Unchained Preppers
General Category => Sustenance => Topic started by: Searchboss on August 08, 2025, 01:24:18 PM
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I hope that this is the right place to post this. I found a lot of great articles related to water purification and storage, but nothing recent. Although most everyone on this forum is already quite prepared from what I have seen, it is easy to get complacent.
I would like to share with you something that happened at my house yesterday. For context, we live in a suburban neighborhood in Central Georgia. We have city-supplied natural gas and water, and Flint Electric supplies our electricity, if we pay all the "subscriptions" on time. :suicide:
Yesterday morning, the water unexpectedly stopped running in our neighborhood. It was only out for about an hour and a half. This is the second time that this has happened this year, but this is not something that happens often. It had been years since this last happened. We found out that the water was off when a neighbor called my wife in a panic, asking her if our water was out too. Eventually, she talked to three neighbors who were all surprised, concerned, and annoyed about the unexpected outage, mostly due to the lack of an official prior notice. I guess that makes sense because governments are supposed to notify their residents before they do things, right? :o
At our house, this situation was only a minor inconvenience. Our neighbors' reactions were viewed as sad but amusing. Most were concerned because they had very little, if any, water in their house. Some just had a few bottles of water from the store at home.
At our house, we keep a modest amount of water in the attached garage, stored in many containers in sizes from 5 to .5 gallons. Some containers have spigots for ease of use at a sink, for example. Some we use for camping, and other small containers are kept because they are easier to carry if we need to move a little water from one place to another. This would come in handy if we needed to pour water into the tank to manually flush the toilet during an outage. Since a hurricane that passed over us one August many years ago that left us without electricity or water for 4 days, we also store six 40-bottle cases of 1/2 liter water bottles (just over 5 gal. per case). These are convenient to use or share during emergencies, on road trips, or at outdoor events, etc.
My point is that if you do not already have a realistic amount of water stored and available before an unexpected outage, it is too late once you discover the water is off, regardless of the reason. It does not matter if you get your water from a well or the city/county system. Do the math and figure out how much water you feel you need to store for your family for however long you may need it to last. Use it and/or rotate it twice a year to keep it fresh.
I thought I would share this to help emphasize that being prepared is important. Having empty containers will not do you any good. You have to have them full of water. :deadHorse:
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Thank you for the reminder, searchboss. We have a rain catchment system at one of our cabins. Currently, there?s an IBC tote full of rainwater and another one next to it that needs to be plumbed. My lovely wife has been reminding (nagging?) me that the second container needs to be connected. I suppose I should get to it while we have plenty of rain. The secondary use of the rainwater is for fire fighting in the event we have a brush fire. At our rural, remote location, we frequently have water interruptions, so it makes sense to have alternate sources. We discussed putting in a well, but it would cost a minimum of $20,000, so it?s not a priority.
As we build our new home, a gutter system is a priority, and the cost has already been factored in. The plan is to have a 1500 gallon tank, so we shouldn?t have any water issues, even without a well. We?re just a bit north of you searchboss, and we?re blessed with abundant rainwater. Water is essential for survival.
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Jackalope, you are quite welcome. I got a laugh out of your response. My wife is the same way. Once I commit to a project that she wants done, she is always happy to provide additional encouragement to get it done until the project is complete! It looks like you have a good setup in the works at your cabin. :DrillSgt:
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Searchboss, thank you for bringing this up. Great well written real life experience :thumbsUp: You rock, I do not care what your wife says about you :dancingBanana: :cheers:
Our water comes from a hand dug well that is fed from a underground spring. The well is about 100' higher than the house and we ran a 3/4" irrigation from the well down to a cistern which feeds the house using a 12 volt marine fresh water pump to the house. HERE (https://unchainedpreppers.com/forum/d-i-y/bringing-water-to-the-bol/msg24911/#msg24911) is an article I wrote about it on UP. Some of the pic's have survived.
Along with our water system we always keep a few cases of 16 oz. water on hand for the same reason as what Searchboss describes.
Before we had our existing water system and our current cabin build, we had a 12 x 20' shed made into a small cabin. We called it the bunk house. Anyway, Like Jackalope, we had a water catchment system we used. Basically it was a 55 gallon plastic food grade barrel. The water ran off the roof into a covered gutter and then into a pantyhose filter and then into the barrel.
When we arrived at the bunkhouse for a long weekend, I would empty the pantyhose filter, and then add a 1/4 cup (I think - Look it up on line) of unscented bleach. We would use that water for everything except drinking. The bleach smell would dissipate over a 24-hour period. There was a spring that came out of a fisher in a rock wall that someone had pounded a pipe into we would use for drinking which was several miles from the bunkhouse.
Just thinking out loud here but if you were in a suburban setting, and your ground water level was high enough, I wonder if it would make sense to tap yourself a secondary water source. Here is a video on how to do it.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIKkSeltuGY (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kIKkSeltuGY)
Anyway, thanks again Searchboss. :cheers:
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Searchboss well said. We had the city water stop due to a problem with a city well in our small town. The City put us all on a "boil water advisory" for a while. Our emergency supplies were used then.
We are currently having a landscaper remake things and two days ago our main water line was cut. So back to emergency supply for a day until the repair was done.
Well said.
zane