Great difficulty making potable water

[Possibilities]

I've been trying to think of long term sources of water. So far, we have several excellent stickies on how to purify water, but eventually these methods are going to be problematic.

For my own preparations, I have a multitude of backup plans. Using 1 gallon per person per day as my formula for calculations

1)I have several $4 plastic stackable bins. They each hold 18 gallons, and are difficult, but not impossible to move once filled with water. As things look bleak I plan on filling them. I thought about plastic trashcans, but the storage bins are better for my own practical use and are more aesthetically pleasing i.e. no complaints from my spouse. 10 x 18gallons = 180 person-gallons

2) I plan on removing the last few feet from my gutters if things go bad, and saving rainwater for watering my garden, and for flushing toilets as long as the sewers seem to be working. The gutters are riveted, and it would be simple to remove one section, and put the drain end into a barrel. I might wash clothes in rainwater, but I'm concerned about bird feces. Varies based upon the weather. I need at least two 55 gallon barrels with lids. Not yet completed.

3) I have multiple 5 gallons of bottled water. 50 person-gallons.

4) I have two 40 gallon hot water tanks. I could shut off the power and/or gas (in my case only electricity). 80 person-gallons.

5) I have purchased two first need water purifiers including pre-filters. Each filter will purify up to 135 person-gallons so 2 x 135 = 270 person-gallons. The filters could even purify lake water, since they're made to remove pathogens and many chemicals. I'm very concerned about the great difficulty of hauling water from several blocks away. I sure don't want to haul my water filter over to the lake. I may use my cooler since it has wheels and a handle and a spigot. This feels very dicey, and I'm concerned about runoff to the lake especially if people are not very careful about disposal of human waste outdoors.

Total 180+50+80+270= 580. Now divide that by the members in my family that's only 145 days if we don't waste any (which we sure will or spills will occur). Prudence dictates filling up containers as they empty once things get bad so we always have a backup supply. I have purchased excess bleach, plus I have some iodine to be doubly sure.

Things I'm thinking:
1)I've thought about simply buying more 55 gallon drums, but they're bulky and I have priced some at $100 that offer free shipping.

2) I could buy more filters. They're around $55 each.

3) I could assemble a solar still. http://www.epsea.org/stills.html Expensive to build at $350. Low output at 1 -3 gallons per day based upon outside temp and sun intensity. Has a big footprint on my deck. Noticeable by the neighborhood.

4) Long term dig a well. http://www.fdungan.com/well.htm I can imagine the great difficulties of keeping the neighbors from drinking all my well water. I can imagine way down the road organizing the neighborhood into building a series of wells. The water table would quickly drop. Problematic at best.

Any ideas? Some have mentioned that the water is right there in the water main, but if things go awry there would be no pressure. I can't imagine that simply putting in a hand pump would work.

 

[Laidback Al]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

There are numerous web links for bladder tanks or pillow tanks that could be used for water storage, but they are not cheap. The smallest I know of is the waterBOB (Bathtub Oblong Bladder).

http://www.waterbob.com/Welcome.do

 

[Tea]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

I have been thinking of purchasing one of these. http://www.ecoloblue.com/en/ecoloblue

EcoloBlue? is a state-of-the-art Atmospheric Water Generator (AWG) that produces purified drinking water from the humidity in the air.

Two problems for me though. I live in San Diego, and it tends to not work if there is really low humidity. Also if power goes out, I would need enough solar to run it.

I do like the idea of it though.

I have water stored, and a large berkey purifier. I also have a built in pool, but I'm not sure if that will be good for anything besides flushing toilets if we lose power.

Mandatory water rationing is starting this week in San Diego also. Level 2 drought.

http://www.kpbs.org/news/2009/may/05/san-diego-council-declares-level-2-drought-approve/

 

[Tea]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

Also, many tank options here.

http://www.watertanks.com/

 

[Possibilities]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

The WaterBob is a great idea and cheap! I read about them in a story, but assumed that they wouldn't be practical or would be too expensive.

I saw the Ecoloblue item. It's really expensive, needs 480 watts but doesn't specify how long so it would be more than my little solar setup could handle for more than 1 day for recharging the battery, and since it needs humidity would work great in my area during the summer, but mostly if outside. Doesn't seem to be a viable option for most of us.

A German company is making the watercone. http://www.watercone.com/product.html
They're not available yet, no idea on price, and the output is abysmal at up to 1.7 liters per day.

I'm starting to understand how people feel in third world countries without access to clean drinking water. In medical school we discussed how the greatest contribution to health care in the 20th century was clean water. Now I'm getting a better picture of the importance of it.

