storing water

[paintman]

im still pretty new to prepping. at this moment I have 0 water stored. a friend of mine is giving me some food grade 55 gallon drums and I was wondering if I ran water to it from my tap how long will it store and do I need to put anything in it?

 

[shibumiseeker]

Municipal tap water is generally good stored 6-12 months in a cool dark location as is. After that, don't do anything to it but treat it with a little bleach right before use.

You'll hear all sorts of nonsense about rotating it out periodically but unless you expect to immediately drink it there's no need.

Do NOT keep adding bleach every so often. The byproducts of disinfection can build up to toxic levels after a while.

BTW, you only need to treat water you actually drink. Wash water, water used for cooking or bathing, is good to go.

 

[TheRude1]

Municipal tap water is generally good stored 6-12 months in a cool dark location as is. After that, don't do anything to it but treat it with a little bleach right before use.

You'll hear all sorts of nonsense about rotating it out periodically but unless you expect to immediately drink it there's no need.

Do NOT keep adding bleach every so often. The byproducts of disinfection can build up to toxic levels after a while.

BTW, you only need to treat water you actually drink. Wash water, water used for cooking or bathing, is good to go.

 

[paintman]

how much bleach would be used?

 

[shibumiseeker]

how much bleach would be used?

About 6 teaspoons of regular laundry bleach (unscented) for a 55 gallon drum. Mix thoroughly and wait 30 minutes. Longer if the water is cold.

Also keep in mind that liquid bleach loses potency over time. If the bleach is several months old, use more. That's good for several more months before further treatment is needed (see my warning above about just repeatedly treating water) if the drum is kept sealed.

A good long term storage solution is hypochlorite crystals (pool chlorine). You can find the ratios for making the equivalent bleach solution on the net.

 

[paintman]

sweet! thanks for the info. I have been watching world war z and red dawn. it puts me in the mood for some major prepping lol

 

[Never A Victim]

I assume if I boil the water in a 55 gallon drum when im ready to drink it (assuming its past the 12 month mark) then it would be good? Or is bleach the only way to go?

 

[rvb]

Easiest solution, go to th store and buy a case of bottled water for everyone in your household. Cheap, sealed, safe to drink, portable. No need to screw around with bleach, etc. You can get by for a couple days on a case of water, even if you use a little bit for cooking, rinsing off your hands, brushing teeth, etc. See the recent discussion on bathtub bladders for other ideas.

My 2c.

-rvb

 

[paintman]

I don't think if things get bad and supplies are down for weeks or months a case of water is going to cut it. I am thinking more along the lines of no more bottled water being produced.

 

[rvb]

Whatever you want. You said you had zero. I'm all for walking before your run but if you want to jump straight to 55gal drums (which you can forget transporting anywhere) then go for it. I think some bottled water on hand is a good starting point...

-rvb

 

[RAMBOCAT]

If you're using bleach to purify water just before drinking, this is the best way to remember the dosage. You have to be 21 to drink-----two drops of bleach will purify one liter of clear water. Add an extra drop for nasty water----mud puddle, muddy stream or anything else that's not clear.

 

[Jackson]

Whatever you want. You said you had zero. I'm all for walking before your run but if you want to jump straight to 55gal drums (which you can forget transporting anywhere) then go for it. I think some bottled water on hand is a good starting point...

-rvb

This is how I've started. I don't really have the space for drums and I'm pretty new to the prepping. I figure having 12 or so cases of water stacked on the shelf in the garage is a lot better than nothing. I drink a fair bit of bottled water. So, its rotated even if it doesn't really need to be. I guess I don't see the down side to having a fair bit of bottled water. Its not overly expensive. Its easy to pick up an extra when I'm at the store. Its convenient, easily separated for giving, trading, or transport. It just seemed like the easiest way to start.

Ultimeately I'd like to get a mechanical pump for the well. I'm not ready to put up the money for that, though.

 

[Meyer]

You can get 7 gallon aqua trainers from Walmart too

 

[mdmayo]

If you're using bleach to purify water just before drinking, this is the best way to remember the dosage. You have to be 21 to drink-----two drops of bleach will purify one liter of clear water. Add an extra drop for nasty water----mud puddle, muddy stream or anything else that's not clear.

Good advice right here, though you are sterilizing not purifying. With tap water there is next to zero need to purify.

 

[shibumiseeker]

I assume if I boil the water in a 55 gallon drum when im ready to drink it (assuming its past the 12 month mark) then it would be good? Or is bleach the only way to go?

Boiling water is the best way to make it biologically safe, but is very energy intensive.

 

[Never A Victim]

Boiling water is the best way to make it biologically safe, but is very energy intensive.

