Water Basics
Of all the emergency items, water is the most important.
That is quite a statement to make, and I'm sure that some intelligent people will say 'yeah, but what about...'. But I still want to say it.
Even if you do not make any other preparations for an emergency, having water on hand will put you ahead of the curve on the road to survival.
A person can survive a month, if they are reasonably healthy, without food. Without water, three days is really pushing it. If you are in a hot, arid climate like much of the southwest USA, I wouldn't count on three days. And the amount of time you can go without water and still be able to effectively deal with an emergency can be measured in hours.
You lose 10 percent of your strength when you lose just 2 percent of the water that your body thinks is optimal.
By the time you feel thirsty, you are already water deficient.
You are probably more than 2 percent low when you feel thirsty. By the time you are very thirsty, it is even worse. You don't want that.
I don't know why, but our body's 'water-is-low' warning system does not work all that well. Thirst is not just a little reminder buzzer telling you that you could use a drink of water. It is an alarm bell yelling that you are significantly dehydrated. This is one area where the body is not going to tell us what it needs, or at least not in time. You actually have to use your head on this one. That is why the U.S. Army requires personnel in the desert to drink vast quantities of water on a rigid schedule.
You must make provision to have sufficient water.
There are two ways to do it. You can store water on hand, which is essential. And you can get water various ways from your environment.
How Much Water? Government authorities generally recommend a reserve of one gallon per person per day. A gallon is 128 ounces. Many health sources say that we should drink a minimum of 10 eight-ounce glasses of water per day. That is 80 ounces. They assume that you sit calmly all day long, so they do not include the additional water you require if you exercise or work hard. In an emergency, you might need twice that much or more. The Israeli army requires each soldier to drink one liter (about a quart) of water every waking hour when they are on duty in the desert. That is a bit over 540 ounces per day, or about 4-1/4 gallons.
But let's just go with the sedentary requirement of 80 ounces. That would leave 48 ounces (1-1/2 quarts) of water for all of your other needs. Cooking food that needs water. Washing your hands. Washing dishes. Sponge bath. Brushing teeth. Watering any food plants you may be growing. Putting out fires. Boiling for medical use in case of injury. I could go on and on.
So please forget the one gallon a day fantasy, and plan on a minimum of 3 gallons a day per person. That may seem like a lot, but it's a much more realistic planning figure. If you actually use less per day, your supply will simply last longer. But you would be surprised how much you would give to be able to take a shower at some point in an emergency situation.
Please err on the side of overstocking when it comes to water. More is better.
Stored Water
Immediate Water. During an emergency, probably the first thing you will need to do for your body is to drink water. So you will need some water that you can access immediately
One good solution is to have some plastic bottles of water on hand. I have various sizes of bottled water in shrink-wrapped 6-packs scattered in various places throughout in our house and garage. By the front and back door. In the pantry. In our bedroom closet. In the garage. And of course in our cars.
Please consider that anything stored in your car can be exposed to high or even extreme heat. If you are in a hot or even a temperate climate, do not use plastic bottles of water. Heat leaches out chemicals from some plastics. Single-serving bottles of Perrier® water seem to be mostly glass. They make for a surprisingly fine source of emergency water for the car. They also contain a pretty good balance of electrolytes, which you also need when you are dehydrated. There is information about electrolytes in Food.
You can count your Immediate Water in your total of water stores, or not. I do not. That provides a little cushion. I probably have four gallons or so of Immediate Water supplies.
Primary Water Stores. I think it is best to store water different ways. We do it three ways:
1. Water in plastic bottles. We have several cases of 1.5 liter bottles of water. They comprise about one third of our total stores. 1.5 liters is a handy amount for personal use, and helps you to keep track of the amount of water you are using per day... if you're good at converting liters to ounces. I'll do it for you, no charge. Three of these bottles total 144 ounces. A gallon is 128 ounces. Isn't it kind of surprising to find out you should be drinking a minimum of almost two of these every day?
Most bottles of water are made of a plastic type that you can refill one or more times. For more information, Google 'refill plastic water bottles' or check out the American Chemistry Council web information.
