How to Store Water for Emergencies

what are you going to do if you wake up one morning and nothing comes out of the tap hi i'm jonathan the provident prepper water storage has to be one of the highest priorities for every prepper we cannot overstate how important water is for so many different things now storing water can be a little bit challenging but in this video we're going to talk about how to go about it and the best containers to use join us as we explore the possibilities together in this video we will talk about how to store water and the kinds of containers that you want to use our emergency water needs include drinking or hydration making sure that we have the water that our bodies need hygiene medical or first aid purposes sanitation and of course food preparation the water that you have stored in your own home is always going to be your safest source of water in an emergency event so just how much water should you store we recommend at least two gallons per person per day for at least two weeks now we recognize this may be a bit challenging but if you get creative we're confident that you can do this and if you want to know what that much water looks like we've got a few pictures here to help you so one 55-gallon barrel could provide one person with enough water for 27 days if you want to look at another way it could take care of a family of four for about one week now if you just want to go and pick up your water storage at costco one case of the costco water bottles is about five gallons which means that it would give you two and a half days worth of water if you want to use repurposed two liter bottles 18 of those would last for about four and a half days if you use less water than the two gallons per day great you can extend that for a longer period of time but it's been our experience that two gallons of water a day really isn't very much water per person especially when you consider that the average use per person is typically around one to two hundred gallons per day let's explore some of the different possible containers that you could use for your water storage glass containers are ideal for water storage they provide a true vapor barrier they will not leach anything into that water but they are prone to breakage which means that in the event of an earthquake you could lose your entire supply so you would want to diversify it we store water in all of our empty mason jars they're going to take up the same amount of space whether they are full or empty so this is a great way to keep them full of water and clean you can also use repurposed glass jars just make sure that you wash them out really well before storing water in them there are two main type of plastic containers that are okay to use for water storage they'll have a recycle symbol at the bottom that'll say number one or peat or number two hdpe either one of those are ideal examples of peat bottles include soda bottles juice bottles or most water bottles and the hdpe plastic containers are things like your blue plastic water barrels or ibc totes and really nice water containers such as the water bricks even if your container is made out of a suitable form of plastic you should not store your water in any container that has held a toxic substance there are a lot of people who like to store water in bleach bottles but the problem with that is that the chemicals have leached into the plastic while the bleach was in those bottles even once you've dumped it out and rinsed it out you've still got those chemicals inside of the plastic that can leach back into the water could you use this for hygiene purposes to wash your hands absolutely i just wouldn't use it for drinking water an easy way to build your water storage is by picking up cases of water bottles when you go to costco or another store the problem with this is that this water really needs to be rotated because it's made out of a thin plastic so it's great if you're using disposable water bottles all the time this is a really nice convenient way to do it the problem with this is that it produces a lot of waste so you might want to take that into consideration these are however extremely practical for emergency evacuation purposes the ability to throw a whole case of water in your car is just a great thing we would advise you to avoid storing your water in milk jug type containers and the reason why is because these are engineered to degrade quickly so they will start to leak in your storage so be very careful about purchasing your water for long-term storage in this and don't ever fill up used milk jugs for water storage the problem with using milk jugs that have contained milk or juice or anything like that is that that jug will harbor bacteria inside of the plastic which will leach back into the water and create a problem so just avoid this there are so many other choices water bottles that are made up of thick plastic such as arrowhead or the crystal geyser both of these are great for long-term storage we have a friend whose water storage is underneath the beds in her home so what she's done is she's taking used two liter bottles and cleaning them out and filling them with water and storing them underneath the beds perfect way to build your water storage and not have it take up very much room the left hand side is some two liter bottles that we have in our water storage and i like to date the last date that those water bottles were rotated just so that i can keep track of that one important thing is that if you are storing water in repurposed bottles you need to clean them out really well or you can have some serious issues with water contamination what we do is we wash out the bottle in nice hot soapy water and then we'll create a sanitizing solution by filling up the sink with cool water because you don't want to put chlorine in warm water because that makes the chlorine dissipate faster we fill up the sink with cool