 

[prepdeb]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

- We have some 5 gallon, collapsible water containers and a few large water barrels that we can fill if things look bad and manual pumps to use with the barrels to dispense water from them. I plan to fill them and store them in the garage if needed.
- We also have two 40 gallon rain barrels that catch rainwater for non-consumable purposes.
- A couple of years ago I purchased a non-electric water distiller. Our stove is gas so I should be able to use it for distilling water even if the power is out.
- I've also purchased dry bleach that can be mixed on an as needed basis for various purposes.
- Also have small water purifying filters for emergency needs.

 

[Laidback Al]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

Another options for larger scale filtering for potable water is a gravity feed filtration system that uses ceramic cartridge filter or ?candles?. The filters are not inexpensive but they provide high flow capacity and can filter hundreds and thousands of gallons of water before replacement.
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Several of many online sources:
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http://doultonusa.com/HTML pages/residential counter top models.htm

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http://www.bigberkey.com/
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http://www.alpharubicon.com/kids/homemadeberkeydaire.htm
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[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

We have several 50 gallon drums. I bought them for $6. each from Pepsico bottlers. We also purchased the bigberkey. http://www.bigberkey.com/


Ft has a thread in the preparedness forum suggesting ways to purify water.

 

[Lizw]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

2) I plan on removing the last few feet from my gutters if things go bad, and saving rainwater for watering my garden, and for flushing toilets as long as the sewers seem to be working. The gutters are riveted, and it would be simple to remove one section, and put the drain end into a barrel. I might wash clothes in rainwater, but I'm concerned about bird feces. Varies based upon the weather. I need at least two 55 gallon barrels with lids. Not yet completed.

Why not start saving rainwater now? Don't you have downspouts on your gutters? There's no need to cut the gutters themselves.

There are multiple options for doing this, from just cutting the downspouts at a convenient point to pour into a barrel instead of on the ground, to using different kinds of diverters. I have six rainbarrels, one for each downspout. In the past, I've just filled the barrels, but this year I'm installing first-flush diverters on the four barrels that will hold potable water. These keep the first few gallons of each rainfall from going into your water container.

There is a very good tutorial about converting a 55 gallon barrel into a raincollection barrel at How to Build a Rainwater Collection System. This is how I did it, and I'm going to post a tutorial on how to hook up a first-flush diverter when I'm finished with that part of it. Have to get some additional fittings that I didn't realize I was going to need on the last trip to the hardware store.

 

[Lizw]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

http://www.alpharubicon.com/kids/homemadeberkeydaire.htm

I know several people who have built the homemade berkey's with 5-gallon buckets, and that's one of my projects for later this summer. I have to point out something that concerns me in alpharubicon's instructions, however. He says his "food grade" buckets came from Lowe's. I presume he means Lowe's Home Improvement paint buckets. These are NOT food grade and I wouldn't use them to store anything I was going to eat or drink.

Most fast food places will give away their empty pickle buckets, which are food grade, of course. Thorough scrubbing will get rid of the odor. Bakeries and dairies are other good sources for food grade plastic buckets (and they don't smell like pickles).

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

LOL Liz I had to laugh at your last post. We also have a lot of buckets each of which cost us 15 cents. They were frosting buckets from our neighborhood grocery store bakery department. I still can't eat a cake from the store. The smell of frosting will be with me for a lonnnnggggg time I fear. None of the buckets was washed prior to my purchasing them. Still better than oatmeal that smells like pickles I suspect.

 

[Lizw]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

Heheh--I don't know which would be worse--pickles or that sickly sweet frosting odor.

The best buckets I've found were from a dairy that made its own ice cream. The fruit flavorings came in 5-gallon buckets, and by the time I got my hands on them, they had been sitting in a shed long enough for whatever odor might have been there to have dissipated. They still had to be washed, but my organic whole corn doesn't smell like cherries, lol.

This is somewhat off topic for the thread, but I found the 2 and 3 gallon buckets from the grocery store bakery ideal for things I store in smaller amounts--green coffee beans, bulk spices, etc.

 

[Amish Country]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

I've been trying to think of long term sources of water. So far, we have several excellent stickies on how to purify water, but eventually these methods are going to be problematic.

4) Long term dig a well. http://www.fdungan.com/well.htm I can imagine the great difficulties of keeping the neighbors from drinking all my well water. I can imagine way down the road organizing the neighborhood into building a series of wells. The water table would quickly drop. Problematic at best.

Any ideas? Some have mentioned that the water is right there in the water main, but if things go awry there would be no pressure. I can't imagine that simply putting in a hand pump would work.

A well provides a renewable source of somewhat protected water. (Wells can still be polluted by surface contaminants, spreading of pollution from nearby aquifers etc.) I remember seeing a program on an older home where an old working well was discovered several yards away from the main house. It had been enclosed in a room and buried. A tunnel from the basement of the home was dug to allow access to the well. This way the well was still "outside the home" where the neighbors could not see or access it and the owners were still able to use it.

