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Wednesday, January 21, 2009

Let's talk water.....

Water is the most important item to go into your preps. People can live weeks without food but only a few days without water. It is recommended that 1 gallon per day, per person is stored. That's a lot of water especially if you have a family. Add a gallon or two every time you shop. A gallon of water from a box store like Walmart is still cheaper than a 16 ounce bottle of cola and that cola is not going to save your life. Store your water out of any direct sunlight.

For the budget minded.....Let's get creative about saving water.

  • First of all DO NOT store your drinking water in plastic jugs that previously held a milk product. No matter how much you think you have washed and cleaned the inside, it can still hold bacteria that can make you sick and you do not want to be sick during a crisis.
  • If you buy soda in cans, switch now to the 1 or 2 liter plastic bottles. It's less expensive to buy your soda this way and you will have a free water jug after you have drank your soda. Save your empty plastic juice containers, they make great water containers as well. When the bottles are empty, add some hot tap water put a drop or two or bleach in it (if desired but not necessary at this point), recap it and give it a good shake and pour it out or better yet...water a plant with it. Now fill it with fresh cold water and add your drops of plain Chlorine Bleach. (See How Much Below) , cap it, give it a shake and let it sit for 20 or 30 minutes. Take the cap off and give it a sniff. If you can detect the chlorine, it is ready to be capped, dated and put into your prep area. If you can't detect the chlorine add a few more drops. It is suggested that you keep this water for 6 months and then replenish it. If you can replenish it at that time, go ahead and do so. If you don't want to waste it. Use it for cooking, watering plants, rinsing dishes or whatever creative means you can think of. Just make sure you replenish your bottles and re-date them. If you need the water and it is older than 6 months it should still be good. If you are worried about it just boil it for a few minutes. Bottled water can be made to taste better by pouring it from one glass to another a couple of times. This adds oxygen back into the water.
Chlorine Bleach (use the plain, DO NOT use the scented bleaches)
1 liter- 4 drops
2 liter or 2 quarts -8 drops
1 gallon - 16 drops

The big guy found us some plastic 55 gallon drums that has a triangle with a #2 inside the triangle on the bottom. Anytime you see this symbol , you will know it is food grade plastic. Although these drums have stamped in the top, DO Not Use for Food or Beverage, we know they are safe as the labels had not been removed and they had held DR Pepper! With a quick cleaning of water and bleach we moved them to our front porch which is shaded all the time. We placed them side by side and filled them with fresh clean water and 1-1/2 cups of Chlorine Bleach per barrel. We then placed a 2 x 4 piece of plywood over the top. We have a piece of Hardie backer board and pieces of ceramic tile left over from our kitchen remodeling. When the weather warms up enough I plan on tiling the top. I had two old bar stools in the barn, I cleaned those up and placed them on each side of the barrels so we now have a patio table on the porch that serves a dual purpose. If you are a arts and craft type of person you could even paint these to look like wooden barrels. It's two late now to add a tap so we will keep a clean piece of hose for siphoning or maybe later will purchase a pump that fits these barrels to pump the water out. Check with a farm and garden center, feed store or even some plant nurseries for these barrels. Sometimes we have seen these for sale in the free papers you can pick up outside of some businesses. Most people will purchase these and cut in half for watering and feeding livestock or for large planters.

Please leave your comments on your creative ways you are storing water so we all may learn some new tips! We will discuss water filters and finding emergency water in another post.

Brenda

4 comments:

kymber said...

Brenda - first off - great post! thank you!

secondly - last spring my husband and i purchased 2 rain barrels (192 litres each in size) - that are made from recycled olive oil containers and are approved and certified by the Canadian Health and Welfare Department.

anyway...we purchased these barrels for $80 dollars each and i am sure that there are comparable prices in your state. these 2 rain barrels cut our water bill by more than half! and not to mention - if SHTF - we would have 384 litres of water stored. i know - it's rainwater - and you still have to filter it.

we also purchased what we call "God gaining a material body and coming down to earth"...otherwise known as the Berkey Water Filtration System (they ship internationally - go to Berkeyfilters.com) for $260 dollars. we filtered our rainwater through this thing since the spring (it takes about an hour and a half to fill a Brita jug) and we have been melting snow all winter and running it through the Berkey.

i have never tasted water so good and i was raised on fresh, free-flowing spring water.

i know that the above-mentioned items are costly and not very creative - but we saved for a long time to purchase these items and both come with life-long guarantees if used properly. and they have truly helped us conserve and retain water through normal, daily living (as well as cut our bill down considerably!) - but in the event of SHTF - we might have no electricity and we might be very cold (especially since we are in canada - brr!) - but we will have water!!!!

thank you for the interesting and thought-provoking posts - and thank you for doing such a good job with the FPN! (we snow birds in canada need to make sure that the FPN is in good hands! teeheeh!)

kymber

Mamma Bear said...

Hi kymber....Welcome! We are in northwest Florida but for the past few days I thought I was in Canada! We have had 4 nights of bitter cold from 17 degrees to the mid 20's. Where is Al Gore and that global warming when you need it?

Thank you for your post and glad to hear the rain barrels are working out for you. I may try your idea of a rain barrel in our back yard. We get a great run off from the roof and would be a great way to catch water and use. I do have a Berkey as well. It is stashed in our emergency supplies. I may have to get it out and check it out before I really need it!

Will look forward to hearing more from you!

APN said...

I had an excellent opportunity to stop in, have lunch, and meet CatMan from California for the first time. A pretty awesome guy we all have here operating California. He's got a lot of good ideas. Check out his network whenever you get a chance. He plans to start up sub-chapters within the California Preppers Network. By the way, from now on, whenever I receive a dispatch, I will post my route. If you see that I will be heading your way, e-mail me and maybe we can hook up and talk Preppin' over lunch or dinner.

Mamma Bear said...

It's always great to meet a prepper face to face! I will make sure to keep an eye out for your routes. We are in the far north end of Bay County and only about 50 miles from the Alabama line.

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