. The OCEM document that I am going to link to only mentions three days, which is a start, but really not that much. Still, a big part of successfully preparing for emergencies is being comfortable starting small and moving up.

http://www.ocem.org/pdf_resources/Food&Water_Take5.pdf

So let's say you start merely with everyone having a 72-hour kit. That's great. Everyone has water for three days, and it is a start. 

The next step can be remembering that in kits you tend to have only one liter per day, while when looking at actual water storage tips you generally look at having one gallon per person per day. I have seen some recommendations for two liters per person per day. The gallon recommendation is covering both drinking and washing and other uses. With that in mind, add three 2-liter bottles per person, and you now have a more full supply for that three days.

And 2-liter pop bottles are great for water storage. They are strong and portable and already food-safe. They also don't degrade the way milk containers do. This is an important thing to remember: if you are buying water for storage, it is coming in HDPE (high-density polyethylene) plastic, and this breaks down and is prone to contamination. Pop bottles are made of PETE (polyethylene terephthalate) and are much better. They should still be stored out of sunlight, but are generally easy to obtain. (I don't drink much soda, but that' still what we have for all of our water storage at this time.)

If you do drink pop on a regular basis you could just take every 2-liter bottle as it is emptied, wash it, fill it with water, and store it away until you accumulate two weeks of storage, and this is easy to do. However, it will accumulate slowly. In my case, we have four adults, requiring 56 gallons. We also have two dogs and one cat. Using the handy calculator at http://mycockerspaniel.com/h2o.htm as a starting point, it is about another 10 gallons for the three of them. 

It is also fairly common to find 5 gallon containers and 55 gallon drums (and 30 and 15-gallon drums as well). That sounds like it would be easiest for us to go straight for the big drum, and then supplement, but it is more expensive, and once full would be very difficult to move, and we really don't have a good place to do it. Slowly accumulating 5-gallon containers may actually work better in our situation. (What I really want to do is fix up the shed as storage space, and there would be room there, but then it could easily freeze in the winter and you would have to keep going back and forth from the shed.)

So, those are the kinds of things you need to think about. One other thing to think about is flushing your water heater on a regular basis. You do have water here, and a large quantity. If you are not able to use the tap water, you are probably not going to be using the water heater, so that water is up for grabs. However, sediment tends to build up, which would make it less suitable for drinking. Periodically flush this, and that improves your drinking water options and should help your water heater run better. One set of instructions can be found here:

http://news.consumerreports.org/home/2010/03/how-to-drain-a-water-heater-sediment-drain-valve-best-water-heater-reviews-consummer-reports.html

Some things to not think about are using water in a water bed. I don't even know anyone who still has one, but if you do it should have chemicals in there that you do not want to drink.

You can think about using water in the toilet tank. (Not the bowl. Never the bowl!) However, even knowing that the water in the tank should be clean, I find it gross and don't want to do it. 

The other thing I don't want to think about is chemically purifying water. I know it can be handy, and then you don't need to store as much water as if you don't have the option of purifying, but then I read about how crystalline iodine is the most effective method, and then I read the warnings about evere skin burns, toxic fumes, corroding and discoloring, and how it can be fatal if swallowed, and I just don't want to go there. There is lots of information out there, especially if you are chemically inclined, or an engineer might want to look into siphoning, and go for it! I just want to store water.

For shelf life, different sources say anywhere from 6 months to 2 years. I have seen no evidence of water going bad, but containers can be compromised so even if you aren't changing the water you should be checking on it.

The one other thing that is vitally important is to know what is going on with your local water supply, which adds to the importance of having a battery-operated radio available. In emergency communication I focused on staying in touch with your loved ones, but you also want to stay in touch with the community, especially in times of emergency.