Posts Tagged water storage
Urban survival and safe drinking water
Over the past few weeks I have been putting a lot of thought into the availability of safe drinking water in an urban survival situation. Its not enough to have access to “water”, when its not safe to drink.
Its common knowledge that people require food, water and shelter to live. From those three points it breaks down into sub categories. Such as what kind of food, what kind of shelter and what kind of water.
I have decided to break my water preps into 3 simple phases based on the amount of safe drinking water you have access to – short term, mid term, long term.
Short term – this is your bottled water. Regardless if its 1 pint plastic bottles, or 55 gallon drums, this is your short term solution.
Why is it short term? Because its in limited supply – sooner or later its going to run out.
Mid Term – This is something like a berkey water filter, something where you can take river, lake or pond water, filter it and make it safe to drink.
The mid term solution does not rely on stockpiling massive amounts of water. You keep a little water at your house, then use the filters to make water from outside sources safe to drink.
Filtration could be either a short or mid term solution – because the filters have a limited life. Even if the filter has a rating of 10,000 gallons, that is still a hard limit.
Long term – Something along the lines of a private well. You have your own private supply of safe drinking water. Wells have allowed mankind to have safe drinking water for thousands of years. There is no reason why they will not work today.
One of the problems faced in the urban jungle – some cities prohibit citizens from having a private well. If that is the case, then the laws need to be changed. People should have the right to access the water under their land.
In some areas, such as around chemical plants, the ground water might not be safe to drink. Dumping and leaking of chemicals have contaminated the ground water in places like Port Arthur Texas and Houston Texas.
Over the years I have seen a lot of water storage solutions discussed. Some of those solutions include – cases of bottled water, 35 and 55 gallon drums, water beds, 500 gallon above ground storage tanks, swimming pools, fish tanks, rivers, streams, private wells.
Regardless of the solution, it all goes back to – is the water safe to drink – yes or no? If the answer is no, what is required to make the water safe to drink? Is that solution a permanent solution? Or will it run out, or wear out – like a filter will do?
The next question is – is the water supply a permanent solution? Yes or no?
Bleach or other chemicals – not a permanent solution
Man Made Filters – not a permanent solution
Mechanical Desalination – not a permanent solution
The final goal is to have a permanent solution for safe drinking water.
Please post your comments in the Urban Survival Water Solutions thread of the forum.
Portable water storage example
Sometimes local feed and fertilizer stores will get 16 gallon drums in stock – these can make excellent water storage solutions. Most of the time they were used to ship some kind of syrup, and the inside smells like Dr. Pepper. These may not be good for storing drinkable water, but will probably make a good hand washing station.
16 gallon portable water solution
Every survivalist should consider some kind of portable water solution. Whether this is 5 gallon buckets, 7 gallon drums or like in this video, 16 gallon drums.
The drum in this video will hold 16 gallons of water, but I only put 15 gallons in it. This is to leave a little head room. These drums originally held some kind of Dr. Pepper syrup. But its nothing that some soap and water will not wash out. When the drums were bought and brought home, dish washing soap was squirted into the drum, a water hose was inserted into the mouth and the water hose turned on. The water was allowed to circulate through the drum for 10 – 15 minutes. Then the drum was turned over, drained, stood back up and the water hose reinserted.
The water stored in these drums are used for hand washing and for general clean up. I do not consider this water drinkable.