water and then we add some chlorine to that a few tablespoons and we let those bottles soak the contact time is really important so about 20 minutes 20 to 30 minutes and then we dump out the water and we let it air dry that provides a little bit more contact time and make sure that those bottles are nice and clean and make sure that you pay special attention to the inside of the lids that they are really clean if there is some type of a cardboard insert i would take those out and throw that away there are other commercial sources that you can look at including things like these water pouches they are quite a bit more expensive but they are handy to store another commercial source is canned drinking water now these are relatively expensive but they are nice in that they have a 50 year shelf life and they are nice because they are not quite as vulnerable to heat as the plastic bottles are when plastic bottles get hot the plastic becomes volatile and leeches more into the water with these cans it doesn't really matter if they get hot it matters a lot if they freeze because the cans can split but if you've got the money this is actually a pretty good option i love these five gallon water cubes we diversify our water storage right it's stored in a lot of different containers because we want to make sure that we have what we need when we need it john as buff as he is cannot put one of those 55 gallon barrels on his back and take it with him we have all kinds of different containers but this is one that i really like and the reason why i think it's so nice it's not easy to carry because it's still heavy right it's over 40 pounds but it's manageable but with a spigot on it i can turn it on its side and we can use it as a hand washing station or to easily dispense water i just really like the cubes and there's a variety of other portable water containers some of them have wheels a very common water storage container is a 55 gallon water barrel these hold a lot of water in a small space but obviously they're going to be extremely heavy to move one system that we have tried and liked is the titan ready stacking water barrel system you fill and take from the bottom barrel and it makes water rotation very easy if you're going to store your water in 55 gallon barrels it's important to understand that it can be difficult to access that water you'll need to make sure that you store a bung wrench and we actually keep ours on top of the water barrel so that we don't lose it because it's difficult to open those bungs without a special tool you can do it with a pair of pliers or something but a bung wrench just makes it much easier then you need to come up with a plan of how you're going to get the water out of that barrel you can siphon it or you can purchase one of these hand pumps we had one and when we went to use the water we found out that that hand pump really didn't fit the water barrel and so it was a little bit tricky to use it the other thing that concerns me is that i'm sticking that pipe into my clean water and there is a risk of contaminating my water so we store the pump wrapped in plastic to try and keep it clean but it's just all stuff that you really need to think about and there are drum dollies that you can put your drum on if you would like to be able to move it you may also have access to repurpose barrels a lot of these are free or they're very inexpensive but you have to make sure that they have never held any toxic substance and you need to make sure that they are food grade only now if you notice these are being stored outside we have a small house and quite frankly we don't have enough room to store a lot of water inside we have a few barrels that are downstairs and we do that because our winters freeze and we want to make sure that we have water inside that is ready to use and not frozen but we also store barrels outside now notice they are up on a pallet and these barrels are white and so the light will penetrate them so we have covered them in a black tarp the other thing that we do is we make sure that we don't fill the barrels completely up because i've done that before i got greedy filled it all the way to the top and in the springtime when we went out and looked at the barrels it was split all the way down the side john likes 10 head space so make sure that you leave some kind of head space at the top so that they don't freeze another product that we really liked was the waterfall water barrel this is a 30 gallon barrel that is self-rotating because your water comes from the tap through the barrel and then you use it out the bottom so it's always rotated and ready to use however this is not for a climate where you have freezing temperatures or you have to drain that and take it inside for the winter but it is absolutely perfect for my kids who live in arizona as you look out there you can find a whole variety of water tanks that you can use some of them are very pricey but they offer some real convenience and the ability to store a lot of water in a small space there are also a variety of outdoor storage tanks that you can get some of these are stored above ground some are buried beneath ground if you're going to bury it though you need to make sure that it is structurally able to handle that load thus says the engineer okay the other thing while we're talking about the being able to structurally handle the load remember that water is heavy so make sure if you are storing it on an upstairs floor that floor needs to be able to accommodate that weight another good option are water storage totes the totes that you can see here hold 275 gallons of water they can be repurposed but again you want to make sure you understand what has been in those before mostly we would be using this for hygiene water or for watering animals or watering the garden my absolute favorite way of acquiring and storing water is rainwater harvesting depending on the climate