5 ms·

The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? I guess we could just start building walls of unopened water b

The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? I guess we could just start building walls of unopened water bottles in our basement… (In my teens I saw a family friend had a bag full of food supplies. I asked someone if that was a prep bag, and they said yes. I thought they were a bit weird. Now I’ve come full circle browsing Amazon for cheap doomsday food.)

ceejayoz 2y ago
> Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? Live near a lake, stream, etc. and enough firewood to boil water.
harry_ord 2y ago
High water tinned foods will help a lot.
encoderer 2y ago
Have the local water delivery company drop off 5 jugs a year
briffle 2y ago
Walmart sells 5 gallon water totes for $15. that is essentially 5 days for one person. We have a few on hand (family of 4 plus dog) and every six months or so, I empty them, clean them, and re-fill them. Also, there are gravity filters that work great if you have things like creeks near you.. Berkey Filters are pretty good for filtering out contaminants, as well as 2-bag gravity filters that are really popular with backpackers because you can fill the dirty bag up, hang from a tree, and do other things while the clean bag fills.. (not an endorsement, but their pictures show nicely how they work) https://www.platy.com/filtration/gravityworks-water-filter-system/gravityworks.html https://www.platy.com/filtration/gravityworks-water-filter-s...
- b112 2y ago
  If there is no AC, and you are exerting yourself a lot (no car or transportation is down, more work to prepare food, even having to take a dump outside), 5 gallons is barely enough for one person to drink per day. You'll be sweating a lot more in those conditions. Another example is food in winter months. During a disaster, even with winter gear, your houee may not be heated. If it is -20C inside, your body will need more calories. If you're having to go outside to cook, to expel waste, and maybe even to go find snow to melt for water, you're going to need 3x your caloric intake. You have to plan for worst case usage per day, not best.
  - danw1979 2y ago
    If you drink ~19 litres (5 US gallons?) of water every day you will not survive long. That’s about an order of magnitude more than is recommended under normal non-strenuous conditions.
  - groby_b 2y ago
    > 5 gallons is barely enough for one person to drink per day. OK, no. If you're running a marathon, in hot weather, you're at maybe a liter per hour. Unless you plan to run 20h marathons and the sun never sets, 5 gallon is well beyond drinking needs. And unless you're able to exert yourself at that level at all, this isn't the "worst case", this is pure fantasy. And if you're preparing for -20C in your house, I recommend investing in insulation, not more calories stored away. (I also question 3x, the figures I've seen point to 2x, with exertion somewhat counteracting cold)
  - vbezhenar 2y ago
    I drink may be two liters of water per day. Unless Google lies to me, 5 gallons is almost 20 liters which would be enough for 3 weeks for me with rationing.
- mmh0000 2y ago
  I've got one of these in my garage. It provides a lot of piece of mind knowing water is solved for. I not a "prepper" by any means, but, realistically I need water every day or I will die. Spending a few hundred to ensure I don't die from dehydration during a natural disaster seems worth it. https://www.surewatertanks.com/collections/products/products/260-gallon-tank-complete-setup-pack https://www.surewatertanks.com/collections/products/products...
- dole 2y ago
  I'll second Berkey Filters. While a full Berkey setup may seem expensive, the filters themselves and not the housing is the important part.
  - steve_adams_86 2y ago
