My father always stored water in two.liter soda bottles in the garage. As youngsters we thought he was quirky. One day their was an announcement to boil water as a storm caused excess water that the treatment plant could not treat. We checked at the store and all bottled water was bought. The shelves were empty except for seltzer water. When we got home we went gleefully to the garage and brought my Dad's bottles of water into the house. He never said a word. But the expression on his face said it all.
Don't forget that most canned vegetables have sufficient water in the can for heating/cooking. When draining the liquid after cooking veggies, I save it in a quart canning jar in the refrig. adding to it during the week. Then once every few days I use it for making pasta, rice or a base for soup/stew.
My girlfriend has 10 years of food storage. She's 80 years old. Each year she donates a years worth of food to the food bank and adds new food to her stock. She said she will always do this. She has 3 months of drinking water and one year of water for showers and dishwashing. She rotates her 3 month water supply every month.
Under the "where do you store it" tab. It's fairly discreet to run a rain gutter (or two) through the wall of your house into your basement. No need to connect it until shtf or run a splitter so it can run outside into the ground or inside to your tanks at your discretion. Benefits of having that inside the basement is you can greatly reduce how much sunlight can reach it. And it's hard for overhead cameras or outside prying eyes to spot them
A pop-up tent can be a great way to capture rain water as the top canopy can be inverted to act as a giant funnel. Probably cleaner than capturing off of a roof.
I use 6 stackable 5 gallon containers (figure about 1 per day for our family) for drinking water stored in the garage and repurposed 5x55 gallon barrels for non potable water uses outside. It's a strange sense of satisfaction once you have these preps in place! Thanks for the video.
Wanted to add one personal experience in regards to pools as a water source. Grew up with a pool in CA and thought of it as a backup plan. When an earthquake struck nearby, it cracked the pool and 80% of the water was gone in a few hours.
Ke Y, she the 1989 quake hit the SF Bay Area the water in many pools sloshed back & forth before jumping out of the pool & wiping out vegetation. Generally, it wasn’t available for reuse in many places. But many public pools have large boulders for heating the water. Like your home water heater, they are sources of fresh water. The safety committee on my condo’s HOA proposed, & got approved a simple conversion during the current upgrade & replacement of each buildings’s 600 gallon tank hot water heater to be able to be tapped into. No or low Addison all cost because work was planned anyway.
Maybe you would drink out of the swimming pool, but I surely wouldn't. It has bodily fluids and skin cells and that is just so gross. I'd rather go down to the river with my Sawyer water filter rather than drink from a swimming pool.
Great information. I bought a Berkey system a couple of months ago and I love it! I ordered the Big Berkey (2.25 gallon), but it was out of stock. The company offered me the Royal (3.25 gal) for the same price. Of course I took it. 😁
Berkey also has a "scratch and dent" sales; I purchased the Royal and saved over $100; the dent was a tiny little one which is hidden by the lid. I love my Berkey!
FYI: You CAN go longer than 3 weeks without food. I've personally gone 4 weeks on just water and I had begun that fast at a normal healthy weight. I never missed a day of work during that time and most work days I took a 30-minute walk during my "lunch" break. Granted that there were times when I felt weak, but those would pass. Most people these days have no idea of how far you can stretch yourself when needed. Also, all too many people in America are overweight, so they could probably go much longer than I did. And research is proving that fasting is actually a very HEALTHY thing to do. In fact, it is much healthier to fast than to go on short rations. So make shelter, water, fire your top priorities. The food can wait. If food is scarce, it is better to go without than to ration; your body will go into protein conservation mode (autophagy) to prevent muscle wasting, but autophagy gets turned off once even a small amount of protein is ingested.
@@The_real_onefs LOL - Yes, I have. I worked every day during a 28-day fast, walked during my "lunch break," mowed my own lawn, etc. Was it easy? Hardly. Did I get things done? Certainly.
Our cat died a year ago,and rodents showed up.We were in a drought and they chewed up gallon jugs of water I had stored in the basement,even chewed thru my water hoses to get to the residual water.Had to use poison,which I don't like to do.Another cat definitely needs to be in our future.But in drought situation this has shown me what the wild critters will do.
Christie Betts >>> Sorry about your Kittie and for the rodent damage. Mice got into my camper trailer last Winter and destroyed it. They were even up in the a/c ducts and chewed through the ceiling. It's totalled and now worth only what I'll be able to get for salvage. I see that your post is a year old. Hopefully, you have added another cat to you family by now. Happy mousing, Kitty!
Great resource. I have the Lifestraw as well as one other water filter for emergency situations. I started buying the Kirkland water bottles from Costco. For the low cost of $3.99CDN, you can buy a package of 40x500ml bottles. They stack well and are easily moved around. More recently, I have been eyeing the empty 4000 gallon cistern that forms part of our garage floor (no town water when my house was initially built) and I have been considering resurrecting that entire system with a view to cleaning out the cistern, pumping out the water and topping it up! Using one gallon/person/day that would last 800 days. Either way, its an improvement over designing water availability for 90 days...
I'm very happy with the WaterBrick containers. Each one holds 3.5 gallons of water, and they interlock to each other when stacked. So they are great for your home, and even when filled, they can be transported fairly easily if you must bug out!
I've lived with no hot water before. To bathe I heated a gallon and half in a huge coffee pot. Poured it into a bucket with 1 1/2 - 2 gallons cold water. Put in a splash of hydrogen peroxide and used a 32 oz cup to pour over myself in the rv shower. Shampooed up and soaped up. Then rinsed. Japanese style shower. It can be don on 3 gallons total. To cook and drinking water for myself a cat and chicken, plus cleaning took about 2 gallons. So I now plan 5 gallons per day is more realistic. I get free food grade buckets at my local bakery, 3 1/2 gallons. To get the frosting smell out of them I wash and soak them in white vinegar water and dish soap. These lids are so good, I had to buy a bung wrench to be able to open them. I have about 30 of these, stacked 3 high, max. In the bottom of my closet and in the living room. I put a long board on them and covered them with attractive fabric. There is enough bleach in them from our water treatment plant to keep the water good even though I change the water out every year. I have a Berkey to filter it anyway. If it tastes stale aerate it. Pour it from bowl to bowl, allowing it to catch oxygen in the stream from the pouring process. You can always buy a water bob if you know a storm is coming. But it blocks the tub. Buy a small blow up kiddie pool to Japanese bathe in. It is easily emptied into a bucket and poured down a drain. I also keep a few cases of bottled water around for ease of use and sharing in disaster. 5 minutes ago
Good thinking. If it is summer, you can also heat a solar camp shower outside and bring it in when it is the right temperature and somehow hang it up in your shower. Those things really work!
I've been travelling as a kid and taken what my mom called "sink baths". Wash cloth & bar of soap, minimal water. Could in water rationing situation use a large bowl of water to rise out wash cloth reduce the h20 consumption. The kiddie pool is great idea. Use sun to heat water.
Great vid and quality. I did want to point out a few items. You mention containers should only be PET or PETE. Those blue drum and containers you show are neither. Most likely they are HDPE, PE or PP or another variant of polyethylene(PE) or polypropylene(PP). Also polycarbonate(PC) is fine, don't believe all the hype on the BPA but PC will have traces of it. More important is ensuring it is food grade or FDA approved to ensure purity of the plastic. On the issue about storing the drums direct on concrete, its the lime in the concrete that has the negative impact long term on the plastic. It will cause it to become brittle and allow it to eventually crack and leak. On your hot water tanks, to ensure max amount of usable water drain some water out a few times a year to flush the sediments and other junk out of the bottom. Pick up a piece of RV water hose to make your life easier. Also if you can find a food grade rubber hose those are also great but expensive. DON'T use standard garden hose for potable water. Yes when we were kids we used to drink out of them all the time. But those were the good 'ol days when things were made here in the USA using quality materials. Now days this stuff is made in asian hole in the walls where the PVC is often loaded with things like lead, it's high in heavy metals and other junk. So just remember that before you slurp on the end of that hose. Also note, liquid chlorine will only last a few months sitting on a shelf before it breaks down and basically becomes salt water. Check out Clorox's site if you don't believe me. If you can store some pool chlorine powder, that stuff will last indefinitely.
Thanks for pointing that out on the blue drums...I will check that out. Agree on the water hoses...I just use our RV water hose for filling these up. Regarding Chlorine, while we have it on handy in the laundry room, I now recommend in my videos to have Pool Shock stored away as it won't break down which you point out. I appreciate the feedback...all very useful information I can use in the future.
@@CityPrepping DO NOT USE POOL SHOCK, it has added chemicals that you do not want to drink. Check the material safety data sheet! Sodium Hypochlorite is what you want. You can mix it with water to make household bleach. Provident Prepper has a great use on safe use and storage of the powder,
I had 35% hydrogen peroxide in the plastic container it came in. The jug came with a plastic bag over it for extra protection. I had it for years. Eventually when I checked on it I noticed the bag was ballooning and the plastic failing.
I saves a ton of money on 55 gallon drums. I called the water municipal and asked for some they gave them to me free of charge. They had the purification chemicals they use to clean our tap water. They gave me other sizes too give em a call especially if you pay water bills.
@@rbmwiv And chlorine. Because these substances are better than not having them, if dosed properly. Proper dosage has negligble adverse effects (may increase your risk of developing cancer by about 0.3% in your liftetime), but nearly eliminates the otherwise-significant risks of dying from more dire illnesses.
As always, a great video. In an emergency, we have found that harvesting rain water yields the best results. 1/2 inch of rain on a 1000 sq.ft. roof can yield up to 550 gallons of water. We have a metal roof, which is better than collecting rain from an asphalt roof. We then pour this water into our Big Berkey water filtration unit for our drinking and cooking water. We also use rain water to flush toilets. We are looking into a more advanced system of collecting rain water, that will have a charcoal filter system, along with a UV Filtration System. In addition, we will then have that water connected into our household plumbing, powered by a Solar Powered Pump. We also store water in other ways, for those periods of no rain, should our rain water supply be depleted. We also have a well. In addition, we have several Katdyn and Mini-Sawyer water filtration units, in our packs. We recently ordered a couple of Berkey Water Bottle Filtration Systems. One is none, two is one and three is better and so on! "Water is Life!" ☺
@Rick Sabian, Yes, I researched this subject before we moved forward with the installation. Sadly, certain states are governing their population so close that they have no freedom. Yet, the local governments aren't doing anything about Lake Mead and Lake Powell, etc. They knew these lakes were drying up for years. Now they want to transfer water from Lake Michigan, and the Great Lakes to fill Powell and Mead. I'm sorry, but if I lived on Lake Michigan, I would have a fit. Pull water from the ocean, using a desalination plant, capturing the salt and then selling the salt to help pay for the system. We send billions of dollars abroad to assist others in useless wars, but we can't help our American citizens in desperate need?
To all my fellow Texans, HEB has their gallon water bottles for $0.68!!! Stock up now before the price goes up. 16 gallons for $10.00 is a hell of a deal.
And for those living in areas like I do, remember you can boil that snow for washing clothes, doing dishes, and if you know how, drinking. Been there and done that... Julia
Melting ice is even quicker because the snow has a lot of air pockets in it so you have to keep adding more of it. You could compress the snow into a snow ball of sorts and it will actually go faster.
@KamekoBruns .......only a moron thinks like you do.......pilots themselves will tell you that they are paid to use chemicals that go into their tail wind.........do your homework......