If you reuse a plastic bottle, or any other container, you must be sure it is clean before refilling. The American Chemistry Council recommendation is to use hot soapy water and then to dry thoroughly. To sanitize the bottle, perhaps check out the information here.
2. Another third of our stores is in the form of 5 gallon bottles from our local drinking water company that delivers to our home. We usually have eight extra 5 gallon bottles, which we make sure are rotated properly. If we get behind on our drinking of water so that the oldest bottles get too old, we use some to water our vegetable garden so we can get fresher water. Some companies stamp an expiration date on their bottles. If yours does not, find out from them how long their water is guaranteed to stay safe to drink, and do not exceed their expiration date.
3. We keep the last one-third of our water stores in drinking-water-specific containers purchased at Wally Mart. They are 7 gallons each. I fill them with tap water, and add bleach. Tap water is not made to store. It is intended to be used as it comes out of the tap. So it may contain organisms and who knows what other things that could be a health hazard if stored.
If you want to avoid all the bleach talk below, you may want to order packs of multi-year shelf life water from Nitro-Pak
Back to the bleach. I use 84 drops of Clorox® bleach (unscented) per 7 gallons, which works out to be a little over 0.14 oz of bleach. That is possibly a bit more than recommended by some sources. But if water that has been stored has a significant chlorine smell, let it stand in a clear glass in the sunlight for an hour. The bleach should break down considerably, and the water in the glass should become drinkable. My thought is better to put in a little more bleach rather than not enough, at least to a certain point. I don't know how much I swallow when I swim in a swimming pool, but those are sanitized with chlorine, and I've survived that amount of so far. However, drinking bleach can be fatal. So do not overdo it.
On the other hand, if there is NO chlorine smell at all, it may be that the bleach has lost its power to be effective. That means you cannot be sure if that water is safe to use or drink, so you must consider it unsafe until you treat it, as discussed below.
One reason I tend to use just a bit more bleach is the fact that bleach lessens in strength the longer it stays in the bottle, even if it is not used. There are generally no expiration dates on bleach. So I try to get some fresh bleach every 3 months or so, and use the older stored bleach I have to clean clothes and things with. I do not know if that is a perfect solution, but it seems to work pretty well.
There are different kinds of bleach, with all sorts of additives. What I'm talking about here is the regular Clorox®, with 5.25% sodium hypochlorite as its active ingredient. You can use an exact copy store brand, but I find that Clorox® seems to last longer. Btw, there are 'other ingredients' in pretty much every bleach you find at the market, so you might want to check out what those ingredients are before using it, and make sure it everything is safe for you. Avoid scented bleaches as well for disinfecting water.
We plan on using the water in the third category for cooking where the water is boiled first, or for other uses that do not require the same purity as drinking water. But if we run out of other sources, this will be our backup for drinking water. If we have enough fuel, we might boil it first.
None of the measures above, or anywhere on this site, will make certain that water is safe to drink. They are just what we do. There are all sorts of circumstances, including your source for water, and the infinite ways water can be contaminated both before and after you get it, that can make water unsafe to drink. Only laboratory testing can tell you if water is safe to drink. We don't have much of that around here. We do what we can and hope it is enough.
And that segues naturally into the second way of getting water...
Water From Your Environment
There are all sorts of ways to get water from your environment. But most of the ways may give you water that could be unsafe. This is a very serious problem that must be recognized and solved before you put a drop of water anywhere on your body, or even think of drinking it. Drinking contaminated water can make you very sick. You can also absorb some contaminates in water through your skin. It is possible that contaminated water has killed more people in the history of the world than any other singe cause.
There are different kinds of contaminants.
Natural biological contaminants like bacteria are in almost all environmental water. You have to kill them. The most widely accepted ways are 1. boiling the water, and 2. so-called water purifying chemicals, such as bleach or iodine tablets (not recommended) or a wide range of other commercial products with varying degrees of effectiveness.
Boiling water is probably the gold standard. It's simple, too. Heat water until it comes to a rolling boil, which means when there are a lot of bubbles churning the water. Then you need to let it cool down before you drink or use it, so that it will not burn you. Be sure you are not letting it get contaminated again when you do that. By the time it returns to a usable temperature, it should be purified to a very high degree.