    You can also use the filters with alternative housings that are far cheaper if aesthetics aren’t a concern. I’ve seen people use food safe 5 gallon buckets for example. It’s much cheaper and works just as well in emergency situations. You do need to be careful about light penetration of the translucent bucket wall. Another cool thing is that you can make (in a pinch, I wouldn’t recommend this over berkey filters) filters from the same type of bulkheads berkey uses attached to home-made ceramic filters. They work remarkably well in emergencies and are trivial to make if you’ve got clay and a hot fire. There’s definitely trial and error involved for getting perfect seals, and some advanced DIYers I’ve seen used glazing to create a more easily sealed rim which can have a plastic tube jammed into it for a friction fit, which then attaches to the inner part of the bulkhead. Totally unnecessary if civilization is working but awesome if things go sideways and you’re out of filters. There might be better methods too, I haven’t looked into it for years.
tithe 2y ago
One option is to do what quick-service restaurants (e.g., Subway) do for chips, cookies, drinks, etc.: keep a hefty supply of product on hand, but consume it first-in-first-out (FIFO, like a queue). During times of stability (when supplies are available), add new supplies to the "back" while you consume from the "front".
pennomi 2y ago
Backpacking water filters aren’t all that expensive and work fine with most water sources. Wouldn’t produce enough to shower in but certainly enough that you could survive in a disaster.
- Marsymars 2y ago
  I've got an assortment of backpacking/camping water filters, but don't live especially near a water source, so my days would revolve around walks to the nearest creek. (2 km away) A cargo bike would help a lot there. If the municipal water is still functional but non-potable, a LifeStraw Max gets you effectively unlimited water on-demand for most sources of contamination.
  - rolph 2y ago
    distillation allows separation of water from not water. mud or damp vegetation can be a water source.
  - jandrese 2y ago
    You could collect rainwater, but realistically water outages are usually not "the taps are dry", but rather "the water treatment plant failed so we can't guarantee the water is safe to drink."
    - Marsymars 2y ago
      I do collect rainwater! (In the summer months, at least.) Have a system cobbled together based on bluebarrelsystems.com Though disaster preparedness and water efficiency are a bit at odds. For the former I'd want to keep all my barrels mostly full, but for the latter I want to keep them empty enough that rainfall events aren't overflowing them and wasting water.
    - Terr_ 2y ago
      That seems to be pretty optimistic with respect to geography. Consider: "The pumps aren't working and there's nothing left up inside the local water-tower." Then you'd have to travel to get any appreciable amount of water before even starting to filter it.
cynicalsecurity 2y ago
Dig a well.
- salad-tycoon 2y ago
  You have to have the right kind of ground to drill with this. I think lots of gravel and rocks won’t work well. Never used it myself but was considering it in the past. https://www.drillawell.com/complete-kit https://www.drillawell.com/complete-kit
rolph 2y ago
storing large quantities of water is not trivial maintenence. its better to be able to sanitize required quantities on demand.
swader999 2y ago
A bag of pool shock and how to use it safely to treat water is fairly easy and cheap.
sa46 2y ago
I used to be a logistics officer for an Infantry battalion. Most of the comments down thread underestimate water consumption. Depending on the climate, you'll want the following daily quantities [1]: - 2-3 gallons for drinking - 1.5 gallons for hygiene (can skip for a while) - 0.5 gallons for food prep The planning factor for military operations was 8 gallons per person per day. Water is heavy—8 pounds per gallon—and acquiring, storing, and moving it is a large effort. [1] https://cascom.army.mil/g_staff/g3/TTD/Products/QM-How-to-Handbook/AWPG_approved_20Mar23.pdf#page=14 https://cascom.army.mil/g_staff/g3/TTD/Products/QM-How-to-Ha...
- close04 2y ago
  > 8 gallons per person per day. Water is heavy—8 pounds per gallon The average person needs far less than 65lbs (30kg) of water per day, which is a third of the average male weight in the US. By medical standards humans need more like 8lbs (under 4l) per day for men and 6lbs (under 3l) for women. Less if your rationing and not exerting yourself.
  - hooch 2y ago
    OP’s factoring includes washing, food prep, all that other stuff.
    - dilyevsky 2y ago
