Frankenstorm - A Tip For Storing Water

I hope everyone came through Hurricane Sandy and Frankenstorm with no problems. I also hope you were all prepared with a minimum 72 hours of food and water and that your car was gassed and ready to go.

White Orange Juice Containers of Water

Here's a little tip for those who don't have much room to store food, water and other supplies. Fill some jugs HALF-FULL with water  (I use a 2 L pop bottle and 4 L empty orange juice containers) Put those jugs of water in your freezer, filling up all the empty space. Use 500 ml empty water bottles if you can't fit a big jug or bottle in.

When the water is frozen, put them in your refrigerator. Put MORE in the freezer and when those are frozen, leave them there.

If your power goes out the jugs and bottles of water will help keep your food cold and thus be available to eat. If you run out of water you can defrost the frozen jugs and bottles and bingo, there's fresh clean water for drinking.

And if you happen to have empty space in your freezer, keep some jugs or bottles of water in there all the time, don't wait for a storm warning. This will not only provide you with instant water and a method of keeping food cold, it also saves energy because a full freezer doesn't have to work as hard.

How Much Water Do You Need & How Fast Can You Get It?

An adult needs between 3 to 5 litres of water (2 to 3 quarts) each day to survive. It's a good idea to plan on 1 gallon per person (2.3 Litres) daily. This allows for extreme heat or physical labour conditions when you need more water.

We save 1 gallon orange juice containers, wash them out well with hot soapy water, then fill with cold tap water. Since we live in a very cold climate in winter we can't store them outside so we can't keep as many as we'd like.

Right now we have 26 1-gal. jugs filled with water, and more empty clean ones hanging in the barn, ready for use. So that gives my wife and I 13 days of water.






Three Weeks of Water in Orange Juice Containers & 5-Gallon Jugs

On top of that my wife has filled 4 5-gal plastic water jugs (the kind you buy at Wal-Mart or when you are buying water at a water depot) and we store those in a closet. Those larger bottles give us 20 gallons, enough for another 10 days. So we have 23 days of water for each of us.

Why do we bother filling those big jugs? Well, they still take up room even empty. Yes we could put them in the barn or garage but they would likely have mice or squirrels running on top of them. That means we'd want to disinfect them before we filled them.

It Takes Four Minutes & One Person to Fill One Empty Jug

Also we tried a little experiment this morning. The jugs won't fit under our taps in any sink or bathtub. So one adult has to stand there and hold the bottle at an angle while it fills in the tub, or hold the spray nozzle at the kitchen sink to fill one.

And each bottle took us 4 minutes to fill. If we wanted to fill 4 empty 5-gal bottles it's going to take 16 minutes and tie up one adult! We might not have that much time or we might have other urgent tasks that need doing.

So we fill them ahead of time and store them in a closet. You can see that we actually have room for 4 big jugs and about 5 or 6 smaller orange juice containers in this one closet. It's not a big deal to give up that little bit of space to be prepared.

If you're wondering where the rest of our filled orange juice containers are, my wife puts them on shelves in a basement room which is cool and dark. We have a closet in the basement that we could use too if we want to have more handy.

Easy Ways to Save & Store Water for Emergency Survival

This is a 3.78L (almost 4 quarts) jug that used to contain orange juice. Every time I finish one, I wash it well and fill it with tap water. Then I add it to my water storage for emergencies.

An adult needs between 3 to 5 L of water daily to survive. This jug has enough water to keep me alive for one day.

This is one of the best ways to make sure you have enough water in an emergency.

Below you can see enough water to keep one adult alive for 5 days (5 jugs).

Yes they take up room, but they can go on shelves in a closet, on the floor of a closet, in a basement room, or if you don't have snow and freezing temperatures, you can store them in a garage or barn or even on your porch.

I'm experimenting this winter with filling some 3/4 full (to allow for expansion) and putting them in my barn.

Last winter I tried using the disposable containers you can buy for water coolers but they cracked. I think I might try the tougher non-disposable ones this year.

We have other stores of water too. My wife keeps 4 of the water cooler jugs filled and in a closet. We also have several trays of bottle water and try to never let them get below two extras in the house at all times.

But the orange juice containers are so handy we have about 35 filled and stored now, plus about 2 dozen empty ones strung on a bungie cord in the barn. We can quickly fill those if we have warning of a disaster possibility. And we're adding more every week each time we finish a jug of juice.

Making a Manual Pump for a Drilled Well for Water

 Do you know what this is? It's an essential part of our essential survival preparation.

We have a drilled well, so in any non-power emergency, we won't have running water. It would take a very long time to try to lower a tiny container and draw water up so I'll be building a manual pump.

I'll also have what I need on hand to build more than one in case one breaks.

We plan on 3 months at our home but if a crisis lasts longer or looks like it's long term from Day One, we have a GOOD plan (GOOD=Get Out of Dodge) and won't need a manual pump for a well.

Since you need to Prepare for the Worst and have multiple backup plans, that's exactly what we have.

This is part of our short-term (3 months or less) Survival Plan.

Water Water Everywhere...

Water Water everywhere and not a drop to drink? Hopefully you've planned your water storage for emergency situations. An adult requires 1 to 3 litres of water daily so for one month you need 30 to 90 litres! That's for ONE ADULT. Phew. That's a lot of water.

This past weekend I purchased several rain barrels. They hold 200 litres of water so a full one is good for my wife and I for at least one month, perhaps longer. I set one up yesterday on the deck and added a spigot so I can have a tap and a hose to drain the water out. I'll use it for watering my herbs grown in window boxes on the deck. And it will be one of three that we're going to set up around our house and outbuildings.



We have a small garden shed which only needs a bit of eaves troughing and bingo we can set up another rain barrel. We have another larger shed which can be set up easily too. That gives us 3 200-litre rain barrels, enough water to last the two of us for 3 months or more.



Rain barrels plus large containers of water stored in your basement or closet are a good way to be sure you have enough water on hand for any crisis or emergency situation.