I used to represent a major water company. Do not use the 5 gallon containers that are delivered to the home. People store meth/gasoline/pee in them. Cannot get them clean. Go to the paint department of Home Depot. Look on the bottom of the plastic buckets. A "2" means food grade. You can get the more expensive twist on lids and use the cheap containers for storage of other items than water. Do not bother rotating your water unless you have something visual growing in it. Chlorine loses potency starting at about month 3. Get the PROPER pool shock. $7 a pound. Treats 17,000 gallons. Understand that filtering is not the same as purifying water. Moreover, nothing is going to effectively remove heavy metals/radiation. Do not store in soft drink 2 liter plastic bottles. The plastic will not last indefinitely in storage. Use the UN single two liter pop bottle is purify, but not filter "bad water". Use a coffee filter to filter some of the garbage out. Concept used in third world countries. Takes 6-8 hours of direct sunlight. Find on youtube how to make a dual 2 liter bottle solar distiller. The bottles are inverted with a plastic pipe going barely into the lower bottle and way up to near the top (really the bottom of the inverted upper bottle to catch the vaporized water. The caps are drilled to have the tube run through and glued together. When the good upper bottle is nearly full, you simply unscrew the lower bad bottle. Then you invert the good bottle right side up and unscrew. Bingo, you have clean water. Then you cap with an extra cap you have handy. Find
Well, pee is sterile, so is meth (which is made with disinfecting chemicals anyway). The gasoline is more worrying, but you can easily know by smell if something has been used to store gas. And if it was made after the ban of leaded gas, you should be OK.
IF you experience water emergency, the most important thing you can do to isolate your homes water supply is to SHUT OFF the main valve at the water meter. This way your water stays in your house's plumbing to drain for your use. IF you don't shut it off, contaminates from outside can enter your last water OR depending on your elevation, your water can be siphoned out of your house. You can access your entire plumbing remaining water is to open the highest valve in your home, go to the lowest and drain what you need. Your hot water tank drain valve may be the lowest water valve in your home. Air will enter the high valve, and water will drain out the low valve. Regularly drain a little water out of your hot water tank. This keeps the valve in good shape and not crust over, and also drains out any contaminates in the bottom of the tank as the tank ages.
If you know your water supply is not contaminated yet but soon will be or will soon be cut off then you may want to fill your bathtub full of water first and then shut off the valve. Even if you don't have a liner for the tub you should probably do this. This would be appropriate in a hurricane with heavy flooding or a blackout over a large area for a couple of examples. This extra water could come in handy even if you already have a large supply stored.
SpockMcoy - (or anyone), Thanks for the info you provided. Do you know of an easy way to completely disconnect from the entire "drainage" grid? I'm concerned that as my neighbors start stuffing the surrounding drainage pipes it will back into my house. I'm think about installing a butterfly valve in the sewage pipe. I also have floor drains in my basement, can I just "cork" those and be okay? Thanks!
I live at a rainy area. I always have rain barrels at my backyard, I use the water for housing cleaning, and laundry in daily life. I can save my water bills but in case of emergency, it can be my drinking water after careful handling.
I would suggest to you to build a sand filter(AKA a natural bio filter). Lots of building info on U-tube. For water you need to drink put it a covered glass container and put it in the sun for a day and let the UV kill the germs. Bleach also works.
I collected used laundry soap bottes from the laundry rooms where I live. Cleaned them out and put a few drops of bleach in each bottle, and refilled. This is the water storage for the toliet. They are clearly marked toliet only. I used 2 liter pop bottles to store drinking water. Everything is dated and rotated evry six months.
Donna Dorrell I have been using 2 liter bottles also. When I first filled them I didn't add bleach. It's time to rotate, wash and refill so I'll add a few drops to each this time. I have used (clean) kitty litter jugs for washing., they are 2.5 gallons I believe and safe plastic. If worse comes to worse, I can run it through a Berkey to remove residual clumping agent and perfumes.
Love that you are putting down the cheap ways of storing or prepping...to many are just out there to sell a product...are those products ideal sure..but the average person doesnt always have these funds to purchase and many dont even try to prep due to this...trust me shtf no one is gonna care if its in a laundry bottle or some store bought product..it will be desperate times..and people will only care to survive on whatever they can without dying from it.
I, too live in the desert. The southwest high desert in NM. Therefore, water is a vital resource to capture and store. A family unit of five- 2 Adults, three four-legged companions (dogs), I've managed to store six weeks worth of water @ 5 gallons of water per person (per day) and 1 gallon for our pets. This volume will address our HH needs- for hydration, cooking, and heigene at a bare minimum. I have chosen the Katadyn TRK drip Ceradyn Gravity fed filter for processing our drinking water. For back-up and mobility, I recommend the Solarbag water filter and Steripen Ultra. I felt encouraged to hear- you where working on a water harvesting catchment system. That is a project I've started- currently have set up 3 -55 gallon barrels. An additional step plan, is to install two- 275 gallon IBC tank to the harvesting system. I'm also, working on attaching a filtering system to the catchment using Zeolite sand. As a new subscriber, may I ask if you'll address the topic of off-grid sanitation? Looking forward to your next video. Thank you for this informative video. - MJ
+MJ NM thanks for the feedback and sharing your setup. Sounds like you've made a lot of progress...I've got a ways to go but I'm getting there. About your request, "may I ask if you'll address the topic of off-grid sanitation" ... I'll put that request in my queue right now. I have a degree in microbiology and worked in the food industry for 8 years so learning sanitation was a big part of my life and I'll work on that one very soon.
Thank you :) It is my understanding, in a grid - down situation, sanitation is critical in preventing illness and death. Poor sanitation, coupled with a limited resource of water, people may choose to overlook proper sanitation inorder to conserve water. Poor sanitation will be a leading factor in spreading illness and death. -MJ
I have about heard city ordinances that don't allow harvesting of water. I believe the concern is that harvesting will lower the water table and cause problems for city wells. People with cisterns might be their target. Haven't heard anyone bring up the subject cisterns for water collection. I believe people in Europe and island communities more commonly use these than the United States.
Hi City prepper the more I watch the more I like! I agree after extensive research I purchased the big Berkey I got four filters we use two filters in our house for every day drinking water. I purchased a second big Berkey with a Nother four filters that I'm keeping for an emergency. So I have six filters in my preps. My thinking is in an SHTF I will be a very valuable resource to others if I can hand out a few gallons of clean drinking water to other people every day. I have a very large pond and to wellheads on my property. I also have hundreds of coffee filters to pre-filter the water before I put it in the Berky.
canadian gamer i was 16 when i started im 21 now.. i would buy alittle canned food and pastas along with 2 gallon waters.. eventually you will see it grow trust me
You can start now if you wanted, Mcdonalds is hireing people 15 and up at least around my area. You can use that money to buy a good deal of the stuff you need early on if you have the time to spare.
Got a pretty good tip for ya. I have four water barrels catching water outside. I use a very inexpensive emergency blanket, the ones for a dollar, to tarp them with. That works great to keep sun off. There not in direct sunlight but it keeps heat off. Works great. I do temp checks you would be amazed. Stay healthy and God bless 😊
Excellent tutorial! I use the FEMA recommendation of 5gal/person/day. A month's supply would require 11-55gal drums. Apartment dwellers are limited by the weight-bearing capacity of the flooring, and space.
yeh, every story i've heard of people that have been in bad situations after a storm say the same thing: they underestimated how much water they'd use and ended up using a lot more in the end. more is definitely better when it comes to water.
For apartment dwellers, store your water in 1 or 2 liter bottles. You can stack and store them on the floors of closets, etc if you lay them down and stack them like logs. Just make sure the lids are on tight. You can store your dry goods and supplies the same way. You'll be surprised how much stuff you can store in a small space and its all in a portable condition.
Aren't they recommending a 6 month supply for each person? I believe they released a new article yesterday stating something to this effect. Holy smokes. I feel the only reason they are coming out now and telling us this now, is because FEMA will not help us when a disaster strikes. They've already said they are handing over the reigns to our State amd local government. So when a FEMA disaster strikes, they can say, "Hey, we told you but you didn't listen." It'll be their way of not accepting accountability and being able to kill us without remorse.
@@keilrothlisberger1228 Never trust the government to come to the rescue in times of need. Just look at Hurricane Katrina. They sent police out to ILLEGALLY CONFISCATE guns from citizens!!!
That's too much water....water should be used as sparingly as possible bcoz you don't know how long the emergency will last....it could be months or even yrs (probably not yrs but you never know...that's the point....you never know)...you could save lives❤️
Excellent video! We use water bricks, the titan ready water system and gallon bottles of spring water picked up at the grocery store. We love our Berkey! Even with all this I'm always looking for ways to store more water. I want a rain catchment system, but have fears about spillover and damage to the foundation of our home.
Just installed two large rain barrels, and I'm filling and storing water containers after each rainfall, keeping the level low in the barrel. Also, we invested in a Berkey water filtering system, and it's amazing. It's a beginning.
Hallo from Israel!! I've being watching your videos for a while, they are very informative and easy to understand. One of the things I haven't seeing is about storing food and watter for pets and how to care for them in an emergency situation. I belive that most pet owners won't want to live them behind. Thank you.
I got a Berkey, Sawyer Mini, Survivor Pro filter and a steripen Opti that covers in house and if I'm out walking around. Also good to carry some coffee filters if you're out in the woods you can dry them out after using them and they will be great for starting a fire
I have a rain barrel water collection system and use this water directly for watering plants, drinking, and cooking. The water for drinking and cooking is filtered using a reverse gravity Berkey system. I keep (4) 50-60 gallon food grade barrels in a cool area of my home up on concrete blocks to enable us to get the water out easily. I put about a shot of bleach in each barrel after it has been filled up. The barrels are rotated in and out so our water supply isn't older than a year or so. When we are ready to drink the water, it is filtered in the Berkey as is our outdoor 110 gallon rain barrel. We have enough water on hand for 3-4 months depending on how many people we have here. Presently 2 of us live here. What I don't have is 5-7 gallon heavy duty plastic containers for an emergency if we have to leave quickly. That is a great idea and one that I will be implementing soon. Thanks for your video, much appreciated!
Good video! Regarding bleach: Clorox recommends 4 drops of UNSCENTED bleach per quart of water, or 1/4 tsp for 1.75 gallons of water, then let it rest thirty minutes before using. Properly treated water should have a slight chlorine odor. Use only plain bleach (and it doesn't have to be Clorox brand). Regarding emergency water storage: if you don't have the blue containers, your bathtub will work in a pinch. The average bathtub will hold ~80 gallons of water. You should clean it first with soap, water, and bleach, then rinse it thoroughly. Fill it completely, then use it for washing and flushing, and maybe cooking where you will boil the water first. Add 11-1/2 teaspoons of bleach to the 80 gallons of water if you're going to be using it for consumption purposes, then stir the water. Regarding use of toilets: when water is scarce, the rule is, "if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." With no running water, there is no way you should be flushing your toilet every time you use it. If you can pee outside safely, do it. Save your toilet for pooping. (remember to stock extra toilet paper!) You don't need clean water to refill your toilet's reservoir. if you're unsure how much to add to it when refilling, take the cover off the reservoir and look at the level when full. Mark that level with a Marks-a-Lot pen, then use that mark as your guide to refill it. Remember, 3 days without water, and you're a goner, and your end won't be pretty. Do NOT drink water from your gutters or a downspout, either.. It is estimated almost 4 million people die of bad water and the bacteria in it every year; there are at least 10 types of bacterium that can be found in impure water that can and will kill you. Here in America, our guts won't tolerate bad water at all since we're so used to drinking nothing but pure water all our lives. You've got to have pure (potable) water for consumption. Once power goes off, in the city the water towers will run out of water in less than a day or so, as it takes electricity to refill them. If the power goes out and you have reason to believe it's a widespread/regional outage, start filling your pots and other clean containers with water. This includes filling your tub(s). Same goes for you rural folks. If you can't run your well pump, you need to find a way to get and purify water.
Something to consider, the Berky replacement filters run about $100 for two. Using a pair of these filters and a couple 5 gallon buckets will make an expedient filtration system for about $200 less. Not pretty, but if you are on a budget, it would work. Side note, to test those filters, run water with red food coloring in it through, no other color. They will filter the coloring out.
thanks for that tip. i considered going that route with food grade buckets, but that would have been a bit of an eye sore in the kitchen, but you are correct. decided to go for the shiny looking option :)
Since I live off-grid, and take my advice from my own real-life experiences, I must make a correction. I can't remember the name of the agency (back in the 1950's) that suggested 1 gal./person/day, but from my own experience which has now lasted more years that I had ever expected, it is almost impossible to exist long-term in the winter months on 1 gallon/day. The summer heat can greatly multiply that number. The bare minimum, without going crazy and giving-up on life is 3 1/2 gallons/day, then add another seven gallons/day if you wish to do laundry with an extremely efficient laundry system.