      1.5 a day for washing is hilariously wasteful. Use some wet wipes for crying out loud!
      - throwaway11460 2y ago
        How do you wash your clothes and dishes with wet wipes? Also you need to clean your home - you don't want to get sick in a catastrophe scenario.
    - instagib 2y ago
      1.28gal for toilet flushing the most efficient toilets. 1.6gal for normal and it can be worse for older ones. I was on a hike that recommended 1 gallon to complete it for 5 miles round trip. I’m sure there is a method to the madness of 8 gallons per person that isn’t easy to see. There is a lot of rounding up with the military also.
ajross 2y ago
> The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? You already have the equipment for that. Your existing hot water heater stores enough drinking water for a month at least, probably more if you ration carefully.
- mgkimsal 2y ago
  we got the smaller 42 gallon one, and.. with two people and a pet... it might last a couple weeks tops, I'd think, if we rationed (~2-3 gallons per day?)
  - ajross 2y ago
    I don't think I've ever drunk two gallons in a day in my whole life. Sedentary survival needs in reasonable climates are maybe a third of that.
    - Filligree 2y ago
      Go hiking in 35 degree weather on Mallorca, you'll easily exceed that. But that's not really disaster-relevant, no.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
travisb 2y ago
The cheapest way is to find some cheap, food-safe container(s). Put it into your basement and change out the water every 3-6 months. 55 gallon rain barrels can often be found subsidized and therefore cheap. Keep a bunch of camping iodine drops around and you are set.
ramses0 2y ago
The genius move I heard of was to throw a few 5-gal jugs of water up in your attic (!!!). It's relatively shelf-stable, standardized size, and "in case of emergency" you can even use it as a gravity-flowed spout to fill smaller containers below. I've taken to trying to have a minimal set of 4 one liter steel water bottles hung in the closet (grab + go) all the time. So convenient to be able to "just grab some water" on the way out the door, and is the start of a solid emergency prep station.
- blincoln 2y ago
  If one is going to do that, I'd strongly recommend putting them in some kind of basin that can hold the water if it escapes from the jugs, or sturdier containers, or both. At least in the US, water jugs are generally very flimsy. An attic is likely to have wide temperature variations throughout the year, and leaky water jugs up there could cause some expensive damage.
  - nytesky 2y ago
    Yeah we had plastic jugs in our cool basement leak all over the concrete floor — I can’t imagine the disaster that would be to have plastic jugs in my 140F attic with resultant leaking down from the ceiling
- scheme271 2y ago
  If it's kept in plastic containers, it's probably only good for a year or so before enough stuff leaches into the water that it'll last off and funky. The time period decreases significantly if your attic gets hot (like a lot of them do).
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    In that kind of emergency, I'd probably be satisfied with safe-but-distasteful as opposed to unavailable.
  - halgir 2y ago
    I want my regular drinking water to be as free of microplastics as possible, but is contamination from plastic containers dangerous enough to be of any concern during an emergency situation?
tlavoie 2y ago
I've got a 1000 litre / 250-ish US gallon rainwater collection tank. While I wouldn't want to start there for drinking water, it would do for quite a while if I boil it. We do get power failures, so it's mostly been for some garden watering, and being able to flush our toilets during an outage. We're on a well, and the pump needs 220v. I suppose I could get a better generator too, ours only does 120v.
- namibj 2y ago
  You can just use a transformer to re-create the 240 for your pump if the power/load is otherwise fine Especially as an autotransformer it's pretty cheap (should be about 50$).
  - tlavoie 2y ago
    That's true! It hasn't been a huge issue, we tend to mitigate basically by filling some pots with water when a storm is coming. (Usual outages happen in high winds, we have overhead lines and many trees.)

