water

by

Water Update

berkI decided after all to go ahead an order a Big Berkey.  On a forum that I read, the safecastle website has a presence, and posts “bunker” passwords for savings from time to time.  The latest bunker had a good deal on Birkey systems, which were already on sale.  I was able to get the Big Berkey with dual black filter AND a stand to rise it up enough that you can fit a glass under the spout for less than just the unit from the Big Berkey site or Amazon.

I have set it up, but I have not yet primed the filters and tested my assembly yet.  The one disappointment, and this is not the fault of the company, but my own failing, is that the unit on the stand is a scant 1/8″ too tall for the spot that I meant to be the filter’s home, which was under a cupboard where the bottom is shaped like an H (center is higher than side cupboards).  I thought I had the right measurements, but that didn’t include the little knob on the cover for easily removing to add water.  Bummer.

Done

Temporary water stored (about 10 gallons in regular store bought milkjug gallons)
Ordered water stand for 55 gallon barrels
Ordered tubing and plumbing supplies to chain 3 barrels
Supply list compiled for rainwater catchment system

Limbo:

Pick up 3 barrels (waiting to hear back from my SiL source)

To Do:

Obtain supplies and install rainwater catchment system
Decide on and order portable filter options for bug out situation. Still leaning towards a UV pen option for portability, but when we “arrive” what then to cleanse water?
Assemble 55 gallon barrel stand when it arrives
Acquire more portable containers for transporting water from catchment system to filter, from filter to barrels, or for immediate use. 7 Gallon aquatainers are looking like a good option. I would like to have 4-6
Buy 4 Water BOBs for tubs, 1 per tub, plus a backup each (if time allows for filling)

Obviously I would feel better if this were all done, and better yet if I had a stream or well on my property, but for someone with nothing, not even plans!, a few months ago, I feel good about where I am at.

by

Water storage thoughts

I was planning on ordering 55 gallon water barrels through my SiLs church contacts, but my water will have to be stored in the garage, but then I read that it is not a good idea to store the barrels directly on concrete, so I held off.  Elsewhere I have read that is mostly a myth.  One site quotes some guy [“According to preparedness lecturer Kenneth Moravec: “Concrete attracts fluids and ‘bleeds.’ Anything that has been on or in that concrete will find its way into your plastic water barrel. This includes the lime in the concrete, any hazardous materials (i.e. gasoline, oils, kerosene or anything a contractor used in construction), algae, etc. Usually it is not enough to make the water toxic but it will taint the water enough to make the taste unbearable. And no amount of pouring it from container to container will take that taste away.”] who turns out to be a long term prepper from Utah, no particular expert except via experience (which is not to be sneezed at, except when you’re wrong), and then it gets parotted and shared as gospel.

*Heated* concrete is a problem, so if it’s in an environment with relatively stable temperature, like in a basement, it’s probably fine.  My garage isn’t temperature controlled though, so it might be a good idea to raise it.  If you are going to do that, then why not create a rack that stacks 2-3, to use the vertical space?  Right now, I could get this metal stand with upgraded plumbing system, with delivery, for around 385$ from groundzero3.com. It’s on sale, and there’s a coupon code, which drops it 60$ altogether.  Note this is without barrels.  Assembly of this would be relatively simple.

img_0639

There’s are also a number of plans out there to build a wooden rack.  A 2×3 takes it up to 330 gallons, which would make me pretty comfortable, once a rain cachement system is in place. Do I have the skill to build that though?  Well, no.

These are great videos and make it seem easy.  But I don’t have the tools.  And if you add the materials and time, well, perhaps it’s not more cost effective.  But it’s twice the barrels.  It’s easier to expand.  Once you have the tools, the additional supplies aren’t that much.  Tools are useful and should be owned anyway.

Times like this, I quite wish my guy was handy.  And that he was on board.

Preparedness Pro has a great article on myths and facts of water storage.  Worth the read.

by

Water, Water Everywhere

The 3rd item on my list is water.  This I divided into 4 main areas

  1. Water Storage
  2. Rain Water Reclamation
  3. Wells / Pumps
  4. Natural Sources
  5. Filtering / Making Water Safe to Drink

The number I’ve seen most often while researching suggests a gallon of water, per day, per person.  That allots for 1-2 quarts of water for drinking, with the remainder for food preparation and hygiene.  This doesn’t seem like a lot to me, especially since the most common food storage items are rice, beans, oatmeal, dehydrated products and so on — all which take a lot of water to make fit for consumption.  And when water doesn’t come out of the hose and I need to water my garden?  Or the toilet still works, but doesn’t pump the water back in so we need to add water to the tank in order to flush out our waste?

For a minimal 3 day supply for my family (As I mentioned in an earlier post, my husband and myself, a 12yo boy, 7yo girl, and my mom), I’d need to store 15 gallons.  A 90 day supply is 450 gallons.  If I wanted to have a years worth stored, at a minimal gallon a day, that’s over 1800 gallons.  Overwhelming!  I could probably find storage for a couple of 55 gallon water barrels, get a couple waterBOBs for my bathtubs (though you need to have some warning for those to be useful), but I don’t see anyway to store much more than that. So I’ll need to look into other ways to replenish water.

Contrary to what people believe, Oregon doesn’t really get THAT much rain.  In Portland, we average 40-44 inches per year, and its spread out over 150ish days.  Lots of other cities get more rain (We aren’t even in the top 30 of cities over 20k population!) but typically that rain is more torrential and comes from fewer days.  If you go east, Oregon is even drier.  South in the valley, they do get more rain (Corvallis makes the top 10), and on the coast in say Lincoln City, they average double what we see in Portland.  We get a lot of gray drizzly days, not pouring rain like they see in Alabama or Florida or Texas, etc.

graydrizzle

At any rate, I can expect to see 40 ish inches of rain per year, and each inch of rain typically results in collection of around .6 gallons per square foot of roof.  I don’t have all the details on my roof.  But if I had a flat roof (I don’t, its got multiple peaks), just based on the floor plan, its have 40×80 or so of roof real estate.  Because its peaked, there would be more because of course the peaks are the long sides of the triangle that would be made.  So to err conservatively, say 3,200 square feet.  If I set up one barrel on one of the 4 downspouts and it were roughly a quarter of that 3200, at .6 gallons and 40 inches of rain, one barrel here could collect more than 19,000 gallons per year.  That seems like a lot, but I can’t find an error in my math.  Of course I would have to be harvesting the water from the barrel on a regular basis.

I also checked into our longest dry spells.  Since 1999, the longest dry spell here was 51 days.  If you go back further, the driest spell on record is 71 days.  To make it through those dry spells I would need to have 255 and 355 gallons on hand, respectively.  I just determined that I don’t really have the space to store more than a couple 55 gallon barrels.  Even if the rain water reclamation barrel was used to store a third 55 gallons, that leaves me 90 or 190 gallons short to get through a potential record breaking dry spell.  That means in addition to installing a rain water barrel, I have to find a way to store more water, in a way that keeps it safe and drinkable as long as possible, handy enough that I can rotate it

Wells/pumps and natural sources of water aren’t an option where I am now.  I am wanting to have information on that in my preparedness binder though; it’s something I would want to think about if we ever do move.  And we may need the info to DIY if we were forced to bug out and fine a new place on the fly.

Finally, filtering.  There’s a lot of different ways to cleanse and filter water.  I’m leaning towards a Berkley filter for home and a UV steripen for the 72 hour bags.  More research to do though.