I go to a local sausage smoking company for 55 gal. white polyethylene barrels that came with food grade vinegar in them. They sell them empty and rinsed for $20. They clean and rinse out easily. I shake some hot water with baking soda in them then rinse with pure water. Some, I cut the tops open with a sawzall, insert a brass garden hose valve 2" from bottom, and use them for fermenting beer in. The sides have markings every 5 gallons. Open like that they clean and sterilize real well with scotch brite scrubbers, hot soapy water, and bleach solution before hot water rinsing. 1 mil. painters tarps, taped over the barrel top with clear packaging tape, close the tops well enough to use them for primary/secondary fermenters (combined) for 40 gallon batches of brew. Set them on a sturdy counter or bench and gravity drain them through the hose spigot right into your kegs (or 5 gallon pails, if you're bottling...). Gotta still have fun if shtf....
I have stored water in my garage in Southern Kalifornia/Northern Baja Kalifornia for YEARS! As long as you use treated water (bleach in my case), store out of sunlight, and fill the containers as much as you can, the water will last forever. Water does not spoil. It will get stale, algae could grow. Mine has not done neither. You can filter, treat, and re-oxygenize the water prior to drinking to be extra safe, but again, water does NOT spoil!
I have the same space problem and was reluctant to store water in the hot garage. You made me think two different kinds of water. Drinking and cleaning/flushing. Thanks.
Thanks for the great video!!, To move my 55 gallon drum around I use a furniture dolly from Home Depot, there about $20-40 dollars. A quick couple of cuts to fill in the middle and your good to go!!
On the subject of the hot water heater idea mentioned I have 2 things to contribute. 1. Obviously be careful if you use it while you still have power. If you pull the exhaust to get water out of it. That is meant as a relief valve and will spray out forcefully everywhere and will burn you. 2. If you are in a power out situation and the water is warm or cold, it is a very good idea to boil it or use it as non-potable water. Over time debris and who knows what from the city line get deposited in the bottom of your tank. There are cases of people who drink cold water or even hot water out of their tank and get sick from a parasite or bacteria. The most common is Legionella. It causes a whole mess of things you don't want during an emergency. When your water is cooling off in that tank it will go through a perfect warm temperature stage in which bacteria and parasites can thrive. So yeah, be careful around the water heater, and boil that water before drinking it.
Project: Dren yeah, I don’t think so, Legionella needs moist air to breed. You should be able to use water in the water heater for a while. Eventually it may go bad. It it was bad to start then you’ve always had bad water. Flushing the bottom periodically is a good idea. Most stuff will settle out pretty quick. YMMV.
I can tell you all about Flint water I used to live in Flint and I moved away from Flint do to it making me sick I am still feeling the effects of the poisoning I got from the water and it's not fun. I do live in a new town now right by a fresh water lake and well water I am feeling better now I just wish my dad would of survived to be here to .
You mentioned the Black Berkey filtration system as quite expensive, but in the long run they are the cheapest of all. And for me, even cheaper as I looked around ...and instead of purchasing the ones with the fancy containers; I bought one online for $63 with two food-grade buckets with screwable lids and a spigot. All the holes were ready just like you were buying the fancy ones. It has the same Black Berkey filters which go for approximately $55 for one ...or two for $107. I've been using my 'Bucket Berkey' system for four years for all of my drinking and cooking needs (and for my large dog) and the water quality is still as high as ever. It is a little bit slower now than when I first got it, but as soon as I get around to using the plastic scrubbing pad I bought at the dollar store, it will then be as good as new. $63 vs 200-500 seemed like a great deal to me ...and I'm always looking for the biggest bang for my buck. GandolfTheWise
Jack L Oglethorpe Not really. If you have a larger tank you can use home filtration filters that filter to 1micron in particulates. The replacement filters are $15 at your local home depot and you can filter right from the source. It would also be a good idea to use larger tanks for rain catchment systems. If you stay below 500gal you can easily hide such systems in small sheds and landscaping.
Just so you know those black filters are activated charcoal filters. And the reason they get slow is because the charcoal is full and needs to be changed. Simply cleaning the filters dosnt make them good again. All the stuff you think your filtering out is not being filtered out. You should get new filters and replace them.
My Katadyn filter has been camping for over 30 years. Filters .2 micron which removes cysts of everything, this is the WHO recommendation. They last forever (the filter is cleanable) and have been in use around the world for many years. Not a cheap answer but time proven.
*_MOST IMPORTANT PREPS for STORED WATER:_* Get a few of the best gravity-fed ceramic water filters & a pressure cooker & you'll never have to worry about keeping stored water *_"good"_*. Get a few the largest dehumidifiers so you can pull water *_right out of the air!_* Get enough solar power to run your dehumidifiers in the event of grid down. He covered some of these points. Awesome video!
Christian Prepper thanks for the feedback. About the dehumidifier, not entirely sure if it it'd work in our environment since we practically live in a desert. thoughts?
Very true. The dehumidifier, as with all recommendations, are subject to region & personal situation. I live in south Texas. *_Extremely_* humid almost year round. We are currently pulling an average of 7gal a day with just one of our 3 dehumidifiers. I've mounted them in the attic because the air is more humid than inside but it keeps them from being exposed too much to the elements. I'm in the process of hooking them all up to my water supply to the house with a cutoff valve so I can go off grid *_in the city._* Obviously all this is in addition to our water stores & is subject to damage off my solar panel array.
Christian Prepper yeh, you guys are swimming in the storms down there right now...us here in So Cal, we're on the other side of that equation with fires starting up in our area yesterday...so dry.
City Prepping A few years ago I had a wake up call with the devastating brush land fires here in Texas. Fortunately I personally wasn't effected by it, but it did make my wife & I discuss better preps for a house fire & even a fast moving brush land wildfire like those. We already had a smoke detectors & some power spring operated heat detectors. I really like those heats because they do not use any electricity & once you wind them up & set them UL reports they are good for 120yrs!!! So we spent almost $400 upgrading certain containers to metal, a few more fire extinguishers, & some fire retardant for some of the furniture. We also restructured our security to escape easier in the event of a fire because, even though its almost impossible for intruders to get in, we realized our house was potentially a death trap. As for large wild fires consuming the neighborhood we're still working on building a fire-break on the perimeter of our property. My only concern for Americans in So.Cal during a WROL is the border may burn! Love your website so much I'll be including it in my revised *PREPPER CHEAT SHEET* that I like to post. I wish people would print the whole thing out on some 3x5 cards, laminate them & keep it in the B.O.B. Your taking time to actually communicate me is encouraging. Thanks
Christian Prepper hey, do me a favor and send me over your Prepper Cheat Sheet if you wouldn't mind. My email address is in the "About" section of my channel. I've been thinking about creating one of those for my own B.O.B. and I'd love to see what you put together. I'm learning like everyone else in this community and I learn so many things from the community I would have never thought of on my own. Definitely would love to feature that in my family B.O.B. video which I play on making soon and will definitely credit you for that. Again, thanks for taking the time to share this info above. Glad to see people are getting more serious these days about preparing for disasters instead of being caught off guard when they happen.
Good information. Thanks a million. My covered water tanks with spigots on the bottom store water for general use. In a pinch can used for drinking after UV treatment from the sun. Because of the water spigots it is easy to drain and rotate the water out on a monthly basis. I do save some rain water and it is filtered via a two stage sand filter for general use. If SHTF and is really needed needed for drinking, it is stored in glass containers and left out in the sun for a day and UV rays to kill the germs.
We have (28) 5 gallon sealed water bottles currently in storage right now from a clerical error on the part of a water delivery company who kept delivering water (3 bottles a week) for 2 months after we stopped service, so we figured its a good start to keeping a reserve. Plus, they are easily portable and able to be given to friends/family in an emergency.
This is a great video I live in south Texas and it's hurricane season. So I'm getting ready before a storm enters the gulf keep the videos coming I'm sure they do a world of good thank you so much
The Waterbob (on Amazon) has a 100 gallon capacity you can fill up in your tub. This gave us peace of mind when we had forewarning that our water utility might be impacted as we had here in Texas a couple of days ago.
@@cajmutube2 If they're stored in zip lock bags I don't see why they would dry out. Every time I go go Taco Bell, K.F.C. etc I ask for the hand wipes & add them to my stash.
Good video and good advice man, water is a vital part of anyone's preps. I shall be bugging in to begin with if anything should happen and I have water stored and 'static' filtration methods such as a Berkefeld. It's also important though to have small, lightweight portable solutions such as lifestraw and Sawyer mini etc to make safe water that you 'obtain' or collect. Each individual in a group should have a personal water filtration system and know how to maintain it and how to pre-filter and make safe water.
After about a decade of use, I finally just gave up on the British Berkfeld. Now using a Sawyer. Much happier. Not ideal (I don't think there is an ideal filter) but so far I've been happiest with the Sawyer.
There are many different ways to store water. Underground cisterns can be made and built. You can also buy large water tanks for home storage above 500gal. If I had a home I would use a combination of all the ways. The best part about the larger tanks is you can use standard piping and replaceable filters to filter out that stored water. The filters go down to 1micron in filtration and can be bought for $15 a filter. You can bring a 650gal tank where ever you go. But it would be a great idea if you plan on bugging in.
I have heard of someone who used a new septic tank for water storage. Never used, of course. It could even be buried and a hand pump used to pump it out.
Need to watch those 50/55 gal drums with just the two bung caps. The plastic can stretch and the caps won't tighten down with a solid seal. Alternative is the 50/55 gal plastic drums with the single lid and metal collar. Don't need a pump with those either.
Berkey filters are expensive but if you are handy you can but the filters it uses and make your own filter out of food safe buckets. I did mine and i have been using it for the last year or so. Also if you put water on the sun for a hole day the uv rays will kill the bacteria. You will still need to clean the water from dirt though! 😃
A Silcock key would be very good for Urban/Suburban survival. Can be used to tap in to Office building water supplies on out side. Maintenance crews use them.
Please PRE-FILTER any non potable water prior to using the Burkley or other filtration system. You DO NOT want to gum up and greatly reduce the life of your (EXPENSIVE) Burkley filter. I run non potable water through a 5 or 1 micron sediment filter first!
My first water prep tip is to buy a bag of bbq charcoal and smash it up into tiny fragments , wash it and dry it then store it in a bottle . its lightweight ready and essential to filter water , if you can fill a bottle of washed sand also and dry that too and another bottle with small gravel . These Three bottles are all you need to grab for drinking filtration and can be kept in your car under the seat. i have a pair of old tights stretched over the bottles also for a debris filter and a coffe filter in the charcoal bottle to stop it being washed away .
I put my 55 gal container on wood too. I also wrapped them in that foil bubble wrap, i think its called Reflectix that i bought at lowe’s, then after i wrapped the sides, i created an overlapping top, to completely seal it up and be able to remove the top as needed. But i wrapped it to help keep light out, ensure the temperature can be stabilized and lastly, keep and dirt and dust off of it so i’m not potentially going to contaminate my water when i have to open it. Unfortunately i have to keep it out in the garage since i have no space in the house, so what i did is even more important.
the tap water here where I am in Indiana is chemically stable for 150 years. Truth. Did gobs of research on it. For us here it would be better to keep the tap water in glass or food safe containers. Just adding my experience with my local tap water. Love your video. Thanks for the work.
If you eat or have tons of vegetables you will probably loose weight you need to maintain your weight during a food shortage or at least (loose weight down to a healthy size then maintain lol) so point is get carbs to do this. Pasta, Rice, Beans. These are key and even better usually cheapest of most foods.
Why not create end tables out of those large barrels? Use a pre cut round wood tabletop usually found at Lowe's and maybe cover the barrel with colorful cloth and place wood eith painted, stained or left natural on top
If you are in to soda like I am, I would recommend saving the 2 liter bottles and rinsing them out a few times and rinse out the cap too, and adding water. This is also lighter than 5 gallon containers for people like me with bad backs.
yeah, artificial sweeteners are much better for your survival. lol. and please don't store water for children in plastic petroleum product containers. If you want them to be able to have children that is...Use glass or stainless steel please. Here's a question for you: If you had to leave right now with only what you can carry...will you take the soda or the water?