ceejayoz 2y ago

> Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? Live near a lake, stream, etc. and enough firewood to boil water.

harry_ord 2y ago

High water tinned foods will help a lot.

encoderer 2y ago

Have the local water delivery company drop off 5 jugs a year

briffle 2y ago

Walmart sells 5 gallon water totes for $15. that is essentially 5 days for one person. We have a few on hand (family of 4 plus dog) and every six months or so, I empty them, clean them, and re-fill them. Also, there are gravity filters that work great if you have things like creeks near you.. Berkey Filters are pretty good for filtering out contaminants, as well as 2-bag gravity filters that are really popular with backpackers because you can fill the dirty bag up, hang from a tree, and do other things while the clean bag fills.. (not an endorsement, but their pictures show nicely how they work) https://www.platy.com/filtration/gravityworks-water-filter-system/gravityworks.html https://www.platy.com/filtration/gravityworks-water-filter-s...

b112 2y ago
If there is no AC, and you are exerting yourself a lot (no car or transportation is down, more work to prepare food, even having to take a dump outside), 5 gallons is barely enough for one person to drink per day. You'll be sweating a lot more in those conditions. Another example is food in winter months. During a disaster, even with winter gear, your houee may not be heated. If it is -20C inside, your body will need more calories. If you're having to go outside to cook, to expel waste, and maybe even to go find snow to melt for water, you're going to need 3x your caloric intake. You have to plan for worst case usage per day, not best.
- danw1979 2y ago
  If you drink ~19 litres (5 US gallons?) of water every day you will not survive long. That’s about an order of magnitude more than is recommended under normal non-strenuous conditions.
- groby_b 2y ago
  > 5 gallons is barely enough for one person to drink per day. OK, no. If you're running a marathon, in hot weather, you're at maybe a liter per hour. Unless you plan to run 20h marathons and the sun never sets, 5 gallon is well beyond drinking needs. And unless you're able to exert yourself at that level at all, this isn't the "worst case", this is pure fantasy. And if you're preparing for -20C in your house, I recommend investing in insulation, not more calories stored away. (I also question 3x, the figures I've seen point to 2x, with exertion somewhat counteracting cold)
- vbezhenar 2y ago
  I drink may be two liters of water per day. Unless Google lies to me, 5 gallons is almost 20 liters which would be enough for 3 weeks for me with rationing.
mmh0000 2y ago
I've got one of these in my garage. It provides a lot of piece of mind knowing water is solved for. I not a "prepper" by any means, but, realistically I need water every day or I will die. Spending a few hundred to ensure I don't die from dehydration during a natural disaster seems worth it. https://www.surewatertanks.com/collections/products/products/260-gallon-tank-complete-setup-pack https://www.surewatertanks.com/collections/products/products...
dole 2y ago
I'll second Berkey Filters. While a full Berkey setup may seem expensive, the filters themselves and not the housing is the important part.
- steve_adams_86 2y ago
  You can also use the filters with alternative housings that are far cheaper if aesthetics aren’t a concern. I’ve seen people use food safe 5 gallon buckets for example. It’s much cheaper and works just as well in emergency situations. You do need to be careful about light penetration of the translucent bucket wall. Another cool thing is that you can make (in a pinch, I wouldn’t recommend this over berkey filters) filters from the same type of bulkheads berkey uses attached to home-made ceramic filters. They work remarkably well in emergencies and are trivial to make if you’ve got clay and a hot fire. There’s definitely trial and error involved for getting perfect seals, and some advanced DIYers I’ve seen used glazing to create a more easily sealed rim which can have a plastic tube jammed into it for a friction fit, which then attaches to the inner part of the bulkhead. Totally unnecessary if civilization is working but awesome if things go sideways and you’re out of filters. There might be better methods too, I haven’t looked into it for years.

tithe 2y ago

One option is to do what quick-service restaurants (e.g., Subway) do for chips, cookies, drinks, etc.: keep a hefty supply of product on hand, but consume it first-in-first-out (FIFO, like a queue). During times of stability (when supplies are available), add new supplies to the "back" while you consume from the "front".

pennomi 2y ago

Backpacking water filters aren’t all that expensive and work fine with most water sources. Wouldn’t produce enough to shower in but certainly enough that you could survive in a disaster.

Marsymars 2y ago
I've got an assortment of backpacking/camping water filters, but don't live especially near a water source, so my days would revolve around walks to the nearest creek. (2 km away) A cargo bike would help a lot there. If the municipal water is still functional but non-potable, a LifeStraw Max gets you effectively unlimited water on-demand for most sources of contamination.
- rolph 2y ago
  distillation allows separation of water from not water. mud or damp vegetation can be a water source.
- jandrese 2y ago
  You could collect rainwater, but realistically water outages are usually not "the taps are dry", but rather "the water treatment plant failed so we can't guarantee the water is safe to drink."
  - Marsymars 2y ago
    I do collect rainwater! (In the summer months, at least.) Have a system cobbled together based on bluebarrelsystems.com Though disaster preparedness and water efficiency are a bit at odds. For the former I'd want to keep all my barrels mostly full, but for the latter I want to keep them empty enough that rainfall events aren't overflowing them and wasting water.
  - Terr_ 2y ago
    That seems to be pretty optimistic with respect to geography. Consider: "The pumps aren't working and there's nothing left up inside the local water-tower." Then you'd have to travel to get any appreciable amount of water before even starting to filter it.

cynicalsecurity 2y ago

Dig a well.

salad-tycoon 2y ago
You have to have the right kind of ground to drill with this. I think lots of gravel and rocks won’t work well. Never used it myself but was considering it in the past. https://www.drillawell.com/complete-kit https://www.drillawell.com/complete-kit

rolph 2y ago

storing large quantities of water is not trivial maintenence. its better to be able to sanitize required quantities on demand.

swader999 2y ago

A bag of pool shock and how to use it safely to treat water is fairly easy and cheap.

sa46 2y ago

I used to be a logistics officer for an Infantry battalion. Most of the comments down thread underestimate water consumption. Depending on the climate, you'll want the following daily quantities [1]: - 2-3 gallons for drinking - 1.5 gallons for hygiene (can skip for a while) - 0.5 gallons for food prep The planning factor for military operations was 8 gallons per person per day. Water is heavy—8 pounds per gallon—and acquiring, storing, and moving it is a large effort. [1] https://cascom.army.mil/g_staff/g3/TTD/Products/QM-How-to-Handbook/AWPG_approved_20Mar23.pdf#page=14 https://cascom.army.mil/g_staff/g3/TTD/Products/QM-How-to-Ha...

