Hey Guys,
I thought I would kick this forum off with a series of articles on storage for the longterm. I know I am not going to get everything right or include every bit of information but I know you guys will get my back on this by correcting whats wrong and filling in the empty spots.
Fact: you can survive 3-5 days without water, but do you want to try it?
So lets assume that you like being hydrated, how are you going to insure a steady supply of clean drinking water for you and yours?
Springs are the best solution but not always practical. I know that in my home state of New Mexico they are few and far between and even the best have been know to go dry in a hard drought. That said if you have a year round spring you are really in a great spot. You would do well to make sure that nothing contaminates your spring and that would best be done with a spring house. See wiki page for basic info
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spring_house The advantages of a spring house are two fold. First you are protecting your source of water and Second you are providing yourself with the means to keep things cold, which will be a real boone in WROL.
Second best would be a
deep well but how are you going to pump that water up to where you can get to it? You could use a well bucket, Dave at
http://livethemotto.blogspot.com/2010/02/home-made-well-bucket.html has written a great how to on well buckets but they are not the best way to skin that cat because you have to pull the jet pump or suction pipe out of the well to use them and their capacity is limited to how heavy of a bucket you can pull up and what if the rope breaks? Another "on the cheap" option is to make your own EMAS pump
http://www.akvo.org/wiki/index.php/EMAS_pump. I have made several of these pumps and find them to be cheap and dependable. I have provided a link to their wiki page and I suggest you take a look, these folks are working on the big picture of water and sanitation. They have great info and all their projects are on the cheap too!
Now if money is no problem you could always track down a rebuilt Aero Motor windmill or anyone of the Solar pumps but I don't think any of us are in that position.
And that brings us to the topic of surface water and rain water collection. Surface water will need to be treated. You can use a Katadyn or Berkey filter and they work just fine but for my money I am going to use Calcium Hypochlorite sold as pool shock
HTH or Hypochlorite does not kill Chrypto. UV light or Ozone does. I need to readress this.. It is cheap shelf stable bleach in powder form. As to rain water collection I am again going to refer to EMAS because they pretty well have the subject covered.
Now what I see alot of us doing is hunkering down for the first couple of weeks or months until the gun fire outside our houses dies down. For that I would recommend a large stockpile of water. Atleast 2 gallons per person per day. Now I know that thise flies in the face of the 1 gallon a day crowd but lets think about the situation we are going to be in. You will be locked down in your house suffering from whatever the elements have to offer. Stiffling heat in the summer (no AC) and biting cold in the winter (no central heat). Those conditions both require increaced intake of fluids. You will also be using that water to cook and clean with and I don't know a single prepper who has nothing but no water needed food. Most of us are rocking dry beans and rice. Plus water is cheap and easy to store now so why not put away extra?
The cheapest method I know of is to store it in used 55gallon food grade platic drums. Make sure that you sanitize the drums and remove any stink in them with baking soda. I would also suggest that you add bleach to the water at the time you fill up to prevent growth of water borne stuff. As cheap as that is I would also suggest that you stockpile cases of water not because I think that water is worth more in a easy to transport fashion but because those #1 pete bottles are perfect for the SODIS water disinfecting method
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solar_water_disinfection.
So that is the short version of my thought on water. We will add more as it gets mentioned but I wanted to jam something out so the forum wouldn't just be tits and guns.
Be good, be safe
thatGuy