Aside from shelter, water is the most critical component for maintaining human life in a survival situation. On average, a human being will die without water in only three days.
Depending on the environment, a person’s survival without water could be much less. Because of this, we need to prioritize the storage, collection, and purification of water as a major consideration in our stockpile of preparedness supplies.
One of the first questions that people have when it comes to the storage of water is:
How Much Do I need for My Family?
Water Requirements Per Person
The general rule of thumb is that we need to store one gallon of water for each person for each day. This means that a family of five would need five gallons of water per day after a disaster or emergency where access to the municipal water supply is cut off.
One gallon covers the water each person needs for drinking, cooking, and sanitation.
It’s not that simple, however.
The average American uses around 100 gallons per day, which means that in an emergency, we would have to cut our water usage by 99 percent.
This is a massive adjustment to our daily living situation, which many will struggle with. During a disaster, grid-down situation, or full-blown apocalypse, every drop of water must be used with care and never wasted.
Related: I Tried to Live Completely Off Grid for a Month. This Is What Happened
To mitigate this, we should try to select foods for our stockpiles that require little to no water in their preparation. As you build a stockpile of emergency food, ask yourself how much water will be needed per day to prepare it.
You may get by with one gallon per day, but if your stored food requires more water to prepare, you’ll have to increase your daily water storage requirements.
Pets
Do not forget about your pets when you are planning your water storage.
Consider your dog or cat another person and budget a gallon of water for them as well.
For smaller pets, you’ll have to use your best judgment when it comes to providing water for them.
How Much Water You Should Store?
When it comes to how much water you need to store, you’ll need to assess how much safe, cool, and dry space you have available for water storage. If you live in an apartment or condo, the amount of space you have available will be a massive factor in the volume of water you can store.
The first step is to determine how many days you want your stored water supplies to last, then consider how much water you can store and manage in your available space.
This is where plans for people who want to keep a year’s supply of water on hand go up in smoke.
Ask yourself if you could store 1825 gallons of water weighing a little more than fifteen thousand pounds in your home. I’m guessing that most reading this will not.
Pick a number of days of water that you can reasonably store, then have a plan to gather water from other sources to supplement your water storage.
And even if you have a huge water stockpile, you should learn THIS. It might even save your life in a crisis.
Storing the Water
For this scenario, let’s assume a family of four with a dog. This means they’ll be storing five gallons of water per day. A good starting point is to store two weeks’ worth of water, which is a goal that many of us can achieve.
(Five Gallons) x (Fourteen Days) = (70 gallons)
There is also an issue with the weight of this water. Each gallon weighs 8.34 pounds, so the two-week supply will equal 583.8 pounds! That’s a lot of weight and a lot of water.
I like to store much of my water supply in 5 or 7-gallon jerry cans. This allows the water to be easily transported or loaded into a vehicle in case of a bug out. I also use a 55-gallon plastic drum to store a large quantity of water for emergencies.
55-gallon plastic drums are great because each one represents eleven days’ worth of water for five people.
They are also readily available online and through local retailers and can be stored vertically or horizontally.
Related: Read This Before Stockpiling Water In Blue Barrels
All your stored water needs to be kept in separate locations around the home so that if there is damage to an area of the house that has some water storage, your entire supply will not be at risk.
If you have bathtubs in your home, it is a good idea to have a bathtub water bladder. These are widely available on Amazon and are essentially a plastic bag that sits inside of your bathtub.
You can fill this water bladder in advance of a known natural disaster, such as a hurricane, or immediately after an emergency while there is still pressure in the system. The average bathtub can hold between 40 and 60 gallons of water, and keeping one of these water bladders on hand for each tub is a great way to supplement your water storage.
Other Water Sources
Pay close attention to all the available water sources in your area.
You must also assess the cleanliness of these sources and their viability for emergency water. Rivers, creeks, lakes, ponds, etc., are great options, but if the water is filthy, it may not be of any use to you.
Collecting rainwater is something that can go a long way to extending your water storage capability. This water will not be good to drink without filtering and boiling but will be fresh water that you can use.
Filtering
Along with stored water, you need to consider adding water filters to your supplies. There are many options available in the water filtration space, and it can be confusing to decide which ones you should be getting.
Smaller hollow fibre filters are perfect for inclusion on a bug-out bag, but someone in the group needs to carry a more robust filter. Reverse Osmosis filters are a very popular option because they can remove most contaminants from water, including fluoride.
Recently, several ultraviolet options have come to market. These claim to kill bacteria and viruses using ultraviolet light. Personally, I do not use these filters because I do not like trusting my health to anything that needs a battery.