Stranger Horse actually the lemon lime soda can break up calcium kidney stones. I think I will still stick with plastic bottles as I don't have to worry about it shattering like glass ones. I also will be filtering this water as well. as for stainless steel ones, the cost is probably out of range for me.
240 Volts Well, at least regular soda vs. diet will give you calories and water doesn't have any at all. Plus some caffeine could be helpful. lol. If you are going mobile then glass won't work and we are all limited by what we can carry. I have a bad back too. But stainless containers are very durable and can be used for cooking - even it's just some boiled water for hot coffee or tea, maybe a soup packet etc. Best Regards : )
Your area may have a drum/barrel company that deals in used food grade containers. I have several 55 gallon barrels acquired from a local firm that still had traces of soft drink syrup (bits of labels, scent of Mountain Dew in the barrel). In 2008, they were $15 each. Haven't purchased any in a long time so not sure what the current price is. I flushed two of those earlier this week (cup of bleach then fill with water and let sit 30 minutes to an hour). The title of "Emergency Water Preparation" caught my eye as I haven't yet filled the barrels.
The 55 gallon drum on concrete is for steel drums. It causes corrosion. Plastic will be fine on the ground. There are also 2.5 gallon storage containers that stack very nicely and I can line the bed if my truck with them and put gear on top. They also stack similarly to Lego blocks so they can be stacked high as well. They have nice handles and a spigot cover for easy pouring. I can't remember where I got them though. But they were well priced and they work great. One last thing, you might mention pool shock as a bleach alternative. Bleach can lose effectiveness slowly over time due to chlorine being volatile, pool shock in powder form helps to prevent this loss. Thank you for the video.
Good info in this video. I would add the following for your consideration. H2O is heavy, 8.34 lb/gal, and there are 7.48 gal/cu ft. So plan your storage needs with this weight/area needs in mind.(be sure the floor or area you are going to use for storage is strong enough & large enough for your needs.) Water bladders are a viable alternative to barrels/jugs/cans, & have the benefit of being "amorphous", readily filling in odd shaped areas. "Grey water", that is water used for non sanitary uses(washing hands, bathing, food prep, etc) & not considered "potable" (drinkable) can then be used to flush the toilet, or water for animals. Water is more valuable than gold, most folks don't even consider its value until it becomes a crisis. I'm blessed with a great family & 26.5 yrs in the WasteWater field, & the ability & knowledge/experience to turn non potable water into potable. P.s. for arid area dwellers, might be a good time to study up on solar stills......just sayin' . God bless & pull together, or we will most certainly be pulled asunder!
GREAT video! It told me everything I could've (and did) needed to know and it answered all of my questions. It was SOOO helpful that you included all the links - I'm getting prepared! Thank you so so much for this awesome video! :)
I don't if I'm just imagining it, but a good time to rotate your water supply is right after your town or municipality releases its annual water report. The water seems to be really clean and treated at that time. I guess they realize that everyone pays a little extra attention to their water quality after looking at the report.
Hint: When treating water with bleach, add powdered Gatorade or Tang to the water lust before consuming to kill the yucky remaining bleach taste. Most commercial bottled water is treated with ozone prior to bottling. Kills bugs.
storing water is a great idea, but if you're going for long term sustainability, get yourself a generator, a couple dehumidifiers, and some 55 gallon barrels. set the dehumidifiers up on a raised platform and run hoses so they drain into the 55 gallon barrels, should work pretty well for anyone that doesnt live in a desert at least.
How to make quick water: 1. Get a pot and put a cup and water around it in the pot (do not drop water into the cup) 2. Turn the pot cover upside down 3. Heat it 4. You are now distilling water!
Waffle please explain this to me step by step This is for steam distilled water treatment I don’t understand what you mean with the cup like a coffee cup empty and put the water around it but the cover up side down heat it what’s with the empty cup what am I not understanding scientifically speaking
I mentioned that method above before I saw this. I forgot about turning the lid upside down. That's so the water (from the steam) that drips from the lid will drip into the inside pan or cup. The lid is higher in the middle, so upside down it will be the opposite...it will be lower. The water will run down the inside of the pan to the lowest point before it drips into the pan below it. This will be pure distilled water that collects in the inside pan or cup.
We've been drinking Carlo & Rossi Merlot that comes in a heavy-duty glass jug, then filling with minimally treated water when we are done with a jug. Over the years (decades) we have amassed several hundred gallons of water that is free of environmental contaminants--from a regularly tested deep well. We also rotate the water, using it in the garden and refilling, regularly. There are several methods we will use before using it for cooking or drinking. I'm happy that the water isn't sitting in plastic and isn't full of the normal contaminants of urban water. We son't rely on it, but it's nice to have.
Sir, I'm a retired firefighter/EMT, I think your info is spot on. I spent many years teaching these things to my community. I only have one question for you.......................Why are you 1st in such a hostile environment? 2nd why are you in a city environment? I IN NO WAY mean these questions to be disrespectful. Just curious? Thank you so much And may God Bless you and yours.
Great video. Other means of storing water I would like to point out is 275 IBC totes. These are usually used to store cooking oils in. Do not get the ones meant for lubricant storage. As far as a water filter. Using an alternating layering of sand, clean rocks, and activated charcoal in a 5 gallon pail with a small hole drilled to empty into a sterile container works too.
What about iodine tincture for water purification? In addition to killing micro-organisms, might it not also help with any potential radioctive problems for secondary events such as nuclear reactor meltdowns? Bleach(chlorine) is in fact a toxic chemical, but iodine is in fact protective of the body, even though the media hype tends to label it as toxic. What do you think? It also can be applied directly to wounds to prevent infection...
Iodine tincture does not protect from radiation. You can use high doses of iodine like in Lugol's solution to overdose your larynx with not radio-active iodine so when you are later exposed to radio-active iodine-isotopes your risk of larynx-cancer is much lower. Just because something is toxic to germs it is not automatically good to consume regularily.
thanks for the tip on an inexspisive shot gun. Im retired and am not able to work but I have been building up on my prepping as much as i can; thanks for the videos
Recommendation: During emergencies, any good substitute for pure water is a great substitute. Instead of devoting large amounts of storage space for bathing water, consider buying a couple thousand sheets of baby wipes or ass wipes for self-cleaning. Soldiers use this "bath in a box" to wipe themselves clean all over without water. It is a dry and effective way to make yourself just clean enough to survive.
The problem with relying on chlorine for keeping your water pure is that the chlorine will evaporate out relatively fast. Unless you're lightning-quick about sealing your water, I doubt you'll be able to keep enough inside to suppress microbes. For the cell bio lab classes I've taken, whenever we wanted to prepare water for supporting life (and didn't care about keeping it sterile) we would leave it out overnight open to the air, to let the chlorine dissipate. I don't know how long it takes for chlorine to dissipate, but I'd guess it's not long enough.
Look at the survivor filter pro or the survivor filter. I think they have 3 models. I tested my survivor filter pro with 6 months old fish aquarium water be and it tasted clean.
I put anti- mice packets all around my water supply, mice hate the smell. You can also keep mice out of your vehicles with said packets. Had a mouse chew through a bottle of water in m vehicle prior to this discovery.
I have been prepping food for a couple of years now, but all this special equipment, etc of water just kinda freaks me out. I know how important it is though so I want to learn. We buy reverse osmosis water for our every day drinking water and I was just thinking of storing this up for emergency. Would that not work? And would I need to go through all this mind-boggling work for this as well? Newbie here :)
+Linda Hudson well the key is to have water on hand as sources can easily become containmented which is hard to handle even with filtration. It was the first step i took when i started prepping. Good luck and stay with it!
I think it sounds more mind boggling than it is. You can just add a few drops of chlorine in it, use it within six months, and/or boil it before using it. If it has never been opened, maybe you wouldn't have to do anything, I don't know. The longer it sits, the more likely something will grow in it, but it isn't a certainty that it WILL grow something. If it is city water it will already have chlorine in it. I plan to collect water and use a water filter when I use it just like I eventually will from the clear stream nearby. Life during SHTF will really be more complicated in a lot of ways and will leave little free time when we have to start doing things the hard way. Water purity is just another one of those things that we will have to ensure that we might not have to worry about now. We should mentally prepare for that reality too.
My town sells water at the processing plant for 25 cents for 100 gallons. Farmers fill up their large containers for animals but they also let you fill your own smaller containers with a hose.
My father always stored water in two.liter soda bottles in the garage. As youngsters we thought he was quirky.
One day their was an announcement to boil water as a storm caused excess water that the treatment plant could not treat. We checked at the store and all bottled water was bought. The shelves were empty except for seltzer water. When we got home we went gleefully to the garage and brought my Dad's bottles of water into the house. He never said a word. But the expression on his face said it all.
*Father's Knows Best* !
Cheeky man ☺️👍 good on him
"The prudent see danger and take refuge,
but the simple keep going and pay the penalty." - Proverbs 27:12
@@natsukanji9507 I'm writing that down! Thank you.
Don't forget that most canned vegetables have sufficient water in the can for heating/cooking.
When draining the liquid after cooking veggies, I save it in a quart canning jar in the refrig. adding to it during the week. Then once every few days I use it for making pasta, rice or a base for soup/stew.
Great idea!
Great idea! Good for you and good luck! God bless you and your family!
Having a supply of juice, broth and canned veggies are ways to add to possible water sources.
GREAT IDEA
And a lot of the vitamins & minerals are still in the water from those canned veggies! Using it IS an excellent idea, thanks for sharing that Susan!
My girlfriend has 10 years of food storage. She's 80 years old. Each year she donates a years worth of food to the food bank and adds new food to her stock. She said she will always do this. She has 3 months of drinking water and one year of water for showers and dishwashing. She rotates her 3 month water supply every month.
Therese Ward wow! What a woman! I love this
GOD bless her WOW! I’m inspired !
Just wondering where& how she stores all of those gallons? And does she have help as water is so heavy.
Awesome.. i think ill need to do more. Water is what we are lacking.
I m ordering more water right now for storage. We havea bunker.
Wow.
Under the "where do you store it" tab.
It's fairly discreet to run a rain gutter (or two) through the wall of your house into your basement. No need to connect it until shtf or run a splitter so it can run outside into the ground or inside to your tanks at your discretion. Benefits of having that inside the basement is you can greatly reduce how much sunlight can reach it. And it's hard for overhead cameras or outside prying eyes to spot them
A pop-up tent can be a great way to capture rain water as the top canopy can be inverted to act as a giant funnel. Probably cleaner than capturing off of a roof.
I use 6 stackable 5 gallon containers (figure about 1 per day for our family) for drinking water stored in the garage and repurposed 5x55 gallon barrels for non potable water uses outside. It's a strange sense of satisfaction once you have these preps in place! Thanks for the video.
+gordibito awesome! Sounds similar to my setup...congrats! It does feel good to get that in line.
Wanted to add one personal experience in regards to pools as a water source. Grew up with a pool in CA and thought of it as a backup plan. When an earthquake struck nearby, it cracked the pool and 80% of the water was gone in a few hours.
Ke Y, she the 1989 quake hit the SF Bay Area the water in many pools sloshed back & forth before jumping out of the pool & wiping out vegetation. Generally, it wasn’t available for reuse in many places. But many public pools have large boulders for heating the water. Like your home water heater, they are sources of fresh water. The safety committee on my condo’s HOA proposed, & got approved a simple conversion during the current upgrade & replacement of each buildings’s 600 gallon tank hot water heater to be able to be tapped into. No or low Addison all cost because work was planned anyway.
Casper what if you boil the water and use it afterwards? Would it be safe
Maybe you would drink out of the swimming pool, but I surely wouldn't. It has bodily fluids and skin cells and that is just so gross. I'd rather go down to the river with my Sawyer water filter rather than drink from a swimming pool.
@@Livetoeat171 -- Wait til you see what wild animals do in rivers! 😂
And people still swim in rivers too, by the way.
Great information. I bought a Berkey system a couple of months ago and I love it! I ordered the Big Berkey (2.25 gallon), but it was out of stock. The company offered me the Royal (3.25 gal) for the same price. Of course I took it. 😁
Boy were you lucky! LOVE the Berkey!
