Newbie Prepper Step 5 – Water Storage and Purification

clean water no longer flows out of your kitchen tap what are you gonna do welcome to newbie prep step number five hi i'm jonathan and kyleen jones and we are the provident preppers we have been incredibly blessed to have an abundant supply of clean drinking water delivered right to our kitchens however in the event of a disaster that supply of water may become disrupted in newbie prep step 5 we are going to continue to build your emergency water storage and we're going to create a system that will allow you to purify more water when your stored water is gone let's get running hey all you newbie preppers welcome to prep step number five we're going to talk about emergency water today let's take just a minute to talk about where we've been we started with prep step one which included a personal risk evaluation this allows us to identify the risks that we're preparing for so that we can effectively meet them we also talked about the importance of having water and building a basic food supply and then in prep step two we developed a family emergency plan so that we could take care of our families both at home and in the event that we needed to evacuate in prep step three we talked about emergency sanitation this is one of the things that's often overlooked we need to be prepared to take care of sanitation needs both at home and if we do need to evacuate and then in prep step four we focused on emergency evacuation developed a plan and built emergency kits for every member of our family now it's time for prep step number five and our quest in this prep step is to obtain emergency water storage and purification the first thing we need to do is to determine our water needs there are four basic categories that we should think about hydration cooking sanitation and medical hydration's needs vary by individual ideal hydration is three to four quarts per day and before you say wow i never drink that much water let's look at what the mayo clinic recommends the u.s national academies of sciences engineering and medicine determined that an adequate daily fluid intake is 15.5 cups of fluids a day for men and 11.5 cups of fluids a day they also noted that several factors may change your fluid intake one of them is exercise and a disaster or emergency type situation may increase your level of physical activity another is environment hot and humid weather can make you sweat which requires additional fluid replacement your overall health if you have a fever vomiting or diarrhea you may need additional fluid to replace the fluid that you are losing and of course if you are pregnant or breastfeeding you'll need additional fluid for our family we calculate one gallon per person per day because we think that that is a safe estimation and if we don't drink it all then we have the ability to stretch that water supply just a little bit longer and for your cooking needs a lot of it depends on what type of food you have stored if you've stored all canned goods that come with their fluid in them then you don't need a whole lot of additional water for cooking however we store mostly dry goods the picture on the left are rolled oats with freeze-dried blueberries in order to turn it into an edible meal you are going to have to add water which needs to be put into your daily water calculations let's talk a little bit about sanitation needs some of the things that you will need water for include laundry doing dishes bathing and cleaning you need to factor all these things in based on your situation for example this little guy he's going to need some serious water to help him stay clean all day so take that into account when you think about what you need and the medical needs if you use equipment that needs distilled water or something like that you need to factor that into your calculations but just one wound one decent wound needing to be flushed can require a lot of water so make sure that you calculate that into your needs the second component we'll talk about is water storage this is so important because the best water that you're going to have when you need it is going to be the water that you've stored in your home now some people say well i'll just go out and get some but you have to remember that water is very heavy and it's probably not going to be as clean as what you have stored at home it's a great idea to diversify your water storage it's good to store large quantities of water but it's also helpful to have things like water bottles that you can just grab and go and take with you we really like these little cube totes that we can use as hand washing stations by putting a spicket on them and turning them on their side and sometimes it's really nice to have canned water in the event of an emergency just because that has a 50 year shelf life so you can stash it away and not worry about it but it will be there and safe when you need it and don't underestimate the potential that you have to use repurposed containers to extend your water supply the photo on the right is a picture underneath my friend's bed and she takes all of these soda bottles and she filled cleans them out and fills them with drinking water and then they're stored underneath her bed the barrels on the upper left are repurposed syrup barrels that we have to extend our supply yes they are not ideal and the water still tastes a little bit like dr pepper or lemon lime but we've really extended our water supply by having them and on the bottom we have some totes that we have filled with water none of these are ideal and it is best to have some drinking water in new containers however as long as we have the ability to filter this water we can absolutely use it for drinking water or we could use it for hygiene water or we can use it for irrigation water or to feed our animals or all kinds of different purposes but we live in a desert so water is critically important to us and perhaps some high volume water storage containers might be right for you maybe you could get a big tank and bury it in your backyard or maybe put some of these larger ones in your garage somewhere just kind of think about the potential and where you can store a lot of water so that you have the water that you need when you need it we are often asked how to prepare water for storage the first thing you have to do is consider the water source if you're talking about water from a chlorinated municipal supply there's really no treatment that's necessary on the front end if you're looking at some kind of a non-treated source you have the option of either treating before you store or as you pull it out for consumption if you need to treat your water and you decide to treat at the time of storage all you need is two drops of fresh regular liquid bleach in a quart of water or eight drops in a gallon now for a 55 gallon barrel we like to use a quarter teaspoon of calcium hypochlorite in that barrel if you click the card in the corner it will take you to a