It does taste 'flat'. The boiling releases oxygen, and concentrates minerals. It helps the taste a little if you shake it up vigorously for a while before you drink it. A tightly closed lid helps it from going all over, but you must take off the lid a couple of times while you are shaking it to help oxygenate it. Also, a tightly screwed down lid makes it almost impossible to open once it cools. As boiled water cools, it creates a bit of a vacuum. Leave the lid loose enough so that there is some air exchange while it's cooling. A tiny shake of salt helps too, in my opinion.
I've talked about bleach above. The amount of bleach to be added was for clean water assumed to be perfectly safe to drink when you put it in the container! For clean looking environmental water, the amount generally suggested is 5-8 drops of unscented bleach per gallon of water. That's about half a drop per 8 ounce cup. The water should be left out for about half an hour before drinking, and yet still have a very faint chlorine smell. For commercial water purifying tablets, read and follow the product directions. You can find a good selection at Nitro-Pak
Are you getting the idea that even if water looks good and clean and safe to the naked eye, it may be totally unfit to use or drink? Because that's a vital point. You can't tell by looking at it whether water is safe, or not.
If the water is obviously contaminated, if it is muddy, or unclear for even worse reasons (like it comes from a puddle and it's green) you need to strain the water through clean cloth or a coffee filter or something like that to get out as many particles as you can, before you do anything else. That helps the decontamination process work somewhat better. Some disease-causing bacteria are large enough that straining the water actually takes out enough of them so that your body, if healthy, can handle the rest. This does NOT make the water safe. It is definitely not safe. Straining it is just a first step.
Man made contaminants are more difficult to get out of water. But we drink a lot of them in our everyday water, so I think there is no need to be more concerned with them in an emergency situation than we are normally UNLESS there is a special circumstance, like the water is trickling down from a heavy metal smelting plant. You need to pass on trying to use something like that. And it's a totally different ballgame if there is radioactivity or biologic or chemical agents present. Those are all far beyond the purview of this site, so you'll have to get that information elsewhere. But my thinking is that any of those make environmental water unusable.
Lest all this seem too dire, consider that some tap water can be recycled sewer water. And people seem to be surviving that.
Now some much happier thoughts.
Rain. This is the simplest and possibly cleanest way to get environmental water, but the least dependable. Still, some people in remote locations depend on rain for all their water needs. They have catchment tanks that can hold thousands of gallons of water, so that they can have water even during periods of drought. But if you are not into building one of those, you can probably get at least some drinking water from rain. Of course the amount depends entirely on when and how much it rains where you are. Don't count on it.
The most basic setup can be made from plastic sheeting and a container for the water. Let me say here that you must use absolutely clean and safe materials whenever dealing with water, and keep them clean from buildup of algae or any other environmental contaminants as time passes. Sanitize them the very best you can. Do not let bird droppings fall into your water. Nor little children. Do you get me?
Stretch the plastic over something to support it... poles, part of your house, rocks, earth berms... anything that will not fall down when rain is pounding on it and collecting in pools before it runs down into your container. Remember that a gallon of water weights 8 pounds. Rain adds force to it. Don't let the supporting materials intrude into the water-catching part, contaminating the water.
Plastic sheeting 3 to 5 mil. thick is probably a good minimum thickness. You can use thinner plastic if you don't have anything better. You can even use plastic bags. (Actually, a thick plastic never-used-before garbage can bag can be an emergency rain catchment device all by itself, although you gather only as much rain as falls through the mouth of it, which will generally not be very much). If your material is imperfect, you may gather only a little water, but that is better than having no water.
You can use duct tape to minimize leakage from rips and holes.
The more surface area of your catchment, the more rain you will catch.
Likewise, the more surface are of your catchment, the more weight and force it will have to withstand. So the bigger the area, the better you have to build it. Overbuild your water catchment, if you have enough materials.
In the middle of your plastic catchment sheet, make a hole. To keep it from tearing larger, you can put duct tape on the underside before you create the hole. The size of the hole depends on exactly how you are making your catchment. A hole 2 inches in diameter should take care of a substantial amount of rain, although if your catchment area is huge, say over 8 x 10 feet, you may want to make it even larger.