Berkey also has a "scratch and dent" sales; I purchased the Royal and saved over $100; the dent was a tiny little one which is hidden by the lid. I love my Berkey!
FYI: You CAN go longer than 3 weeks without food. I've personally gone 4 weeks on just water and I had begun that fast at a normal healthy weight. I never missed a day of work during that time and most work days I took a 30-minute walk during my "lunch" break. Granted that there were times when I felt weak, but those would pass. Most people these days have no idea of how far you can stretch yourself when needed. Also, all too many people in America are overweight, so they could probably go much longer than I did. And research is proving that fasting is actually a very HEALTHY thing to do. In fact, it is much healthier to fast than to go on short rations. So make shelter, water, fire your top priorities. The food can wait. If food is scarce, it is better to go without than to ration; your body will go into protein conservation mode (autophagy) to prevent muscle wasting, but autophagy gets turned off once even a small amount of protein is ingested.
Everybody is different LMFAOOOO, you aren't going to survive long. You have truly never done real work while your hungry and have no energy
@@The_real_onefs LOL - Yes, I have. I worked every day during a 28-day fast, walked during my "lunch break," mowed my own lawn, etc. Was it easy? Hardly. Did I get things done? Certainly.
👍🏼 YES! I also fast. Been 24 days with only water and felt fabulous! Will be 70 this year and still doing fasts😃
Our cat died a year ago,and rodents showed up.We were in a drought and they chewed up gallon jugs of water I had stored in the basement,even chewed thru my water hoses to get to the residual water.Had to use poison,which I don't like to do.Another cat definitely needs to be in our future.But in drought situation this has shown me what the wild critters will do.
Always have a cat or two around the place. Kittens are easy to obtain.
Christie Betts >>> Sorry about your Kittie and for the rodent damage.
Mice got into my camper trailer last Winter and destroyed it. They were even up in the a/c ducts and chewed through the ceiling. It's totalled and now worth only what I'll be able to get for salvage.
I see that your post is a year old. Hopefully, you have added another cat to you family by now. Happy mousing, Kitty!
I have a cat and I was wondering what you plan to do with them when it happens.
Buzz Barnes take care of the cat that's best as you can like a family member which they are they are finicky to find food for
Christie Betts 😳😳😳🤯🤯🤯
Great resource. I have the Lifestraw as well as one other water filter for emergency situations. I started buying the Kirkland water bottles from Costco. For the low cost of $3.99CDN, you can buy a package of 40x500ml bottles. They stack well and are easily moved around. More recently, I have been eyeing the empty 4000 gallon cistern that forms part of our garage floor (no town water when my house was initially built) and I have been considering resurrecting that entire system with a view to cleaning out the cistern, pumping out the water and topping it up! Using one gallon/person/day that would last 800 days. Either way, its an improvement over designing water availability for 90 days...
I'm very happy with the WaterBrick containers. Each one holds 3.5 gallons of water, and they interlock to each other when stacked. So they are great for your home, and even when filled, they can be transported fairly easily if you must bug out!
I've lived with no hot water before. To bathe I heated a gallon and half in a huge coffee pot. Poured it into a bucket with 1 1/2 - 2 gallons cold water. Put in a splash of hydrogen peroxide and used a 32 oz cup to pour over myself in the rv shower. Shampooed up and soaped up. Then rinsed. Japanese style shower.
It can be don on 3 gallons total. To cook and drinking water for myself a cat and chicken, plus cleaning took about 2 gallons. So I now plan 5 gallons per day is more realistic.
I get free food grade buckets at my local bakery, 3 1/2 gallons. To get the frosting smell out of them I wash and soak them in white vinegar water and dish soap. These lids are so good, I had to buy a bung wrench to be able to open them.
I have about 30 of these, stacked 3 high, max. In the bottom of my closet and in the living room. I put a long board on them and covered them with attractive fabric. There is enough bleach in them from our water treatment plant to keep the water good even though I change the water out every year. I have a Berkey to filter it anyway. If it tastes stale aerate it. Pour it from bowl to bowl, allowing it to catch oxygen in the stream from the pouring process.
You can always buy a water bob if you know a storm is coming. But it blocks the tub. Buy a small blow up kiddie pool to Japanese bathe in. It is easily emptied into a bucket and poured down a drain.
I also keep a few cases of bottled water around for ease of use and sharing in disaster.
5 minutes ago
Good thinking. If it is summer, you can also heat a solar camp shower outside and bring it in when it is the right temperature and somehow hang it up in your shower. Those things really work!
I've been travelling as a kid and taken what my mom called "sink baths". Wash cloth & bar of soap, minimal water. Could in water rationing situation use a large bowl of water to rise out wash cloth reduce the h20 consumption. The kiddie pool is great idea. Use sun to heat water.
Great ideas!!!
Next time buy a 3 gallon pressure sprayer tank. Connect a shower head or just use the sprayer that came with it.
You don't need to shower every single day. It actually is not that good for your skin but people do it anyway because they're so used to it.
Great vid and quality.
I did want to point out a few items. You mention containers should only be PET or PETE. Those blue drum and containers you show are neither. Most likely they are HDPE, PE or PP or another variant of polyethylene(PE) or polypropylene(PP). Also polycarbonate(PC) is fine, don't believe all the hype on the BPA but PC will have traces of it. More important is ensuring it is food grade or FDA approved to ensure purity of the plastic.
On the issue about storing the drums direct on concrete, its the lime in the concrete that has the negative impact long term on the plastic. It will cause it to become brittle and allow it to eventually crack and leak.
On your hot water tanks, to ensure max amount of usable water drain some water out a few times a year to flush the sediments and other junk out of the bottom. Pick up a piece of RV water hose to make your life easier. Also if you can find a food grade rubber hose those are also great but expensive. DON'T use standard garden hose for potable water. Yes when we were kids we used to drink out of them all the time. But those were the good 'ol days when things were made here in the USA using quality materials. Now days this stuff is made in asian hole in the walls where the PVC is often loaded with things like lead, it's high in heavy metals and other junk. So just remember that before you slurp on the end of that hose.
Also note, liquid chlorine will only last a few months sitting on a shelf before it breaks down and basically becomes salt water. Check out Clorox's site if you don't believe me. If you can store some pool chlorine powder, that stuff will last indefinitely.
Thanks for pointing that out on the blue drums...I will check that out. Agree on the water hoses...I just use our RV water hose for filling these up. Regarding Chlorine, while we have it on handy in the laundry room, I now recommend in my videos to have Pool Shock stored away as it won't break down which you point out.
I appreciate the feedback...all very useful information I can use in the future.
Glad to help and keep the great vids coming.
What would be the ratio to use of dry pool chlorine per gallon of water?
@@CityPrepping DO NOT USE POOL SHOCK, it has added chemicals that you do not want to drink. Check the material safety data sheet! Sodium Hypochlorite is what you want. You can mix it with water to make household bleach. Provident Prepper has a great use on safe use and storage of the powder,
I had 35% hydrogen peroxide in the plastic container it came in. The jug came with a plastic bag over it for extra protection. I had it for years. Eventually when I checked on it I noticed the bag was ballooning and the plastic failing.
I saves a ton of money on 55 gallon drums. I called the water municipal and asked for some they gave them to me free of charge. They had the purification chemicals they use to clean our tap water. They gave me other sizes too give em a call especially if you pay water bills.
NubiaGoddess Life probably been full of floride
@@rbmwiv And chlorine. Because these substances are better than not having them, if dosed properly. Proper dosage has negligble adverse effects (may increase your risk of developing cancer by about 0.3% in your liftetime), but nearly eliminates the otherwise-significant risks of dying from more dire illnesses.
I tried that and they want 35 dollars a barrel; more then new on line.
thanks
@@rbmwiv fluoride isn't making you flaccid or controlling your mind. WATER will kill you if you drink enough of it, understand doses.
As always, a great video. In an emergency, we have found that harvesting rain water yields the best results. 1/2 inch of rain on a 1000 sq.ft. roof can yield up to 550 gallons of water. We have a metal roof, which is better than collecting rain from an asphalt roof. We then pour this water into our Big Berkey water filtration unit for our drinking and cooking water. We also use rain water to flush toilets. We are looking into a more advanced system of collecting rain water, that will have a charcoal filter system, along with a UV Filtration System. In addition, we will then have that water connected into our household plumbing, powered by a Solar Powered Pump. We also store water in other ways, for those periods of no rain, should our rain water supply be depleted. We also have a well. In addition, we have several Katdyn and Mini-Sawyer water filtration units, in our packs. We recently ordered a couple of Berkey Water Bottle Filtration Systems. One is none, two is one and three is better and so on! "Water is Life!" ☺
Revisit your local regulations
@Kim Gordon, I have and it's100% legal.
@Rick Sabian, Yes, I researched this subject before we moved forward with the installation. Sadly, certain states are governing their population so close that they have no freedom. Yet, the local governments aren't doing anything about Lake Mead and Lake Powell, etc. They knew these lakes were drying up for years. Now they want to transfer water from Lake Michigan, and the Great Lakes to fill Powell and Mead. I'm sorry, but if I lived on Lake Michigan, I would have a fit. Pull water from the ocean, using a desalination plant, capturing the salt and then selling the salt to help pay for the system. We send billions of dollars abroad to assist others in useless wars, but we can't help our American citizens in desperate need?
To all my fellow Texans, HEB has their gallon water bottles for $0.68!!! Stock up now before the price goes up. 16 gallons for $10.00 is a hell of a deal.
how much is it now?
John Griffey would be nice now
From someone who knows: those gallon jugs will become brittle with time and they will leak. The 2 gallon jugs will leak as well. Been there.
$1.22/g June 2024
And for those living in areas like I do, remember you can boil that snow for washing clothes, doing dishes, and if you know how, drinking. Been there and done that...
Julia
***** she probably knows that. Still a useful comment.
Melting ice is even quicker because the snow has a lot of air pockets in it so you have to keep adding more of it. You could compress the snow into a snow ball of sorts and it will actually go faster.
We washed clothes with rain water
@KamekoBruns .......only a moron thinks like you do.......pilots themselves will tell you that they are paid to use chemicals that go into their tail wind.........do your homework......
I used to represent a major water company. Do not use the 5 gallon containers that are delivered to the home. People store meth/gasoline/pee in them. Cannot get them clean.
Go to the paint department of Home Depot. Look on the bottom of the plastic buckets. A "2" means food grade. You can get the more expensive twist on lids and use the cheap containers for storage of other items than water.
Do not bother rotating your water unless you have something visual growing in it.
Chlorine loses potency starting at about month 3. Get the PROPER pool shock. $7 a pound. Treats 17,000 gallons.
Understand that filtering is not the same as purifying water. Moreover, nothing is going to effectively remove heavy metals/radiation.
Do not store in soft drink 2 liter plastic bottles. The plastic will not last indefinitely in storage.
Use the UN single two liter pop bottle is purify, but not filter "bad water". Use a coffee filter to filter some of the garbage out. Concept used in third world countries. Takes 6-8 hours of direct sunlight.
Find on youtube how to make a dual 2 liter bottle solar distiller. The bottles are inverted with a plastic pipe going barely into the lower bottle and way up to near the top (really the bottom of the inverted upper bottle to catch the vaporized water. The caps are drilled to have the tube run through and glued together. When the good upper bottle is nearly full, you simply unscrew the lower bad bottle. Then you invert the good bottle right side up and unscrew. Bingo, you have clean water. Then you cap with an extra cap you have handy.
Find
All excellent tips...thanks for sharing!
bd C thank you for that A2 tip.
Thankyou
I just screen shot what you said thank for info
Well, pee is sterile, so is meth (which is made with disinfecting chemicals anyway). The gasoline is more worrying, but you can easily know by smell if something has been used to store gas. And if it was made after the ban of leaded gas, you should be OK.