post that we have written on calcium hypochlorite that will explain all that for you two tablespoons of fresh unscented liquid bleach now you notice we're using the word fresh here because as chlorine bleach sits on the shelf it becomes weaker and weaker so if it is not fresh you probably won't have enough chlorine in that bleach to be able to kill the bugs so you want to make sure that you have fresh liquid bleach and you don't want to add too much because liquid bleach has a lot of other chemicals in it it's not just sodium hypochlorite so make sure that it's fresh and there are a couple ways that are a little bit more expensive but i know that some people really like to use them you can use one bottle of water preserver concentrate or aquamira chlorine dioxide it's a two part treatment bottles you could use that also so we will put a link to that in the description if you would like to use either of those and we're telling you your options you don't have to use all of them you don't want to use all of them you just want to pick one another question we get asked a lot is how often do i really need to rotate my water to be honest water rotation is kind of a pain the official recommendation is 6 to 12 months however water is a stable compound and if you put clean water in a clean container there's really not a lot that can go wrong if you're worried at all be prepared to filter it before you consume it and now the third category is to make sure that you have both the understanding and the supplies that you need to purify water some of the water disinfection supplies that you might want to consider now remember you don't need to have all of these but it's a good to have a couple options would be the fuel to boil water or pasteurize the water and uv disinfection is really cool and we'll talk about that there are supplies you would need to do that chlorine which could be in the form of bleach or calcium hypochlorite or iodine and then you need to have a good water filter there are two things that we're concerned about in water the first is that we need to deactivate or kill the living bugs that are in that water that could make us sick these would include viruses which are really really tiny and difficult to filter out bacteria and protozoa which are both larger protozoa is the largest and most good filters will filter out protozoa the second thing we need to be concerned about are chemical contaminants such as pesticides or oils or any kind of chemicals that could be in the water it's really important to understand that your disinfection techniques will not get rid of these at all these can only be removed by filtering purification is a three-step process the first step is to clarify the water which you're just pouring the water through any kind you can use a coffee filter a paper towel some type of a cloth what you're doing is filtering the big chunks out of the water because you want to start with the cleanest water that you possibly can the second step is to disinfect the water and kill any living bugs that are in it and the third step is to filter the water which will physically remove any of the protozoa or other critters that you haven't been able to deactivate and it should if you have the right filter get rid of some of the chemicals that are in the water boiling is actually the best way to disinfect your water getting that water to 212 degrees will deactivate all the pathogens so make sure if this is the disinfection technique that you are choosing to use you need to have fuel to bring that water to a boil so pasteurization is a close second to boiling you need to reach 150 degrees fahrenheit for six minutes so it's a much lower temperature but you need to maintain it for a little bit longer we have a sun oven that will do a really nice job of this in the photo on the left you will see what we call a wapi it's a water pasteurization indicator and it is filled with this little wax and the wax will melt and show you exactly when pasteurization has occurred pasteurization is much less fuel intensive and so it might be a really good option for you distillation is another great option however again it is very fuel intensive and if you don't have the right equipment it can be somewhat difficult but remember that distillation has some really good advantages like it will remove some chemicals from the water it won't remove anything like alcohol that has a lower boiling point than water but it distillation is a great way to be able to really clean and purify your water you can use chlorine to disinfect your water it's really important to remember though that some protozoas have a really thick outer shell like giardia and cryptosporidium and so chlorine or iodine will not disinfect those so they would need to be filtered out but you can use sodium hypochlorite which is what you find in your regular liquid bleach or some powdered calcium hypochlorite to accomplish this this is the official recommendation from the clorox company there are only three varieties of their bleach that they recommend for water disinfection the regular bleach the germicidal bleach with cloromax and the concentrated clorox germicidal bleach pay attention to the amount that you're supposed to use for each one of these because it does vary when you're going to treat with it you need to add the drops to the water and then let it sit for 30 minutes and do its job at the end of that 30 minutes you should be able to smell just a little bit of chlorine if you can't you're going to need to retreat and wait another 15 minutes before consuming that water if you consume the water immediately the chlorine hasn't had a chance to kill those bugs and so it can still make you sick this is our favorite calcium hypochlorite there's a link in the description of this video to both a post and another video that will explain this to you but it's a great thing to have in your storage because it has a 10 year shelf life and we like to create a stock solution that we can use at the same rate that we would use chlorine bleach another option is iodine this is not our favorite but it is an option that you can use one form of iodine comes in tablets which have a very short shelf life on the other hand this polar pure has a very long shelf life and does a really good job if you can find it but remember iodine will not deactivate some protozoas such as giardia and cryptosporidium so you will need to filter this water if you are concerned about those solar disinfection is one of my favorites and quite frankly when i first learned about this i did not believe it so i have had to do a lot of research on this if you click the card in the corner it will take you to a video that we've created specifically on solar water disinfection and this is a really cool emergency way to disinfect water that millions of people actually use in on a daily basis in third world countries so what you do is you take the cleanest water that you can right it's we want to clarify it and get rid of