If you have a backyard and access to rainwater, you’re already better off than a lot of people. All you need to do is set up this cheap DIY rainwater harvesting and purification system, capable of storing and filtering 165 gallons of water that would otherwise just go to waste.
Determining the amount of water you need to keep your family healthy and hydrated after a disaster is no small task.
It requires good forethought and careful planning to ensure you have enough to meet your daily needs.
Whether planning for a multi-year disaster or simply wanting to be ready for a 72-hour emergency, water will be a keystone component of your preparedness planning.
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lehmans hardware store sells well buckets that are new not old rusted ones. we bought ours a few years ago along with the appropriate length of rope. i would like to find a well pulley, we have a smaller one but it’ll work till i find one. this system will be used after the generator runs dry. we have a dual-fuel one with many propane tanks on hand in a propane cage i found at a yard sale. we keep 40 gallons of water on hand and switch it out twice a year. each of our get-home bags have a katydyn water filter in it. hopefully we won’t need them, my ruck humping days are behind me. we have a swimming pool that will add water to our survival if needed. this was a good article making you think of what a person needs.
Is our water really free for the taking?
It is funny for those in California and elsewhere in the USA people don’t know how government and environmentalist have regulated water rights to us.
The Delta Smelt controversy from Sacramento caused many farms in the Fresno area years ago to go bankrupt. The supposed endangered species act for the Delta Smelt fraud caused irrigation waters to be diverted to the ocean to save the fraudulent smelt in question.
Anything big government has control over will be a bottleneck approach to controlling what we get with utilities and other services.
Thank you Mr. Major for covering the need for water storage and the need for being able to purify more water because one can not store enough for long term. A good follow up would be more detail on filtration and purification. Its worth mentioning that everyone has about 40 gal of water in your water heater. Isolate it and protect it with inlet/outlet valves as soon as you realize things are going south. I haven’t done it, but I have thought about adding a second tank just to double the amount that is always being replaced and refreshed without any effort on my part. I will admit that I don’t refill my waterbricks and barrels as often as I should, its a real pain to keep up with it. Again, if you are prepping for a time period of more than a month nothing is more important that acquiring water and then filtering and purifying it.
I just went through the hurricane Beryl fiasco. My opinion and past comments on here that water will be what drives people to irrational behavior was proved right. Apparently everyone was caught by surprise. The HOUSTON weather people got it so wrong. If you want to look at a map of Texas, The area on I 10 through HOUSTON if you go east to not quite Beaumont, West to the other side of Katy, Up Highway 45 to the other side of Huntsville down 45 through HOUSTON down Highway 59 all the way to Edna. Near total power failure. It’s not all city or suburbs. Many people have wells. We woke up that morning, and it was on top of us. We went to bed with everybody saying it was going in far south of here. At the first part of June, I filled 2 5 gallon jerry cans with water. Several municipalities and MUDs did not have water. The pumps have no back up. 4 million people without electricity and many without water. Don’t get me started on the greed of the power company. This was completely avoidable but proves us to be correct in our efforts to be prepared. I will not say I cruised on easy street but I was far better off than many. You just never know how dependent you/we are to convenience until it’s gone. Hats off to the line workers who did a huge effort in restoring power to many within 48 hours. There are still many who do not have power. The big majority does. I will say this to who’s ever reading. The most important thing is to have your soul prepared. This was a very mild hurricane that did this much damage. If the Lord wants you, he will take you if not, have your preps ready. I will say I could have gone several weeks if it came to that. It didn’t but easily could have. I learned again.. news cannot be depended on and weather can only be guessed.
Be prepared in mind, body and soul.
Chaplain Dan, wise words. At my last location, we had a well, and for the first several years we were there, we lost power every third storm. I quickly learned to keep water on hand. I’d also make sure one bathtub was scrupulously clean and would fill it with water at the third storm.
The well was too deep for a solar jack and I didn’t see any manual pumps that looked like enough to get the water out of the well.
We had a tornado come through (experts said it wasn’t one, but in a more affluent location not far from us they said it was, ahem), and our area had no power for three days. It was summer. Fortunately, there was a swimming hole not very far from our house, and we cooled off there as well as cleaned ourselves. Lots of others did the same.
The bathtub full of water I had plus the gallon jugs I stored meant that our household had enough for drinking, cooking, and careful washing.