IF you experience water emergency, the most important thing you can do to isolate your homes water supply is to SHUT OFF the main valve at the water meter. This way your water stays in your house's plumbing to drain for your use. IF you don't shut it off, contaminates from outside can enter your last water OR depending on your elevation, your water can be siphoned out of your house. You can access your entire plumbing remaining water is to open the highest valve in your home, go to the lowest and drain what you need. Your hot water tank drain valve may be the lowest water valve in your home. Air will enter the high valve, and water will drain out the low valve. Regularly drain a little water out of your hot water tank. This keeps the valve in good shape and not crust over, and also drains out any contaminates in the bottom of the tank as the tank ages.
+SpockMcoy Issmart awesome feedback and thank you for that tip.
City Prepping
thx, anytime I can help out a little.... ;)
If you know your water supply is not contaminated yet but soon will be or will soon be cut off then you may want to fill your bathtub full of water first and then shut off the valve. Even if you don't have a liner for the tub you should probably do this. This would be appropriate in a hurricane with heavy flooding or a blackout over a large area for a couple of examples. This extra water could come in handy even if you already have a large supply stored.
wow- so true- thanks SpockMcoy!
SpockMcoy - (or anyone), Thanks for the info you provided. Do you know of an easy way to completely disconnect from the entire "drainage" grid? I'm concerned that as my neighbors start stuffing the surrounding drainage pipes it will back into my house. I'm think about installing a butterfly valve in the sewage pipe. I also have floor drains in my basement, can I just "cork" those and be okay? Thanks!
I live at a rainy area. I always have rain barrels at my backyard, I use the water for housing cleaning, and laundry in daily life. I can save my water bills but in case of emergency, it can be my drinking water after careful handling.
I would suggest to you to build a sand filter(AKA a natural bio filter). Lots of building info on U-tube. For water you need to drink put it a covered glass container and put it in the sun for a day and let the UV kill the germs. Bleach also works.
I collected used laundry soap bottes from the laundry rooms where I live. Cleaned them out and put a few drops of bleach in each bottle, and refilled. This is the water storage for the toliet. They are clearly marked toliet only. I used 2 liter pop bottles to store drinking water. Everything is dated and rotated evry six months.
Donna Dorrell I have been using 2 liter bottles also. When I first filled them I didn't add bleach. It's time to rotate, wash and refill so I'll add a few drops to each this time. I have used (clean) kitty litter jugs for washing., they are 2.5 gallons I believe and safe plastic. If worse comes to worse, I can run it through a Berkey to remove residual clumping agent and perfumes.
Love that you are putting down the cheap ways of storing or prepping...to many are just out there to sell a product...are those products ideal sure..but the average person doesnt always have these funds to purchase and many dont even try to prep due to this...trust me shtf no one is gonna care if its in a laundry bottle or some store bought product..it will be desperate times..and people will only care to survive on whatever they can without dying from it.
@@mowlmowl5345
And it is Recycling at its best!
I, too live in the desert. The southwest high desert in NM. Therefore, water is a vital resource to capture and store. A family unit of five- 2 Adults, three four-legged companions (dogs), I've managed to store six weeks worth of water @ 5 gallons of water per person (per day) and 1 gallon for our pets. This volume will address our HH needs- for hydration, cooking, and heigene at a bare minimum. I have chosen the Katadyn TRK drip Ceradyn Gravity fed filter for processing our drinking water. For back-up and mobility, I recommend the Solarbag water filter and Steripen Ultra. I felt encouraged to hear- you where working on a water harvesting catchment system. That is a project I've started- currently have set up 3 -55 gallon barrels. An additional step plan, is to install two- 275 gallon IBC tank to the harvesting system. I'm also, working on attaching a filtering system to the catchment using Zeolite sand. As a new subscriber, may I ask if you'll address the topic of off-grid sanitation? Looking forward to your next video. Thank you for this informative video. - MJ
+MJ NM thanks for the feedback and sharing your setup. Sounds like you've made a lot of progress...I've got a ways to go but I'm getting there.
About your request, "may I ask if you'll address the topic of off-grid sanitation" ... I'll put that request in my queue right now. I have a degree in microbiology and worked in the food industry for 8 years so learning sanitation was a big part of my life and I'll work on that one very soon.
Thank you :) It is my understanding, in a grid - down situation, sanitation is critical in preventing illness and death. Poor sanitation, coupled with a limited resource of water, people may choose to overlook proper sanitation inorder to conserve water. Poor sanitation will be a leading factor in spreading illness and death. -MJ
MJ NM
Absolutely...great point. Alright, it's now in my queue to create a video addressing this specific issue. Thanks!
I have about heard city ordinances that don't allow harvesting of water. I believe the concern is that harvesting will lower the water table and cause problems for city
wells. People with cisterns might be their
target. Haven't heard
anyone bring up the subject cisterns for
water collection. I believe people in Europe and island communities more
commonly use these than the United States.
Hi City prepper the more I watch the more I like! I agree after extensive research I purchased the big Berkey I got four filters we use two filters in our house for every day drinking water. I purchased a second big Berkey with a Nother four filters that I'm keeping for an emergency. So I have six filters in my preps. My thinking is in an SHTF I will be a very valuable resource to others if I can hand out a few gallons of clean drinking water to other people every day. I have a very large pond and to wellheads on my property. I also have hundreds of coffee filters to pre-filter the water before I put it in the Berky.
You are a fantastic teacher! Thank you, for the clear concise delivery about each researched topic you present.
I am currently not a prepper mainly because I'm still a kid but I definitely wanna be one in the future
Go for it. Learn everything you want to for being prepared, but avoid letting fear affect your quality of life. There's a balance, I'm sure.
canadian gamer i was 16 when i started im 21 now.. i would buy alittle canned food and pastas along with 2 gallon waters.. eventually you will see it grow trust me
You can start now if you wanted, Mcdonalds is hireing people 15 and up at least around my area. You can use that money to buy a good deal of the stuff you need early on if you have the time to spare.
Educate your parents. Nice to see you are thinking ahead. Well done!
TAlk to your parents
I appreciate your willingness to cite your sources AND to include necessary links.
Got a pretty good tip for ya. I have four water barrels catching water outside. I use a very inexpensive emergency blanket, the ones for a dollar, to tarp them with. That works great to keep sun off. There not in direct sunlight but it keeps heat off. Works great. I do temp checks you would be amazed. Stay healthy and God bless 😊
That's great news, thank you!
Excellent tutorial! I use the FEMA recommendation of 5gal/person/day. A month's supply would require 11-55gal drums. Apartment dwellers are limited by the weight-bearing capacity of the flooring, and space.
yeh, every story i've heard of people that have been in bad situations after a storm say the same thing: they underestimated how much water they'd use and ended up using a lot more in the end. more is definitely better when it comes to water.
For apartment dwellers, store your water in 1 or 2 liter bottles. You can stack and store them on the floors of closets, etc if you lay them down and stack them like logs. Just make sure the lids are on tight. You can store your dry goods and supplies the same way. You'll be surprised how much stuff you can store in a small space and its all in a portable condition.
Aren't they recommending a 6 month supply for each person? I believe they released a new article yesterday stating something to this effect. Holy smokes. I feel the only reason they are coming out now and telling us this now, is because FEMA will not help us when a disaster strikes. They've already said they are handing over the reigns to our State amd local government. So when a FEMA disaster strikes, they can say, "Hey, we told you but you didn't listen." It'll be their way of not accepting accountability and being able to kill us without remorse.
@@keilrothlisberger1228 Never trust the government to come to the rescue in times of need. Just look at Hurricane Katrina. They sent police out to ILLEGALLY CONFISCATE guns from citizens!!!
That's too much water....water should be used as sparingly as possible bcoz you don't know how long the emergency will last....it could be months or even yrs (probably not yrs but you never know...that's the point....you never know)...you could save lives❤️
I like water barrels lifted up on platforms because that gives easier access to the spigot at the bottom.
We got a Berkey last year! It makes me feel a little better that you're recommending it too.
Excellent video! We use water bricks, the titan ready water system and gallon bottles of spring water picked up at the grocery store. We love our Berkey! Even with all this I'm always looking for ways to store more water. I want a rain catchment system, but have fears about spillover and damage to the foundation of our home.
Another thing to keep in mind is that catching rain water is illegal in most states and they will fine you if they see you doing it.
@@gragra556 ........whooooaaaaaaa !!! are you kidding ?!!! that's insane !!! what in the world are they thinking ?!!!!
NewWorldOrder is what their thinking
CONTROL
My pool holds 25000 gallons. It's my personal water source. I run 2 gutters into it when needed to fill.
Just installed two large rain barrels, and I'm filling and storing water containers after each rainfall, keeping the level low in the barrel. Also, we invested in a Berkey water filtering system, and it's amazing. It's a beginning.
Rain water may not be the answer with all the planes flying over poisoning the atmosphere. When it rains, the poison will be in your water!
Hallo from Israel!! I've being watching your videos for a while, they are very informative and easy to understand.
One of the things I haven't seeing is about storing food and watter for pets and how to care for them in an emergency situation. I belive that most pet owners won't want to live them behind.
Thank you.
I got a Berkey, Sawyer Mini, Survivor Pro filter and a steripen Opti that covers in house and if I'm out walking around. Also good to carry some coffee filters if you're out in the woods you can dry them out after using them and they will be great for starting a fire
I have a rain barrel water collection system and use this water directly for watering plants, drinking, and cooking. The water for drinking and cooking is filtered using a reverse gravity Berkey system. I keep (4) 50-60 gallon food grade barrels in a cool area of my home up on concrete blocks to enable us to get the water out easily. I put about a shot of bleach in each barrel after it has been filled up. The barrels are rotated in and out so our water supply isn't older than a year or so. When we are ready to drink the water, it is filtered in the Berkey as is our outdoor 110 gallon rain barrel. We have enough water on hand for 3-4 months depending on how many people we have here. Presently 2 of us live here. What I don't have is 5-7 gallon heavy duty plastic containers for an emergency if we have to leave quickly. That is a great idea and one that I will be implementing soon. Thanks for your video, much appreciated!
Good video!
Regarding bleach: Clorox recommends 4 drops of UNSCENTED bleach per quart of water, or 1/4 tsp for 1.75 gallons of water, then let it rest thirty minutes before using. Properly treated water should have a slight chlorine odor. Use only plain bleach (and it doesn't have to be Clorox brand).
Regarding emergency water storage: if you don't have the blue containers, your bathtub will work in a pinch. The average bathtub will hold ~80 gallons of water. You should clean it first with soap, water, and bleach, then rinse it thoroughly. Fill it completely, then use it for washing and flushing, and maybe cooking where you will boil the water first. Add 11-1/2 teaspoons of bleach to the 80 gallons of water if you're going to be using it for consumption purposes, then stir the water.
Regarding use of toilets: when water is scarce, the rule is, "if it's yellow, let it mellow. If it's brown, flush it down." With no running water, there is no way you should be flushing your toilet every time you use it. If you can pee outside safely, do it. Save your toilet for pooping. (remember to stock extra toilet paper!) You don't need clean water to refill your toilet's reservoir. if you're unsure how much to add to it when refilling, take the cover off the reservoir and look at the level when full. Mark that level with a Marks-a-Lot pen, then use that mark as your guide to refill it.
Remember, 3 days without water, and you're a goner, and your end won't be pretty. Do NOT drink water from your gutters or a downspout, either..
It is estimated almost 4 million people die of bad water and the bacteria in it every year; there are at least 10 types of bacterium that can be found in impure water that can and will kill you. Here in America, our guts won't tolerate bad water at all since we're so used to drinking nothing but pure water all our lives. You've got to have pure (potable) water for consumption.
Once power goes off, in the city the water towers will run out of water in less than a day or so, as it takes electricity to refill them. If the power goes out and you have reason to believe it's a widespread/regional outage, start filling your pots and other clean containers with water. This includes filling your tub(s). Same goes for you rural folks. If you can't run your well pump, you need to find a way to get and purify water.
Something to consider, the Berky replacement filters run about $100 for two. Using a pair of these filters and a couple 5 gallon buckets will make an expedient filtration system for about $200 less. Not pretty, but if you are on a budget, it would work. Side note, to test those filters, run water with red food coloring in it through, no other color. They will filter the coloring out.
thanks for that tip. i considered going that route with food grade buckets, but that would have been a bit of an eye sore in the kitchen, but you are correct. decided to go for the shiny looking option :)
I'm new to this how safe is tap water for storage do I need to do anything to before I store it
Since I live off-grid, and take my advice from my own real-life experiences, I must make a correction.