anything that's floating in it or you can tell this water it was pond water and so it's still just a little bit nasty we want to fill up the bottle about three quarters of the way and then we want to shake it because oxygen will accelerate the disinfection process so once we've filled it three quarters away we shake it up and then we finish filling it then we're going to lay it on its side and expose it to the sun for four to six hours within four to six hours of direct sunlight all the pathogens should be deactivated in here one of the tricks is that it can only be about four inches in diameter for this to work so a two liter soda bottle is just fine you just expose it on its side a lot of the smaller juice bottles will work but this is a really good thing to remember if you are caught and you have no way to disinfect your water but you do have a plastic water bottle it's possible to make that water safe to drink it will not remove the chemicals right but it will disinfect the pathogens in the water you could also use a glass canning jar our finishing step is filtration finding a good water filter is so important for your emergency supplies and there's a whole variety of them on the market you need to make sure that you find the filter that's going to do the job that you need it to do and will fit within your budget if you click the card in the corner it will take you to a post that talks all about what you need to look for when you're finding a filter basically you need to know what kind of water source you are planning to need to filter from do you need to filter out viruses or do you just need to filter out the protozoa will your water have chemical contaminants in it that needs a really high quality filter to make it drinkable and i wish we had time in this video to get into all of this but seriously just click that card and go to that post and it will walk you through everything you need to know to figure out which filter would be the best idea for you to purchase and it's homework time we're going to accomplish this go to theprovidentprepper.org and just search for newbie prepper and it'll you'll find a post and go to newbie prep step number five your homework assignment includes reading all of these articles in them there's such incredibly valuable information and if you read them you will be able to store water correctly understand how to disinfect it and be able to purchase the right filter to meet your needs as your homework assignment after you complete your reading assignments your homework is to evaluate your water storage and see what you could reasonably do to increase the amount of water that you have stored and to purchase a water filter that fits both in your budget and will fulfill your needs that little tub on the right is how we store some of our emergency water filters now i have more water filters than anybody would ever need but it's really important to me that they are organized and that they are clean and well taken care of and so in this tote we have the smaller filters that are very portable in different containers to keep them organized and safe but when we have an emergency or when we need a water filter we know exactly where to go to get those filters our bigger filters like the berkey and the aqua rain won't obviously fit in this bucket but they are stored nearby one of the great tools that you have at your disposal are the action plans if you go to the providentprepper.org and click on action plans it will take you to a page that has icons for each of the chapters in our book then select the plans that you need in this case water storage and water disinfection when you click on that icon it'll bring up an action plan page on that page it will give you the opportunity to print a pdf copy of that action plan these action plans are not a complete list but hopefully there's some great ideas on there to get you started and on your way you will want to go through this and eliminate the things that don't apply add the things that aren't on here but create your own plan based on your situation on the water storage action plan we've kind of got a really fun example for you so this is a while ago it was back in 2013 2014 for our family and the dynamics were a little bit different then but if you notice we've calculated our water storage plan with six people at two gallons a day for 30 days we have chickens which needed one gallon of water a day cats which needed a half a gallon for each cat and a dog which needed a half gallon which equaled a total of two gallons per day that we needed calculate in for their needs we just put this example in here for you so that you can look at this and see these calculations and then on the next page there's a blank sheet where you can start working on some of these calculations and use it as a worksheet now that you have that water in storage make sure that you check it and rotate it periodically the official recommendation is that you rotate it every six to 12 months we don't think that's really that necessary if you put clean water in a clean container it really shouldn't have issues more realistically we try and rotate our water every three or four years however on the back end we always plan to filter that water that we're going to be drinking the most important thing is you have that water stored if you do not have that water stored your options are minimal and then watch for prep step number six coming soon this one is all about building your short term food supply we encourage you to go to the providentprepper.org newbie prepper 10 simple steps to get started for a lot more information that will help you on your way and there's a video emergency water storage where we walk you through in this video just exactly how you should store your water for emergencies in your own home it's a really good video you might want to check it out and emergency water filters seriously if you don't understand much about emergency water filters this video just walks you through it and helps you understand what you need and what the best options might be for you and your family check them out remember you are going to do the best that you can with the resources that you have available to you you may need to get a little bit creative but water is so important that it will be worth the effort and now for the question of the day what is your biggest challenge when it comes to storing drinking water comment below and thanks for being part of the solution you

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 6,293

Rating: 4.9735684 out of 5

Keywords: SHTF, TEOTWAWKI, Water Storage, Emergency water storage, water purification, water disinfection, dangers in water, chemical contaminants in water, how to store water, water barrels, water disinfection 55 gallon barrel, novice prepper, new prepper, beginning prepper, prepping for beginners, Water storage simplified

Id: dx1c9PEi_mo

Length: 20min 52sec (1252 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 29 2020