 

[Possibilities]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

Thanks for your replies. When I said that I was going to remove the rivets on my gutters, I meant the last section from my downspout so that it would fit into my rain barrel.

The hidden well was an interesting idea. Hmmm.

Checkout the link I posted called the motherload. There are a huge number of alternative ideas, and the organizer has made it into a large 13 GB file available as a torrent.

 

[hawkeye]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

Possibilities, you raise a good question, one that I've still yet to find a suitable answer

flushing toilets as long as the sewers seem to be working.

What happens if the sewers backup. Is it possible for it to back up into a home? If so, how would one keep this from occurring?

 

[Shannon Bennett]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

In some instances the answer is yes, Hawk. When that happens it is called supercharging. This normally happens when there is a very heavy rainfall and there is no back flow device in place to prevent the the huge volume of water from backing up into your home. Have a handy person either install one or call a plumber if your home doesn't have one of these already.

 

[Lizw]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

What happens if the sewers backup. Is it possible for it to back up into a home? If so, how would one keep this from occurring?

What happens is an unbelievably nasty mess. One office I worked in was in the basement level of a multi-story building. The sewer line down the hill from us was crushed by a heavy truck, and for a whole weekend, when no one was in the offices below, people were using the toilets in the retail store above us. Guess where it all went

Do what Shannon said and have a backflow device installed (basically a check valve). And then consider not using flush toilets at all. A sawdust toilet is an easy alternative, and the media doesn't have to be sawdust. We use composted leaves from the woods. You can get a toilet seat that fits on a 5-gallon bucket (or a 7-gallon ale pail, if you prefer the higher version). If you don't want to switch until you have to, you could at least try it out to make sure everyone in the family knows how to use it and that you have the materials on hand to put one together. An enclosure is nice, but not obligatory.

 

[LMonty]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

have you got a pressure cooker? rather important if you need to sterilize anything, such as surgical instruments, or if you need to preserve low acid foods.

Also makes a dandy still.

purchase some copper tubing that fits over the hole the pressure guage sits on. make it long enough to be coiled a couple of times then extend over a collecting vessel. (4 or 5 ft long should be plenty) . make sure the distal end of the tubing is lower than the top of the canner. place the collecting vessel under the open end of the tubing. fill canner with water, put on cover, affix tubing. place on heat source, withthe distal end of tubing over the collection vessel. Bring water in canner to a slow boil. the stream is going to travel thru the tubing, condensing as it the temperature decreases. condensate should be quite safe to drink or use for medical purposes if kept sterile or clean until use.

large volumes are problematic with one canner, but can be solved by using more than one canner. burns are a possible downside so safety issues do need to be considered, and never remove the canners popoff valve. (pressure isnt really needed for this, just the lid in place to allow collection of steam into the tubing). Avoid "boiling dry" the canner to prevent damage to the system. depending on the canner model used, you may remove the lid gasket to prevent possible damage to it since pressure isnt needed. I do not recommend purshasing canner with dial guages, siince they need to be calibrated yearly before use.

Toggle guage canners do not need this step, which could be unavailable in long term SHTF scenarios.

Another downside is having to create the coiled pipe and fit to the nipple the toggle guage sits on. not technically difficult, but probably should be done before need. a practice run will help ensure that any bugs in the system can be taken care of now while the living is easy. (IMHO, we should always practice preps BEFORE we need them!!) Another downside is that nosy neighbors and others seeing this set up might assume that you are doing things that the average citizen hasnt been allowed to do since long before Prohibition. Discretion to avoid misunderstanding and the scrutiny of ATF agents might be wise.

benefits are that the equipment is cheap, easy to obtain, used canners are often available very inexpensively (Ive paid as little as USD5 for one very large one). They are also multipurpose, since can be used for food preservation, water purification, distillation of liquids such as might be needed for medical purposes, and expedient sterilization, etc. I love multipurpose preps. Makes the most of my limited prep budget.

BTW, in regard to the Rubicon article, there is also a grocery chain named Lowes.

 

[Tea]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

I wanted to share another link. These are for personal use, or you can donate to areas that need them. Options for organizations also. Their intentions are primarily for third world countries, but maybe someone will find they need this for personal use also. Great backup at the very least. Once full, you will not be moving it.. lol

$75 for 10 years.

It removes parasites, bacteria, and viruses from contaminated water making it safe to drink. It?s the first point-of-use technology of its kind that is designed to deliver safe water for a family for more than 10 years.

http://www.hydraid.org/

 

[Lizw]

Re: Great difficulty making potable water

BTW, in regard to the Rubicon article, there is also a grocery chain named Lowes.

Thanks for the handy instructions on making a still. And you must live in my general neck of the woods if you know about Lowe's Supermarkets. That's our local one. Anywhere out of this area, people go "Huh?" if you say you get your groceries from Lowe's.