Preparing Your Water Supply at Home

If you don’t have water supply on hand when a crisis happens, it’s going to quickly become a matter of survival for you and your loved ones.

Water should be one of your priorities and you need to start now setting aside water for your use.

You’ll want to put aside as much water as you possible can. After an emergency situation hits, whatever water supply brings the water to your home might not be fit to actually use anymore, if you even have the electricity to bring it into your home.  This means setting aside a massive amount of water that may take you months to accumulate.

So you’ll need to be prepared. You need to store water according to how many people and animals you’re going to be providing for. The rule of thumb when it comes to setting aside emergency drinking water is to put aside 7 gallons of water a week for every person or animal that must be taken care of.

You could use something like WaterBrick Water Storage Containers to make sure that you have a solid supply of water for yourself and your family. There are plenty of types of water containers on the market but the reason that you want to get this kind is because they can hold a lot of water in just a little bit of space.

You’ll need to make adjustments when figuring in things like the weather. If the weather is hotter where you live, then you’ll need to set aside more. People who live in areas where it’s hotter end up losing more water as they go about their day.

Also make sure that you consider the individual needs of each person. You’ll need to figure in more water for a woman who is expecting a child or for an animal that’s expecting to give birth.

The barest minimum amount of water supply you should set aside is 72 hours to get you through that crucial first three days of an emergency.
However, some people do set aside water above that amount.

Remember that water doesn’t have a date for when it’s no longer usable.

While there are expiration dates on bottled water, the water itself doesn’t turn foul. What happens when water is stored for long periods is that leaching can occur.

Whatever water you set aside can absorb odor from how it’s stored. So you can end up with perfectly good water that tastes terrible. You can prevent this by making sure you store it properly and that you switch out older water with newer batches every so often. Some people recommend changing out your stored water twice a year, while others suggest every four months.

While the best bet is to buy water already sealed, space can sometimes be an issue with this method. Not to mention it can be pretty expensive by the time you’re done collection the amount that you need.

You can set aside water yourself from your own home before an emergency strikes if you use the proper containers. These would have to be top grade containers that didn’t allow sunlight or temperature changes to impact the quality of the water. You would also have to make sure the containers were safe to store water in.

Some plastic containers contain chemicals that make it unsafe to keep water in for any length of time. One think you can do if you decide to store water yourself is to treat the containers before using them. You can do this by simply de-contaminating the container by using household bleach to clean it with. Make sure that you wash down the sides as well as the bottom and the lid of the container with the bleach. After you do that, do not dry the container with a towel since you could accidentally end up contaminating the container.

There are a few prerequisites to follow when you’re keeping water stored for emergencies.

Any type of container that you use shouldn’t have warnings on it that it can’t be used for food. If it has that, then it can’t be used for water storage either.

You’ll need to use containers that can seal completely. If there is even a small opening, bacteria can get into the container along with pests and other undesirables. Never use any plastic jugs or containers that aren’t safe to store water in such as ones that have been used for bleach, pesticides or other chemicals that are harmful.

Once you decide what you’re going to use to contain your water, make sure that you mark the container’s contents. You’ll also want to put the month, day and year that you stored the water so that you can keep up with a rotation schedule.

Make sure that you keep your water stored in a dark area away from direct sunlight or extreme heat. It’s always best to place your water supply in an area that has a temperature not greater than 70 degrees.

If you prepare, you can easily set aside enough water to supply your family’s needs to get you through a crisis.

Always be on the lookout for a way to get water – especially if you have a lot of animals depending on you. You can set up rain barrels outside your house to collect water for pets and livestock. Water running off the gutters of your home during a rainstorm can be used and stored for use.

When a crisis first occurs, you want to do everything that you can do to protect your water supply to make it last as long as possible. You should immediately go into proactive mode.

If you lose the ability to have fresh water brought into your home because the utility company has shut down or there’s been some other type of interruption, you’ll want to do what you can to preserve every drop. That means making sure not a drop of what you already have is wasted.

Most people don’t realize that they have many gallons of water already inside their house that’s perfectly safe to use for drinking.

• Remove the hose from the back of your washing machine and hang it down into the washer. Turn on the water at the faucet and let the washing machine fill up with water.You wouldn’t want to use this water for drinking unless you had no choice and treated it with purifying treatments, but it could be used for other things.
• Some appliances already contain water that you can use right away.
  Your hot water heater can store numerous gallons of water depending on what size tank you have. Many tanks will have as much as 50 gallons of water on hand. You can remove that water and use it for your needs. All you have to do is drain the water and transfer it to whatever water storage system you use. You want to get it out of the hot water tank before anything can contaminate it. The minute that you realize there’s no water coming to your house, close the hot water heater valve and shut off any power leading to it. Never leave the power attached to a hot water tank once it’s been drained since this can damage the unit.

While you can drink the water once you remove it as is, most people do still sanitize the water just in case. Homes today are constructed with pipes that don’t contain lead.  That means that the water in those pipes is also safe to use for drinking or for other purposes.

Drain the water from each pipe in your bathrooms and your kitchen.  Store this drained water until you need to use it.

In the event that it was a natural disaster that caused you to lose the water supply to your house, make sure you prevent water that’s been standing in outside pipes from getting inside the house pipes. You can do this by shutting off the water outside to prevent it from reaching your house.

Many houses today have at least a full bathroom and a half if not more. For every bathroom that has a toilet, there will be water stored in the tank that can be used. This water isn’t dirty, but most people only use it for drinking if they’ve run out of other options. If you don’t like the idea of drinking this water, you can still use it to wash your clothes, bathe with, or to water livestock or family pets.