I plan to stock up on propane tanks and get a burner that will hook up to it for food prep but mostly water purification. I also plan to buy a few very large cooking pots to boil the water. My problem with bleach is that is has a shelf life. I also have wood to use for heating the house but can use for boiling water. I have a sawyer squeeze to filter dirty water before boiling it. Does this sound like a decent plan?

 

[CathyInBlue]

How about a whole-house water buffer?

All of the water that comes into the house, muni tap, well, tanker, first goes through a stage of automatic testing for chemicals, pH, dissolved solids, suspended solids, etc., before it gets dumped straight into a large, stainless steel tank. That tank is plumbed to all water appliances in the house and is kept pressurized with an air compressor, and/or pump to insure 60 PSI to the appliances.

As long as the household is large enough and the tank small enough, the water in the tank is never going to be there, molecule for molecule, long enough to stagnate.

What if the tank is really big and the household is really small? Just to be ridiculous, say, a 2000 gal. tank for a single person? Let's say the person can get by on 2 gal. of water a day, drinking, cooking, cleaning, sanitation, everything. That's 0.1% of the tank's contents being expended and refilled per day. Would the water in the tank start to stagnate, even with regular inflow and outflow? What if there were something as pedestrian as a water main break with cross contamination with the sewer system, so the authorities warn not to use the water coming from the taps until future notice. Now, there's no inflow, only outflow. It would take 1000 days, 33 months, of no water before this hypothetical water-rich loner exhausted his stash. That's well beyond the 6-12 months shibumi mentioned.

Aside from bleach treatment at the drinking tap, what about static treatment within the tank itself? Suspended copper bars in the tank if the plumbing itself is not copper?

Ozone bubbler?

UV bombardment coil?

 

[shibumiseeker]

Cathy:

Yep, that would work. And way more expensive and complicated than it needs to be, but if it makes the person happy, great.

Here's the deal. You can never prevent stuff from growing in water. My partner is a microbiologist working in the quality assurance lab of a major medical devices company. Part of her job is testing the ultrapurified water system they use for pretty much everything having to do with the medical devices. This water is sterilized more ways than you or I could ever afford to do. Yet the system fails the testing from time to time.

So what? The municipal supply you are drinking isn't sterile. It's free from the organisms that are most responsible for making most people sick, in quantities that will make them sick. Stored water will still allow those organisms to grow, but the residual chlorine keeps the populations down.

The fact of the matter is for most of the organisms we have in our water, our internal gut flora and fauna are used to them in the quantities they encounter, and in your scenario anything that might grow in the tank will do so at a rate our bodies can deal with, and most of them will cause us mild gastrointestinal upset at the worst as we readjust if we are suddenly exposed to new ones or in quantities our bodies are not used to. Not something we want when the S is alreay HTF, but not really a major problem. During SHTF I want to avoid getting one of the major diseases that are prevalent in disaster situations from contaminated water, and that comes from outside sources, not the drum of water sitting in the basement.

SOME organisms that are either virulent enough or cause more serious problems (giardia, cryptosporidium, typhus, etc) aren't present at all in the municipal system at all when those systems are working properly, so aren't a consideration.

It REALLY isn't complicated to store water. It's only a little more complicated to treat highly disease-carrying water. People make it much more complicated than it needs to be.

 

[shibumiseeker]

I plan to stock up on propane tanks and get a burner that will hook up to it for food prep but mostly water purification. I also plan to buy a few very large cooking pots to boil the water. My problem with bleach is that is has a shelf life. I also have wood to use for heating the house but can use for boiling water. I have a sawyer squeeze to filter dirty water before boiling it. Does this sound like a decent plan?

Sure, that'll take care of biologicals. Whether it is a decent plan is up to you to decide how much effort you want to go through.

10lbs of granulated pool shock in a sealed container will treat enough water for one person's lifetime of drinking water to make it biologically safe, and if kept in a sealed container will outlast that person.

 

[BigBoxaJunk]

Sure, that'll take care of biologicals. Whether it is a decent plan is up to you to decide how much effort you want to go through.

10lbs of granulated pool shock in a sealed container will treat enough water for one person's lifetime of drinking water to make it biologically safe, and if kept in a sealed container will outlast that person.

Although be careful about what you consider a sealed container. Years ago, we had one of those little Walmart pools and at the end of the summer, I left about five pounds of hypochlorite granules in their original sealed plastic container in a cabinet in the garage. By the next spring, everything in that cabinet made of steel was rusty. Chlorine is an excellent oxidizing agent and it will rust steel faster than salt water and will shorten the life of plastic containers also, over time.

If I was looking into chemical water treatment (and I guess I should), I would also research iodine tablets.