Speaking as someone who has the entirety of my heat for this winter stacked up in totes, prepping by storing bulk materials is not really something to be done l

Speaking as someone who has the entirety of my heat for this winter stacked up in totes, prepping by storing bulk materials is not really something to be done lightly. Unless you turn this DIY water buffer into something you use in your every day life (ie thirsty? time to go to the basement to get a glass of water), you will get bored of maintaining it long before the municipal water supply fails. Also 55 gallons of water is ~450lbs, so it's not going to be terribly easy to move with an [appliance] dolly. You probably want pallets and a pallet jack (and a smooth concrete floor). Personally I'd suggest getting an RO filter for your every day drinking water needs, and setting up a rain barrel collection that you can routinely use for outdoor garden/plants. Then if you suddenly need drinking water, you should be good just boiling the rain water. And if there is some large scale catastrophe with some kind of chemical/radiological contaminant in the rain, you can run it through the RO.