Safe Drinking Water - How to Cope while an crisis
What if you turned on your faucet and no water came out? That will never happen, right? Well, if the power grid went down, the municipal water furnish would soon be interrupted. A power grid failure could happen from terrorist hackers or simply from an overload like happened on August 14, 2003 Northeast United States, which plunged 55 million Americans and Canadians into darkness. A major economic collapse would be much worse, disrupting transportation and delivery of chemicals needed to treat the water. Don't count on bottled water being ready - store shelves are emptied within hours of a crisis.
The good news is that you can be self reliant very easily. While everyone might not want to be so prepared as to be able to fetch water from rivers and keeping ponds and drink it without worry, you can be that prepared very easily. However, it is principal to understand what is in the water that can make you very sick and what you can do about it.
Step 1: Start by Storing Some Water
Do I need to buy water jugs?
While you can buy 6 gallon plastic water jugs at Walmart for , this is not recommended. They cost too much money and too hard to move nearby (a full 6 gallon jug weighs about 50 lbs.). Instead, just rinse out 2 liter pop bottles and use them. They are free and you don't even need a extra "storage area" as you can put them in the back of the closet, in the car, or wherever you have a tiny space. The thicker two quart and gallon fruit juice bottles are also great. While they seem beloved on a lot of 'preparedness supply' websites, the blue 50 gallon water drums seem impractical for anyone without a dedicated survival retreat. If a hurricane is advent and you fear water may be interrupted, or just want a larger supply, there is an economical, hundred gallon bladder worth seeing into called the WaterBob, which you set in your bathtub and fill. It is worth seeing into building a bathtub sized box in your basement and putting one of these in for only .
Do Not use gallon milk jugs, as they are a pain in the neck. The plastic is too thin and will degrade in a few months, and unlike a two liter bottle, if you drop it you will have a big mess.
How much should I store?
The rule of thumb is that you need to store a gallon per day per person to ensure a good furnish for drinking, cooking and minimal sanitation (hand washing, dish washing and brushing teeth). This does not take into list bathing and laundry. Your water will go farther if you have some paper plates and cups and plastic utensils in your cupboard.
Step 2: Tap Your "Hidden" Sources of Water
By occasion your upstairs faucets, you can get anyone water is in the pipes from the downstairs faucets - it will simply drain out. Also, your hot water heater contains about 40 gallons of water! (Hopefully, you are in the habit of draining a gallon each month to drain off the rust or sediment, or you have a newer hot water heater.)
Remember that your toilet tanks have a incorporate of gallons of water as well. This is 'clean' water that has not flowed down into the bowl yet, but it should be treated as imagine water and purified (see below).
Step 3: Know How to Purify imagine Water
Having the supplies and know-how to get water from a keeping pond in your subdivision, or even a dirty river or lake, and make it totally safe and drinkable gives you a great feeling of security. That feeling is even good if you've ever had a waterborne illness like 'Montezuma's Revenge' or Giardia with its explosive diarrhea (yes, that is certainly a term from a curative book!).
There are three 'levels' of purifying your water that you should understand. That is not to say that you must take three steps, but rather there are three types of contaminants that you need to remove from your water to make it certainly safe and drinkable.
Level 1: Particulate Matter - "Scum and Floaties"
If you've ever had water from a well at a forest sustain that is brown from iron and minerals, it is small consolation that it is safe to drink. It is just downright unappetizing. Particulate matter includes anyone in the water that makes it cloudy or less than crystal clear. If you are dipping a bucket into a pond or river in an urgency situation, this is the first thing you'll notice. While all water filters will remove particulates, they will clog your filter and shorten the usable life of this precious resource. The best way to cope particulates is to let the water stand for 12 hours while the floaties determine to the bottom, then 'pre-filter' it by gentling pouring the water through some towels or cotton t-shirts. You should see a noticeable distinction in the water. However, it is not safe to drink.
Level 2: Bacteria / Protozoa / Voc's / Heavy Metals
The next group of things that you want out of your water can be eliminated through boiling (bring to a rolling boil for at least one minute). This kills the bacteria and protozoa, and the Voc's (volatile organic compounds - think fertilizers and other chemicals...) will boil off. The only qoute is that this will not eliminate the heavy metals (mercury, lead, etc), and boiling takes vigor (difficult when your stove doesn't work) and time for the water to cool back down before you can drink it. You can add iodine or bleach to kill off the bugs, but this will do nothing to get rid of the Voc's and the heavy metals. Therefore, a filter is the best selection if you are going to have to drink this water for any period of time (a incorporate of days of mercury and lead probably won't hurt you....)
Level 3: Viruses
While viruses are killed off by boiling, they are not typically eliminated with filters. The qoute is that the filter elements have to be so fine to eliminate viruses that the flow rate is very slow and most manufacturers outline that viruses are not as big a qoute in the Us, so they get ignored. This can be addressed by pretreating the water with iodine or bleach before it is filtered; the additive kills the viruses and the filter removes the bad taste of the additive.
Step 4: Buy a Berkey or Sawyer Sp 190 Filter and Rest Easy
If the power is out, a filter that mounts on your faucet will be worthless. So will Reverse Osmosis filters, which rely on water pressure to work. The only viable, foolproof selection is a ideas that needs only gravity to move water through a filter that will remove all things we have talked about. Two such filters are the Berkey, widely considered as the "gold standard", and the Sawyer Sp 190. There may be other filters ready that will remove viruses as well as all the other nasties, but these two are the best. (Note that Sawyer has an Sp 184 filter that is popular, but does Not remove viruses like the Sp190 model...) A Berkey comes with two filter elements that will furnish you with 6,000 gallons of safe water.
Step 5: derive Rainwater
Along with your filtration system, you will need to carry the water from the water source. Consider that five gallon buckets filled with water weigh about 40 pounds, so smaller packaging are more practical. The best clarification is merely purchasing a few extra plastic garbage cans for use as rain barrels. Just a half inch of rainfall will yield 300 gallons of water from a 1000 quadrilateral foot roof. That would fill ten Rubbermaid 32 gallon garbage cans that cost only each. (If you purchase a "rainbarrel" you can expect to pay dollars each for a 40 gallon barrel). A uncomplicated downspout diverter can be obtained for under , like the Emsco Universal Water Diverter ready at HomeDepot.com.
Summary
If you've read all things above and you take these precautions, you'll never have to worry about the most important commodity you need to survive. Storing some water and getting a good water filter takes approximately no extra time. The rainbarrel setup takes a trip to the store and you don't even need to set it up unless something bad happens.