you can harvest a tremendous amount of water off of your roof it is also fairly easy to rotate and so often we have people ask us whether or not their swimming pool can count as their drinking water and the answer to that is no we have filtered swimming pool water using a very high quality filter and quite frankly it still tasted nasty and it was rated to remove chlorine and a bunch of different chemicals so i would count your swimming pool water as hygiene water but i would make sure that you have a different source for clean drinking water could you use it in an emergency yes you could however i just wouldn't want to risk it i would really want to plan for a different source of drinking water i would really not plan on using swimming pool water for any kind of human consumption if you really are planning on using your swimming pool as a source of drinking water i would make sure that you practice that you take whatever filter it is that you've been told will filter that pool water and you filter it and you drink it not just one taste but drink it and see whether or not it makes you feel well i personally really think we should just stick with using it as hygiene water okay let's talk about water rotation officially the recommendation is that you should rotate your water every six months that is painful it is i don't think there's very many people that ever do that okay because we have real lives right so what we want to know is whether or not you really have to do that let's think about it you have clean water you've put it in a clean container what can really happen you could have some of the plastic leech into the water not going to kill you what i would say is if you are not going to rotate it regularly just be prepared to filter it with a good quality filter and this also depends on whether these are being stored indoors or outdoors that's true because outdoors the heat is going to accelerate that leaching into the water so you're it's more problematic seriously do the best you can to rotate your water regularly if you have the financial means buy a system like that the titan ready or like one of those nice water tanks where rotation is really easy but if not don't sweat this store the water it's so much more important that you store the water we have a friend who was telling us about a metal water barrel that they had stored in their basement it was there for 50 years and they wanted to test the water and see if it was okay so they scraped all the scum off the top and took a sample and took it in and had it tested and it was still safe to drink would i want to do that no that is not my intent but clean water in a clean container you really should be okay so what about water treatment this is a common question that we get do i need to treat my water typically we recommend that if you have a chlorinated municipal water supply you don't need to add any additional treatment that does have some residual chlorine that will take care of any treatment need as for untreated water you have the option of treating it as you store it or as you consume it we have a great post that goes through exactly how to treat water in a 55 gallon drum if you click the card in the corner it will take you to that post and it gives you all kinds of different options and and things that you need to consider when you're doing that but generally if you are going to treat it when you store it you would want to use a quarter of a teaspoon of calcium hypochlorite or two tablespoons of fresh unscented chlorine bleach now for smaller containers the recommendations here are from the clorox company and it depends on which variety of clorox you use these are the only three that they recommend you use for water treatment at all do not use any of their other products for water treatment but for a quart you're looking at two drops of regular bleach and that's only if your water supply is untreated if you have a municipal water supply that has been treated already with chlorine you don't need to add any other chemicals to that we sincerely hope that you make water one of the highest priorities water is so important and you can do this without a lot of expense and a lot of effort but it is so vital get it done we invite you to visit the provident prepper how to store water for emergency preparedness in that post we go through all kinds of different containers and treatment methods and if you have any questions that aren't answered the chances are they will be answered in that post another concern that we hear frequently is which water filter do i buy how do i know so we created an entire video on youtube emergency water filters we go through some of our favorite pics we really work to teach you what you need to look for in a water filter and why you need that because every water source is different and you need to find the right filter to meet your specific needs another video that you really should take time to watch is making water safe to drink and in this video we go through the different disinfection techniques that you may want to use to make sure that your water supply is safe to drink check them out now you know what to do sit down right now and make an action plan that makes sense for your situation and then let's get busy now is the perfect time to get those containers filled and now for the question of the day what is your favorite way to store water for emergencies comment below and thanks for being part of the solution [Music] you

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 140,088

Rating: 4.9465404 out of 5

Keywords: SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, Prepping, Emergency Preparedness, Emergency Water Supply, Water Storage Containers, Plastic Water Storage Containers, Glass Water Storage Containers, Water Treatment, Water Storage Treatment

Id: 5hQ2GoXJg6I

Length: 17min 39sec (1059 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 13 2020