The average depth for a dependable well in my area is 1000 feet, around 20,000.00 all in, so I’ve never considered a well. Have followed the development of solar powered well pumps and they have become efficient to several hundred feet, good off grid alternative for lots of folks. My water storage is a 20,000 gallon above ground pool.
like the thought of this : but most of our area is run by villiage idiots w/o common sense and so we have laws that stop us from water storage or collections
even if possible the avg is at about 3-6 ea 16 oz bottles per person per day times 7 times 30
I dont think possible for the masses or city dwellers or even a lot of areas with large housing units
since the goal of the Rich, elite , absulute villiage idiots in charge is CONTROL , this keeps you in submission and loyal to thier agenda and cause
but if Rural or out of citys or masses then you can
bathing is only about a gallon per week per person
other items are water goes bad with Heat , bacteria s so must be running or cleaned by the earth so it remains filtered
anything run thru filters , sand, types of sediments will be good
best is to store in wells, underground, an natural storage , underground caverns, caves, containers
best to keep up your research
Water rights are very important to us taxpayer/s health.
Agree if the Hollywood village idiots (Clooney), get rid of Biden, just think of VP Harris in charge. She is from the same political family that Pelosi and CA gov Newsom are from, a big happy family And that is who liberals want running our country into the ground?
She did great as a border czar and would do the same stuff to our water rights. Right now the San Diego beaches in Imperial Beach area have for over 40plus decades Tijuana sewage flowing into the USA beaches. These toxic waste not only water but airborne toxic fumes getting the local people sick.
What happens in vagus doesn’t stay in VEGAS anymore. What happens in California so goes the rest of the nation.
God bless America and Maganomics!
I meant 40 plus years, decades in the making.
Not only illegals crossing the open border but raw darn sewage polluting many beaches in San Diego Area.
Good afternoon. I’m fortunate. I’ve got 2 wells on my property, and I am not connected to the water grid. What I am working on, is disconnecting the water pump and filtration system from the power grid and running it with an inverter connected to batteries charged with solar. Folks, my tee-shirt today says, ” If you fail to plan, you plan to fail”. Folks stay informed and be vigilant.
Has anybody just tried a dehumidifier. When it gets so humid, that my wooden floors start to buckle, I went to wally world and got a ‘DEHUMIDIFIER’ to remove water from the air and stop my floors from expanding. After a few hours, I have to dump about 2 (two) gallons of water into the sink. And the dehumidifier comes with a filter, just in case I need to drink. Just saying, It’s already out there.
I live in Texas (major humidity) and my humidifier uses the included hose and dumps right into a berkey filter unit. Sometimes I get some dust in the water but most times it is very clean, filtered water. I did test it for contaminates (using water test strips bought from amazon) and the test came up fine. I use it for the dog’s water bowl when it is dusty. It clears up after a bit. This is not a good solution for all year (during winter it gets a bit dry and during peak summer months, no humidity) but about half the year…..we have to find things to use the water on as it produces so much.
I would still make sure you drink the “condensate” from the dehumidifier through a Life Straw. Chemicals, bacteria, and even metals can end up in the condensate, you do not want to drink it straight from the tank!
I didn’t get the physical copy of the lost supper food book and not all of the books shown in your picture of books showed up for down loading
I’ve ordered and received, after very long waiting times, at least 6 of the books offered on this site, one volume I ordered two copies, the second for a gift (for a total of 7 books).
The books are very good and each time I’ve placed an order, I’ve ordered the extra downloadable bonus books also, but have never received a single downloadable book nor a link to the page to download. Since they were free, I’ve never pursued a follow up for the free books. On one order (following the USPS tracking number) the book got held up at some postal distribution center for several weeks (no exaggeration!) after inquiring, I was sent a new book which took another 2-3 weeks to receive for a total of roughly 10 weeks total for 1 book. That of course was the Postal Service problem and not the company but it just added to the frustration(s) of every book order.
So to Claude and his office staff, your products (the books) are very good, the service is horrible (3-4 weeks to receive each book order and no download link for the free volumes that I’ve ever been able to figure out). Id really like to still receive my download books if possible, you can check my order history through my email. Thank you and good luck to Sherrie
one gallon/day for drinking, cooking & sanitation??? Plan on getting very thirsty very quickly. I have been trying to be very careful w/ the water I use in the house. The best I’ve been able to do so far is 7 gallons/day of water for a 30 day pd. This is only for cooking & sanitation. It does not include drinking water which I get separately from a kiosk.
There is NO way that 1 gallon/day will get anyone thru a collapse.
Don’t forget certain foods can help augment your daily hydration needs. Melons, for example, are high in moisture and fiber. Obviously not enough but better than dipping into your reserves.