I can't remember the name of the agency (back in the 1950's) that suggested 1 gal./person/day, but
from my own experience which has now lasted more years that I had ever expected, it is almost
impossible to exist long-term in the winter months on 1 gallon/day. The summer heat can greatly multiply
that number. The bare minimum, without going crazy and giving-up on life is 3 1/2 gallons/day, then add
another seven gallons/day if you wish to do laundry with an extremely efficient laundry system.
I go to a local sausage smoking company for 55 gal. white polyethylene barrels that came with food grade vinegar in them. They sell them empty and rinsed for $20. They clean and rinse out easily. I shake some hot water with baking soda in them then rinse with pure water. Some, I cut the tops open with a sawzall, insert a brass garden hose valve 2" from bottom, and use them for fermenting beer in. The sides have markings every 5 gallons. Open like that they clean and sterilize real well with scotch brite scrubbers, hot soapy water, and bleach solution before hot water rinsing. 1 mil. painters tarps, taped over the barrel top with clear packaging tape, close the tops well enough to use them for primary/secondary fermenters (combined) for 40 gallon batches of brew. Set them on a sturdy counter or bench and gravity drain them through the hose spigot right into your kegs (or 5 gallon pails, if you're bottling...). Gotta still have fun if shtf....
I have stored water in my garage in Southern Kalifornia/Northern Baja Kalifornia for YEARS! As long as you use treated water (bleach in my case), store out of sunlight, and fill the containers as much as you can, the water will last forever. Water does not spoil. It will get stale, algae could grow. Mine has not done neither. You can filter, treat, and re-oxygenize the water prior to drinking to be extra safe, but again, water does NOT spoil!
when algae what then?
I live in S. Oregon with well water. My garage gets to 125° in summer and 20° in winter. How do I store water ?
I have the same space problem and was reluctant to store water in the hot garage. You made me think two different kinds of water. Drinking and cleaning/flushing. Thanks.
No I didn't know to store water out of the sunlight! What vital information. Thank you!
Thank you, may God keep you and yours , through these crazy times. ✝️
Thanks for the great video!!, To move my 55 gallon drum around I use a furniture dolly from Home Depot, there about $20-40 dollars. A quick couple of cuts to fill in the middle and your good to go!!
On the subject of the hot water heater idea mentioned I have 2 things to contribute.
1. Obviously be careful if you use it while you still have power. If you pull the exhaust to get water out of it. That is meant as a relief valve and will spray out forcefully everywhere and will burn you.
2. If you are in a power out situation and the water is warm or cold, it is a very good idea to boil it or use it as non-potable water. Over time debris and who knows what from the city line get deposited in the bottom of your tank. There are cases of people who drink cold water or even hot water out of their tank and get sick from a parasite or bacteria.
The most common is Legionella. It causes a whole mess of things you don't want during an emergency.
When your water is cooling off in that tank it will go through a perfect warm temperature stage in which bacteria and parasites can thrive.
So yeah, be careful around the water heater, and boil that water before drinking it.
Project: Dren yeah, I don’t think so, Legionella needs moist air to breed. You should be able to use water in the water heater for a while. Eventually it may go bad. It it was bad to start then you’ve always had bad water. Flushing the bottom periodically is a good idea. Most stuff will settle out pretty quick. YMMV.
I can tell you all about Flint water I used to live in Flint and I moved away from Flint do to it making me sick I am still feeling the effects of the poisoning I got from the water and it's not fun. I do live in a new town now right by a fresh water lake and well water I am feeling better now I just wish my dad would of survived to be here to .
God bless you❤️🙏
Sorry for your loss and blessings on your own recovery!!
I am so sorry you had to go through that. It's terrible what happened there. My condolences.
One of the more thorough water prepping videos I've seen. Well done
+Prepper Brothers glad you liked it and thanks for the feedback.
You mentioned the Black Berkey filtration system as quite expensive, but in the long run they are the cheapest of all. And for me, even cheaper as I looked around ...and instead of purchasing the ones with the fancy containers; I bought one online for $63 with two food-grade buckets with screwable lids and a spigot. All the holes were ready just like you were buying the fancy ones. It has the same Black Berkey filters which go for approximately $55 for one ...or two for $107. I've been using my 'Bucket Berkey' system for four years for all of my drinking and cooking needs (and for my large dog) and the water quality is still as high as ever. It is a little bit slower now than when I first got it, but as soon as I get around to using the plastic scrubbing pad I bought at the dollar store, it will then be as good as new. $63 vs 200-500 seemed like a great deal to me ...and I'm always looking for the biggest bang for my buck.
GandolfTheWise
Jack L Oglethorpe
Not really. If you have a larger tank you can use home filtration filters that filter to 1micron in particulates. The replacement filters are $15 at your local home depot and you can filter right from the source. It would also be a good idea to use larger tanks for rain catchment systems. If you stay below 500gal you can easily hide such systems in small sheds and landscaping.
Online where?
Sawyer filters as $25 and can filter 100,000 gallons each.
The bucket version is about $60 and has everything needed except the two buckets.
I've had a Berkey water filter for years...works best...
Love it.....
Just so you know those black filters are activated charcoal filters. And the reason they get slow is because the charcoal is full and needs to be changed.
Simply cleaning the filters dosnt make them good again.
All the stuff you think your filtering out is not being filtered out.
You should get new filters and replace them.
My Katadyn filter has been camping for over 30 years. Filters .2 micron which removes cysts of everything, this is the WHO recommendation. They last forever (the filter is cleanable) and have been in use around the world for many years. Not a cheap answer but time proven.
*_MOST IMPORTANT PREPS for STORED WATER:_*
Get a few of the best gravity-fed ceramic water filters & a pressure cooker & you'll never have to worry about keeping stored water *_"good"_*. Get a few the largest dehumidifiers so you can pull water *_right out of the air!_* Get enough solar power to run your dehumidifiers in the event of grid down. He covered some of these points. Awesome video!
Christian Prepper thanks for the feedback. About the dehumidifier, not entirely sure if it it'd work in our environment since we practically live in a desert. thoughts?
Very true. The dehumidifier, as with all recommendations, are subject to region & personal situation. I live in south Texas. *_Extremely_* humid almost year round. We are currently pulling an average of 7gal a day with just one of our 3 dehumidifiers. I've mounted them in the attic because the air is more humid than inside but it keeps them from being exposed too much to the elements. I'm in the process of hooking them all up to my water supply to the house with a cutoff valve so I can go off grid *_in the city._*
Obviously all this is in addition to our water stores & is subject to damage off my solar panel array.
Christian Prepper
yeh, you guys are swimming in the storms down there right now...us here in So Cal, we're on the other side of that equation with fires starting up in our area yesterday...so dry.
City Prepping A few years ago I had a wake up call with the devastating brush land fires here in Texas. Fortunately I personally wasn't effected by it, but it did make my wife & I discuss better preps for a house fire & even a fast moving brush land wildfire like those.
We already had a smoke detectors & some power spring operated heat detectors. I really like those heats because they do not use any electricity & once you wind them up & set them UL reports they are good for 120yrs!!! So we spent almost $400 upgrading certain containers to metal, a few more fire extinguishers, & some fire retardant for some of the furniture.
We also restructured our security to escape easier in the event of a fire because, even though its almost impossible for intruders to get in, we realized our house was potentially a death trap. As for large wild fires consuming the neighborhood we're still working on building a fire-break on the perimeter of our property.
My only concern for Americans in So.Cal during a WROL is the border may burn! Love your website so much I'll be including it in my revised *PREPPER CHEAT SHEET* that I like to post. I wish people would print the whole thing out on some 3x5 cards, laminate them & keep it in the B.O.B. Your taking time to actually communicate me is encouraging. Thanks
Christian Prepper
hey, do me a favor and send me over your Prepper Cheat Sheet if you wouldn't mind. My email address is in the "About" section of my channel. I've been thinking about creating one of those for my own B.O.B. and I'd love to see what you put together. I'm learning like everyone else in this community and I learn so many things from the community I would have never thought of on my own. Definitely would love to feature that in my family B.O.B. video which I play on making soon and will definitely credit you for that.
Again, thanks for taking the time to share this info above. Glad to see people are getting more serious these days about preparing for disasters instead of being caught off guard when they happen.
Good information. Thanks a million. My covered water tanks with spigots on the bottom store water for general use. In a pinch can used for drinking after UV treatment from the sun. Because of the water spigots it is easy to drain and rotate the water out on a monthly basis. I do save some rain water and it is filtered via a two stage sand filter for general use. If SHTF and is really needed needed for drinking, it is stored in glass containers and left out in the sun for a day and UV rays to kill the germs.
+covercalls88 sounds like you have a nice setup...thanks for the feedback.
We have (28) 5 gallon sealed water bottles currently in storage right now from a clerical error on the part of a water delivery company who kept delivering water (3 bottles a week) for 2 months after we stopped service, so we figured its a good start to keeping a reserve. Plus, they are easily portable and able to be given to friends/family in an emergency.
karma was invented by parasites!
Absolutely the best water storage video I’ve seen.
This is a great video I live in south Texas and it's hurricane season. So I'm getting ready before a storm enters the gulf keep the videos coming I'm sure they do a world of good thank you so much
The Waterbob (on Amazon) has a 100 gallon capacity you can fill up in your tub. This gave us peace of mind when we had forewarning that our water utility might be impacted as we had here in Texas a couple of days ago.
Packets of baby wipes will save gallons of needed water.
They do dry out but drops of water can re moisten
@@cajmutube2 If they're stored in zip lock bags I don't see why they would dry out. Every time I go go Taco Bell, K.F.C. etc I ask for the hand wipes & add them to my stash.
Good idea
I have some huggies that are at least 2 years old still good
Hi, but how do you use baby wipes to store/clean water?
Chris this by far is one of the best educational videos I’ve watched for water storage! Thank you!
Good video and good advice man, water is a vital part of anyone's preps. I shall be bugging in to begin with if anything should happen and I have water stored and 'static' filtration methods such as a Berkefeld. It's also important though to have small, lightweight portable solutions such as lifestraw and Sawyer mini etc to make safe water that you 'obtain' or collect. Each individual in a group should have a personal water filtration system and know how to maintain it and how to pre-filter and make safe water.
+Geordie Prepper excellent advice and i have a similar plan. Thanks for the comment.
After about a decade of use, I finally just gave up on the British Berkfeld.
Now using a Sawyer. Much happier. Not ideal (I don't think there is an ideal
filter) but so far I've been happiest with the Sawyer.
There are many different ways to store water. Underground cisterns can be made and built. You can also buy large water tanks for home storage above 500gal. If I had a home I would use a combination of all the ways. The best part about the larger tanks is you can use standard piping and replaceable filters to filter out that stored water. The filters go down to 1micron in filtration and can be bought for $15 a filter. You can bring a 650gal tank where ever you go. But it would be a great idea if you plan on bugging in.
I have heard of someone who used a new septic tank for water storage. Never used, of course. It could even be buried and a hand pump used to pump it out.
Need to watch those 50/55 gal drums with just the two bung caps. The plastic can stretch and the caps won't tighten down with a solid seal.
Alternative is the 50/55 gal plastic drums with the single lid and metal collar. Don't need a pump with those either.
Thanks for the video. Be aware that the "water preserver" is just sodium hypochlorite, also known as unscented bleach.
Berkey filters are expensive but if you are handy you can but the filters it uses and make your own filter out of food safe buckets. I did mine and i have been using it for the last year or so. Also if you put water on the sun for a hole day the uv rays will kill the bacteria. You will still need to clean the water from dirt though! 😃
I'm a water prepper too. Good advice:)
+Kyle Brooks thanks...glad you enjoyed it!
A Silcock key would be very good for Urban/Suburban survival. Can be used to tap in to Office building water supplies on out side. Maintenance crews use them.
Please PRE-FILTER any non potable water prior to using the Burkley or
other filtration system. You DO NOT want to gum up and greatly reduce
the life of your (EXPENSIVE) Burkley filter. I run non potable water
through a 5 or 1 micron sediment filter first!
