Water Never Enough Storage

My view is that the likely length of this  event is sooner or later going to force most of us to hunt water, lots of water!  The little survival filters aren't going to hack it for very long or be a very comfortable volume.  Do you have a way to move volumes of water easily, it's heavy and bulky to move, and you'll need lots of it.  Can you clean the water and then kill all the bad stuff you can't see?

Fact: Water weighs 8 plus pounds per gallon!  5 gallons of water weighs 40 pounds, remember the pictures of the people with shoulder poles that had small buckets of water at each end, brutal!!

Fact: There are all kinds of crap that end up in free water, most of them nasty and hard to deal with. 

Fact: Viruses are extremely hard to kill in water and we'll be dealing with a virus based threat plus all the normal things.

We need to look beyond storage to purification if this event is as real as we believe.  Simple stuff will make effective purification but you have to have it on hand ahead of time.  You need to look for water sources you'll be able to access and at how you'll move the water to your places. 

 

I have stored bleach(6 large bottles so far)...and I have stored all of my water in 2 litre pop bottles...and would make a wagon or cart..even an old stroller would do to put water in about 6-12 of these a trip...

Corky,

I am hoping for a fairly brief crisis, 2-6 months.  Currently we have some store-bought water in jugs for immediate use. We have over 100 gallons of water available in bulk storage. In a long-term emergency, myself and my wife would have to rely on water from our local river (which in time of crisis may be polluted  with untreated sewage or runoff) . So I share your concern about how to purify water on a long term basis.

I'd like to invite you to investigate the First Need water filter that is capable of removing darn near everything you'd find objectionable in water intended for drinking.  You can get replacement cartriges for the unit.  Many friends and I have used these on backpacking trips, the water has always been crystal clear.  One caution -  you need to protect the unit from freezing since the ceramic element can crack if frozen. 

For our bulk storage and for treating any questionable water obtained from an impure source, we plan to use swimming pool shock (calcium hypochlorite) to treat water.  We plan to have 4 barrels of 55 gallon capacity to store "city water", and we will be adding a minimal amount of shock just to give a base level of protection during storage, since the barrels will be sealed and the water changed out for fresh every 6 months.  We will have extra shock on hand for treating non-city water if needed.  We think this is better than bleach because calcium hypochlorite will store in dry form nearly indefinitely (10 years), whereas liquid chlorine bleach loses half of it's potency after a year (use twice as much for the same effect) and is next to worthless after two years.

For those who remember Y2K, here's a flashback for you:

"Dry chlorine, also called calcium hypochlorite has the added benefit of extended shelf life. Providing it is kept dry, cool and in an airtight container, it may be stored up to 10 years with minimal degradation. If you want to keep chlorine in larger quantities, this is the item to store (according to Bingo1). It must be ONLY 65% calcium hypochlorite, no addtional anti-fungals or clarifiers. In an EXTREMELY well ventilated area, (Hint: OUTSIDE!) add and dissolve one heaping teaspoon of high-test granular calcium hypochlorite (approximately 1/4 ounce) for each two gallons of water. Five pounds of dry pool bleach costs about $10-15, which will make about 92 gallons of bleach, which will sterilize 706,560 gallons of clear water, or 353,280 gallons of cloudy water. "

corky52 wrote: Bruss, How effective is the shock against viruses? I'd look at bigger/cheaper/ easier to use filters, ones that have capacity to do a 1000  gallons or so.  I'd also look at a UV treater, about $200.  I'm still looking at filters for some of the chemical crap in the water, the sandbox types look very viable and cheap, Canadians have done lots in that area.

Corky,

Can't answer your question about effectiveness against virii - unknown.  We're taking what we think are "reasonable" precautions, rather than trying to protect against every concievable threat.  I would love to have a setup such as you envision, in truth that will have to wait (for us, at least) until we have purchased our rural property.  Chlorination has been good enough for municipal water supplies and swimming pools for generations, if it were broadly insufficient, I think we would have heard of it by now.  I think it is the most safe and effective (affordable) measure available to us at the moment.

A couple of pounds of calcium hypochlorite and the first need filter are very light and compact... if for some reason we had to leave our home we could easily take them with us.  Not so for some large installed and powered water system.

Edited by bruss01

Bruss,

I was talking about things like the Doulton water candles instead of the first need.  We boondock quite a bit in our RV and found for the cost you can have a small size with much more capacity than the hand pump job.

 

I was referencing the sand setup as something being worth looking up and putting the info in your head.  Sand setups could be built from simple stuff if the need arose.  At several hundred pounds I don't think they're very portable.

http://www.prazwaterinc.com/products/products/uvlight/omni.h tml

Cheap UV, just need a small inverter to run.

Edited by corky52