close04 2y ago
> 8 gallons per person per day. Water is heavy—8 pounds per gallon The average person needs far less than 65lbs (30kg) of water per day, which is a third of the average male weight in the US. By medical standards humans need more like 8lbs (under 4l) per day for men and 6lbs (under 3l) for women. Less if your rationing and not exerting yourself.
- hooch 2y ago
  OP’s factoring includes washing, food prep, all that other stuff.
  - dilyevsky 2y ago
    1.5 a day for washing is hilariously wasteful. Use some wet wipes for crying out loud!
    - throwaway11460 2y ago
      How do you wash your clothes and dishes with wet wipes? Also you need to clean your home - you don't want to get sick in a catastrophe scenario.
  - instagib 2y ago
    1.28gal for toilet flushing the most efficient toilets. 1.6gal for normal and it can be worse for older ones. I was on a hike that recommended 1 gallon to complete it for 5 miles round trip. I’m sure there is a method to the madness of 8 gallons per person that isn’t easy to see. There is a lot of rounding up with the military also.

ajross 2y ago

> The water seems like the hard part. Are there any tricks for cheap, safe hydration for a family? You already have the equipment for that. Your existing hot water heater stores enough drinking water for a month at least, probably more if you ration carefully.

mgkimsal 2y ago
we got the smaller 42 gallon one, and.. with two people and a pet... it might last a couple weeks tops, I'd think, if we rationed (~2-3 gallons per day?)
- ajross 2y ago
  I don't think I've ever drunk two gallons in a day in my whole life. Sedentary survival needs in reasonable climates are maybe a third of that.
  - Filligree 2y ago
    Go hiking in 35 degree weather on Mallorca, you'll easily exceed that. But that's not really disaster-relevant, no.
- deleted 2y ago
  [deleted]

travisb 2y ago

The cheapest way is to find some cheap, food-safe container(s). Put it into your basement and change out the water every 3-6 months. 55 gallon rain barrels can often be found subsidized and therefore cheap. Keep a bunch of camping iodine drops around and you are set.

ramses0 2y ago

The genius move I heard of was to throw a few 5-gal jugs of water up in your attic (!!!). It's relatively shelf-stable, standardized size, and "in case of emergency" you can even use it as a gravity-flowed spout to fill smaller containers below. I've taken to trying to have a minimal set of 4 one liter steel water bottles hung in the closet (grab + go) all the time. So convenient to be able to "just grab some water" on the way out the door, and is the start of a solid emergency prep station.

blincoln 2y ago
If one is going to do that, I'd strongly recommend putting them in some kind of basin that can hold the water if it escapes from the jugs, or sturdier containers, or both. At least in the US, water jugs are generally very flimsy. An attic is likely to have wide temperature variations throughout the year, and leaky water jugs up there could cause some expensive damage.
- nytesky 2y ago
  Yeah we had plastic jugs in our cool basement leak all over the concrete floor — I can’t imagine the disaster that would be to have plastic jugs in my 140F attic with resultant leaking down from the ceiling
scheme271 2y ago
If it's kept in plastic containers, it's probably only good for a year or so before enough stuff leaches into the water that it'll last off and funky. The time period decreases significantly if your attic gets hot (like a lot of them do).
- Terr_ 2y ago
  In that kind of emergency, I'd probably be satisfied with safe-but-distasteful as opposed to unavailable.
- halgir 2y ago
  I want my regular drinking water to be as free of microplastics as possible, but is contamination from plastic containers dangerous enough to be of any concern during an emergency situation?

tlavoie 2y ago

I've got a 1000 litre / 250-ish US gallon rainwater collection tank. While I wouldn't want to start there for drinking water, it would do for quite a while if I boil it. We do get power failures, so it's mostly been for some garden watering, and being able to flush our toilets during an outage. We're on a well, and the pump needs 220v. I suppose I could get a better generator too, ours only does 120v.

namibj 2y ago
You can just use a transformer to re-create the 240 for your pump if the power/load is otherwise fine Especially as an autotransformer it's pretty cheap (should be about 50$).
- tlavoie 2y ago
  That's true! It hasn't been a huge issue, we tend to mitigate basically by filling some pots with water when a storm is coming. (Usual outages happen in high winds, we have overhead lines and many trees.)