The Berkey website has a bunch of q & a related to how to best use their filters. I found the info rather helpful even if I didn't have a berkey.
My first water prep tip is to buy a bag of bbq charcoal and smash it up into tiny fragments , wash it and dry it then store it in a bottle . its lightweight ready and essential to filter water , if you can fill a bottle of washed sand also and dry that too and another bottle with small gravel . These Three bottles are all you need to grab for drinking filtration and can be kept in your car under the seat. i have a pair of old tights stretched over the bottles also for a debris filter and a coffe filter in the charcoal bottle to stop it being washed away .
u can build a rootseller and store your water that way and if you have the money put in a well with a hand pump
I put my 55 gal container on wood too. I also wrapped them in that foil bubble wrap, i think its called Reflectix that i bought at lowe’s, then after i wrapped the sides, i created an overlapping top, to completely seal it up and be able to remove the top as needed. But i wrapped it to help keep light out, ensure the temperature can be stabilized and lastly, keep and dirt and dust off of it so i’m not potentially going to contaminate my water when i have to open it. Unfortunately i have to keep it out in the garage since i have no space in the house, so what i did is even more important.
Great video! Very informative as a single mom. Thank you for sharing ☺️
the tap water here where I am in Indiana is chemically stable for 150 years. Truth. Did gobs of research on it. For us here it would be better to keep the tap water in glass or food safe containers. Just adding my experience with my local tap water. Love your video. Thanks for the work.
People worrying about corona but they don’t realize how there’s a food shortage coming up
Food shortages already are happening!!:( I’m starting a garden soon
If you eat or have tons of vegetables you will probably loose weight you need to maintain your weight during a food shortage or at least (loose weight down to a healthy size then maintain lol) so point is get carbs to do this. Pasta, Rice, Beans. These are key and even better usually cheapest of most foods.
@@jswarpaint6215 if you eat a ton of vegetables you actually get healthy. You aren't meant to eat all that processed food and meats.
Exactly! I've already started my prepper pantry!
@Samuel Iam duck you
Why not create end tables out of those large barrels? Use a pre cut round wood tabletop usually found at Lowe's and maybe cover the barrel with colorful cloth and place wood eith painted, stained or left natural on top
If you are in to soda like I am, I would recommend saving the 2 liter bottles and rinsing them out a few times and rinse out the cap too, and adding water. This is also lighter than 5 gallon containers for people like me with bad backs.
be careful with those as it's hard to get the sugar out. maybe a little better if they're diet soda bottles.
yeah, artificial sweeteners are much better for your survival. lol. and please don't store water for children in plastic petroleum product containers. If you want them to be able to have children that is...Use glass or stainless steel please. Here's a question for you: If you had to leave right now with only what you can carry...will you take the soda or the water?
Stranger Horse actually the lemon lime soda can break up calcium kidney stones. I think I will still stick with plastic bottles as I don't have to worry about it shattering like glass ones. I also will be filtering this water as well. as for stainless steel ones, the cost is probably out of range for me.
240 Volts Well, at least regular soda vs. diet will give you calories and water doesn't have any at all. Plus some caffeine could be helpful. lol. If you are going mobile then glass won't work and we are all limited by what we can carry. I have a bad back too. But stainless containers are very durable and can be used for cooking - even it's just some boiled water for hot coffee or tea, maybe a soup packet etc. Best Regards : )
@@CityPrepping The sugar would hasten growth of yeast in the water, I think.
Your area may have a drum/barrel company that deals in used food grade containers. I have several 55 gallon barrels acquired from a local firm that still had traces of soft drink syrup (bits of labels, scent of Mountain Dew in the barrel). In 2008, they were $15 each. Haven't purchased any in a long time so not sure what the current price is. I flushed two of those earlier this week (cup of bleach then fill with water and let sit 30 minutes to an hour).
The title of "Emergency Water Preparation" caught my eye as I haven't yet filled the barrels.
I insulated my 55-gallon drums with hot water heater tank insulated wraps, it works great keeping them dark.
The 55 gallon drum on concrete is for steel drums. It causes corrosion. Plastic will be fine on the ground. There are also 2.5 gallon storage containers that stack very nicely and I can line the bed if my truck with them and put gear on top. They also stack similarly to Lego blocks so they can be stacked high as well. They have nice handles and a spigot cover for easy pouring. I can't remember where I got them though. But they were well priced and they work great.
One last thing, you might mention pool shock as a bleach alternative. Bleach can lose effectiveness slowly over time due to chlorine being volatile, pool shock in powder form helps to prevent this loss.
Thank you for the video.
Good info in this video. I would add the following for your consideration. H2O is heavy, 8.34 lb/gal, and there are 7.48 gal/cu ft. So plan your storage needs with this weight/area needs in mind.(be sure the floor or area you are going to use for storage is strong enough & large enough for your needs.) Water bladders are a viable alternative to barrels/jugs/cans, & have the benefit of being "amorphous", readily filling in odd shaped areas. "Grey water", that is water used for non sanitary uses(washing hands, bathing, food prep, etc) & not considered "potable" (drinkable) can then be used to flush the toilet, or water for animals. Water is more valuable than gold, most folks don't even consider its value until it becomes a crisis. I'm blessed with a great family & 26.5 yrs in the WasteWater field, & the ability & knowledge/experience to turn non potable water into potable. P.s. for arid area dwellers, might be a good time to study up on solar stills......just sayin' . God bless & pull together, or we will most certainly be pulled asunder!
I'm from PR...very useful information now that our island is having so many small earthquakes...I've been into prepping for years. Thanks for the vd.
GREAT video! It told me everything I could've (and did) needed to know and it answered all of my questions. It was SOOO helpful that you included all the links - I'm getting prepared! Thank you so so much for this awesome video! :)
I don't if I'm just imagining it, but a good time to rotate your water supply is right after your town or municipality releases its annual water report. The water seems to be really clean and treated at that time. I guess they realize that everyone pays a little extra attention to their water quality after looking at the report.
Hint: When treating water with bleach, add powdered Gatorade or Tang to the water lust before consuming to kill the yucky remaining bleach taste. Most commercial bottled water is treated with ozone prior to bottling. Kills bugs.
storing water is a great idea, but if you're going for long term sustainability, get yourself a generator, a couple dehumidifiers, and some 55 gallon barrels. set the dehumidifiers up on a raised platform and run hoses so they drain into the 55 gallon barrels, should work pretty well for anyone that doesnt live in a desert at least.
How to make quick water:
1. Get a pot and put a cup and water around it in the pot (do not drop water into the cup)
2. Turn the pot cover upside down
3. Heat it
4. You are now distilling water!
Waffle please explain this to me step by step This is for steam distilled water treatment I don’t understand what you mean with the cup like a coffee cup empty and put the water around it but the cover up side down heat it what’s with the empty cup what am I not understanding scientifically speaking
I'm confused
wha??? not understanding at all...
@@mzcarlycalabasas4034 ... Condensation will collect on the pot cover and drip into the empty cup.
I mentioned that method above before I saw this. I forgot about turning the lid upside down. That's so the water (from the steam) that drips from the lid will drip into the inside pan or cup. The lid is higher in the middle, so upside down it will be the opposite...it will be lower. The water will run down the inside of the pan to the lowest point before it drips into the pan below it. This will be pure distilled water that collects in the inside pan or cup.
We've been drinking Carlo & Rossi Merlot that comes in a heavy-duty glass jug, then filling with minimally treated water when we are done with a jug. Over the years (decades) we have amassed several hundred gallons of water that is free of environmental contaminants--from a regularly tested deep well. We also rotate the water, using it in the garden and refilling, regularly. There are several methods we will use before using it for cooking or drinking. I'm happy that the water isn't sitting in plastic and isn't full of the normal contaminants of urban water. We son't rely on it, but it's nice to have.
Sir, I'm a retired firefighter/EMT, I think your info is spot on. I spent many years teaching these things to my community. I only have one question for you.......................Why are you 1st in such a hostile environment? 2nd why are you in a city environment?
I IN NO WAY mean these questions to be disrespectful. Just curious?
Thank you so much
And may God Bless you and yours.
Great video. Other means of storing water I would like to point out is 275 IBC totes. These are usually used to store cooking oils in. Do not get the ones meant for lubricant storage. As far as a water filter. Using an alternating layering of sand, clean rocks, and activated charcoal in a 5 gallon pail with a small hole drilled to empty into a sterile container works too.
It does not fully purify the water. It still needs boiled or treated.
What about iodine tincture for water purification? In addition to killing micro-organisms, might it not also help with any potential radioctive problems for secondary events such as nuclear reactor meltdowns? Bleach(chlorine) is in fact a toxic chemical, but iodine is in fact protective of the body, even though the media hype tends to label it as toxic. What do you think? It also can be applied directly to wounds to prevent infection...
Iodine tincture does not protect from radiation.
You can use high doses of iodine like in Lugol's solution to overdose your larynx with not radio-active iodine so when you are later exposed to radio-active iodine-isotopes your risk of larynx-cancer is much lower.
Just because something is toxic to germs it is not automatically good to consume regularily.
Did not know that, thnx
thanks for the tip on an inexspisive shot gun. Im retired and am not able to work but I have been building up on my prepping as much as i can; thanks for the videos
Recommendation: During emergencies, any good substitute for pure water is a great substitute.
Instead of devoting large amounts of storage space for bathing water, consider buying a couple thousand sheets of baby wipes or ass wipes for self-cleaning. Soldiers use this "bath in a box" to wipe themselves clean all over without water. It is a dry and effective way to make yourself just clean enough to survive.
I keep two Sawyer micro filters on hand. Msr makes great filters too.
The problem with relying on chlorine for keeping your water pure is that the chlorine will evaporate out relatively fast. Unless you're lightning-quick about sealing your water, I doubt you'll be able to keep enough inside to suppress microbes. For the cell bio lab classes I've taken, whenever we wanted to prepare water for supporting life (and didn't care about keeping it sterile) we would leave it out overnight open to the air, to let the chlorine dissipate. I don't know how long it takes for chlorine to dissipate, but I'd guess it's not long enough.
i place one eye dropper of chlorine in 5 gallon jug and i store 5 years. never had a problem when its kept in the dark. never had algae grow.
@@videosrfun4me189 Man, I forgot I wrote that. I feel old. Yeah in hindsight you're probably right.
Look at the survivor filter pro or the survivor filter. I think they have 3 models.
I tested my survivor filter pro with 6 months old fish aquarium water be and it tasted clean.
I put anti- mice packets all around my water supply, mice hate the smell. You can also keep mice out of your vehicles with said packets. Had a mouse chew through a bottle of water in m vehicle prior to this discovery.
Mint tea bags work also
Lots of great information and common sense comments. Thank you
I have been prepping food for a couple of years now, but all this special equipment, etc of water just kinda freaks me out. I know how important it is though so I want to learn. We buy reverse osmosis water for our every day drinking water and I was just thinking of storing this up for emergency. Would that not work? And would I need to go through all this mind-boggling work for this as well? Newbie here :)
+Linda Hudson well the key is to have water on hand as sources can easily become containmented which is hard to handle even with filtration. It was the first step i took when i started prepping. Good luck and stay with it!
I think it sounds more mind boggling than it is. You can just add a few drops of chlorine in it, use it within six months, and/or boil it before using it. If it has never been opened, maybe you wouldn't have to do anything, I don't know. The longer it sits, the more likely something will grow in it, but it isn't a certainty that it WILL grow something. If it is city water it will already have chlorine in it. I plan to collect water and use a water filter when I use it just like I eventually will from the clear stream nearby.
Life during SHTF will really be more complicated in a lot of ways and will leave little free time when we have to start doing things the hard way. Water purity is just another one of those things that we will have to ensure that we might not have to worry about now. We should mentally prepare for that reality too.
Very Good Video.... with useful information, from a practical perspective....
Thank you
Put cardboard in between each flat of bottled water to prevent bottles from crushing due to uneven weight.
My town sells water at the processing plant for 25 cents for 100 gallons. Farmers fill up their large containers for animals but they also let you fill your own smaller containers with a hose.