How much water are you storing?

Ive got about a month and a half worth of water stored for one person. I go by the 4.5 to 5 litres of water per person per day. All my water is bought bottled water ranging in bottles from the 12 litre upside down water cooler bottles, 10 litre bottle with faucet to 24 pack 600ml water bottle.

Need to top my amount up but will not go too much over this in bottled water. Waiting on installing a rain water tank until my move to a new home. Also would like to set up some grey water tanks to my down pipes for use in the garden and sanitation.(Cheap and easy to do)

Ideally the minimum goal amount I would like to reach is 3 months of water for 3 people.

Lucky you Frostbite

Bottled water for the most part: 24 x 600mL = 14.4L per pack. That's about 2 packs per day for our family (including my parents). We have 30 packs atm, so that's about 2 weeks. We also have a few 30L drums, so that adds a few days worth. I can also distill small amounts to bolster supplies. I so long to get to a rural acreage...

Water is one item that we require to be able to survive and have a lifestyle.

I know that in the cooler weather I require approximately 2.3 litres a day while working to keep myself healthy and I would imagine that in the hotter months my daily intake would be at least double that.

I have never been a fan of bottled water because of the chemicals in the bottles. Put a half empty bottle on the dashboard of the car in the sunlight for half a day and the gasses emitted from the bottle will leave a film on the inside of the windscreen and you will be able to taste the chemicals in the water.

If we were living in the city I would be storing rainwater water in tanks that were made for the task so that the risk of chemical contamination was kept to a minimum.

Remember that after a SHTF situation if you get sick from any cause there will not be a medical system in place to help you with your ailments so it would be best to eliminate any causes for concern.

If you look at the Choice web site and their article on bottled water you will find it worth the read.

As we live entirely off the grid water is one of the items we have to have suitable catchments for. Adequate roofing areas are required to catch enough potable water for use in the house and the amount of tank capacity has to be matched to household use.

In our case groundwater runoff is captured in a series of dams and that water is used to flush the inside toilet as well as watering livestock and for the production of food.

We had water in one 31,000 litre tank for seven years and when we came to use it there was no difference in taste or colour, or lack of, than water from the tank that had been contained for a much shorter period.

We do not treat our tank water with any chemical such as bleach before use and have never heard of, in our many years of living in rural areas, of any one else doing it either. If the water is stored in properly made tanks whereby the light cannot get to it there should be no cause for concern. Bird droppings, possum poo and the like have never been an issue for us or the people we know.

We do have a ceramic filter urn that we use for water which is consumed by the glass but all of the other water we use is straight from the tap.

Our biggest problem with water is getting it to where it is to be used. We require both electrically powered and petrol powered pumps to move water to tanks that are above the areas where it is to be used so that it can then gravity feed to those places.

If ever a SHTF event occurred then it would take a lot of human energy to move water so that we could survive.

The majority of people living in cities or towns, regardless of their size, will find it hard to survive if all they have for a supply of water is a reticulated town supply that will fail once the power to drive it becomes non existent.

Yes, we do have a good solar power system and yes, we do use the electricity from that to pump some of our present needs but, like everything else it has a limited life span. Petrol powered pumps need a fuel that will become unavailable after a SHTF situation.

Over the years I have been intent on getting water catchments above most of the garden and orchard areas in case a time arose whereby fuels would not be available for the pumps. If we get good rains in a season, we are set up so that our main garden is able to be irrigated from dams via a gravity feed system. We know that it does not work every year but if we were frugal we would/could have a good supply of food three out of five years.

Frostbite, I believe I have remarked on your water availability before and I am still envious of it but getting it to where it can/could be used after a SHTF event is going to be a challenge.

The BPA problem [plastics] is about concentration and for the purposes of food and water isn't an actual issue.  Sure, in it's most extreme it causes some issues and like all chemicals in low concentrations according to hundreds of research papers, it's innocuous.  It's worth noting that cans are all coated an epoxy coating to stop rust [and few people talk about that] and so on and they contain tiniest amounts of BPA. Happy to dig up some further data if you like, though there's this:

the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has said that BPA is safe at the very low levels that occur in some foods. This assessment is based on review of hundreds of studies.


Cool stuff! The panels themselves only degrade 20% in 40 years, aka still at 80% assuming they're not physically damaged. Obviously pumps are the most likely to fail in that equation, though they're also fairly long lasting being electric. If you're pumping to raised storage, I would imagine you could do that during the day without the need for batteries, with the right pump and running DC [you'd have to do a cost/benefit] it might even be possible to do that without a regulator for the voltage - slow on cloudy days, fast on sunny days with a float/simple cut off to simplify your electronics.  I'd personally just keep a couple of spare regulators if it mattered, they're super cheap if you go for Chinese as the cost versus quality equation to my mind is easy, $12 versus $120+ means I have 10 for the price of 1.  With a spare pump/parts perhaps having the same pump [for familiarity and swapping of parts] I could see how you could persist for a very long time without resupply.

I love hearing this stuff thanks for the insights, there's pumps that use water flow [simple pumps] that require no electricity to work also.

This is a real weak spot in my preps. My initial aim is 200L and at the moment I'm at around 120L, all in Coles/Aldi 10L bottles stashed under the house in the dark. The 200L aim is based on 2L drinking water per adult per day and 1L drinking water per day for the kids (aged 1 and 5). This would be very light on in Perth any time from December to March. So that's 6L/day, throw in a little more for cooking and (very) minimalist cleaning (say 2L) and that gets the four of us through about three weeks in a harsh austerity regime. So yeah, not completely comfortable with my water plan. In a SHTF situation I'd be aiming to collect any rain that fell starting on day 1 and I also have what I need to put together a solar still, so that'd hopefully help.

The medium term plan is to buy a house, and if/when that happens I'll get a rain tank. Preferably one not visible from the street

I do have a bit of a concern over the storing in plastic thing, so will read that Choice article this weekend - thanks peter1942.

100L in 10L Coles/Woolworths Spring Water
28L in 600ml bottles

Fill 50L before every forecast storm

Prepared to capture from roof gutters in SHTF scenario and have a Big Berkey and Aquatabs for purification.

3000 litre tank fills from roof, however not sure of it is potable, as it has an overflow that rats could get into as they like to do when poisoned, will have to empty and take off mess and have a clean out with pool sieve.
About 20 litres in bottled water
2 200 ltr blue drums and 2 more available if required.
Also a pool with 20 k plus of not potable but usable for washing etc.

Hey Veg, do you have some approximations on how much water your garden needs in addition to rain?