You can run a tube of some kind... vacuum cleaner hose, pvc pipe, whatever you have on hand... from the plastic to the container, but that's usually not necessary. Again, be sure everything is absolutely clean and sanitary at all times.
That includes the container that you will put in the middle under the hole. Plan how you will drain water from the container, either by moving it, or by a spigot of some sort. A big water jug like used for team sports comes to mind. But you can use anything that's sanitary and will hold water without leaking.
Can you drink rain water without purifying it? The people around here with catchment tanks, usually pipe it straight into their kitchens and bathrooms. They drink it without purifying it. Is that safe? Is that perfectly safe? I don't know. But I think rain water tastes really great. The only better water I've ever had was sipped directly from a stream in the high mountains 40 years ago this summer. You could see the trout moving through the stream as though they were swimming in air, the water was so clear and pure. And I think that tells you a lot about where I'm coming from.
Local bodies of water. Rivers, streams, lakes, puddles, etc. The further you go down that list, the less chance the water you get from it will be safe to use. Today, I would not drink directly from a stream any more than I would lick a rock in a cow pasture. Treat it all as contaminated water, and do your best to purify it before drinking it, brushing your teeth in it, or even washing your feet in it.
The ocean. Well, the problem here is that sea water is intrinsically undrinkable. It's salt water. You will most likely die if you drink more than just a little, like the amount I used to swallow when I was learning to swim. But take the salt out, and you have fresh water!
There are so many ways of doing that. All of them take a lot of energy.
For example, you can boil water on a stove, then catch the steam in a lid of some sort, and tilt it so that it drips into a container. It will be pure, clean freshwater that is as sanitary as the container you catch it in. But in an emergency, when you must conserve energy, you may not be able to do a lot of that.
So consider a more energy-efficient method. Spread sea water in sanitary flats of some sort, maybe sheets of plastic laid into depressions in the earth, without any tears or holes where the dirt could contaminate the water. Put more plastic sheeting over it, like a tent. Let the sun provide the energy, and slowly the water will evaporate and collect on the underside of the tent plastic. Put containers to collect the drip when the water runs down the tent to the edges. There are a lot of ways of doing that, but you can experiment with what you have to find the most efficient setup. Again, you will have fresh water that is as clean as your materials.
If you have the materials, you can make a desalinization unit with glass instead of plastic sheeting, using appropriate water-safe pvc pipe to as a collector and to pipe the water to a container. We'll get figures and pics for you at some time in the future.
If you'd like to take a look at a truly amazing filter that turns seawater into drinking water, check out Nitro-Pak
The air. This is probably the most tricky area of collecting environmental water. Some locales are better than others. The more humidity you have in the air, the more water you probably will be able to gather. Since it is difficult, it would be unwise to rely on it as your only source of water, even in an emergency.
There are two basic methodologies. The first one has to do with topology and how succulents drink water from the air and why you can't have a certain size of rock in desert roadbeds. Let's skip that for now.
In the second one, you dig a circular hole in sand (this was developed for desert survival) or dirt. Make it 3 to 4 feet in diameter, and 2 to 3 feet deep. If the location is already a natural depression, all the better. Dig a small hole in the middle, deep enough for the container you are going to use and wide enough so that the sides of the container does not touch dirt. Something like a cup, or a sports bottle might be nice. Just be sure the lid is off.
Put plastic over the hole and container, making sure it does not touch the dirt nor the container. Put enough rocks on the edges of the plastic so that wind will not cause it to flap. Gently press down on the plastic until it slopes toward the container in the middle, but still does not touch the bottom of the hole nor the container. The slope of the plastic should now be about 45 degrees. Go back and secure the edges of the plastic with more rocks, and put dirt all over the edges so that moisture cannot escape.
Put an object, like a small round rock, on the top of the plastic in the middle, right over the container.
In as little as a couple of hours, even in the desert, moisture will start to condense on the the underside of the plastic and start dripping from the spot under the object in the middle. When there is sufficient water in the container to make undoing your work worthwhile, get your prize... water as fresh as the sun and as clean as the container you're sipping it from.