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Water Storage
Oct 1, 2008
In my last post I talked about some water purification and I mentioned that I keep four 7 gallon jugs of water filled up here at the house. Well an inquisitive reader wrote and ask me “you said you have several 7 gallon containers of water at home. How do you keep that fresh? How long will it keep?“. I thought about just sending an email back but decided to make a post out of it.
I’m not the world leading expert on water storage but what I have gathered in the past has lead me to these main points:
- If you are going to store water use food grade storage containers that you can buy from Wal*Mart or online. A substitute would be to use 2 liter soda bottles that have been emptied and cleaned properly.
- Fill your water jugs to the top with regular tap water. If your tap water comes from a water utility company and is pretreated with chlorine then you are good to go else you will need to purify the water in some manner before storing it. This would be a good time to use the chlorine.
- Close the containers with their original lids and be careful not to contaminate the cap when you put it on.
- Put a date on the container so you know when you stored it.
- Replace the water every six months.
- If your water taste flat then you can bring some life (or oxygen) back to it by pouring it form one clean container to another a few times.
Those are the main points and here are some links for you to glean more information from. Don’t forget to print this stuff. When you need it the most the internet probably won’t be available to you.
How to store water for drinking or cooking
Storing Emergency Water Supply
Stocking and storing food and water safely
Food and water in an emergency by the Red Cross
Food and water in an emergency by FEMA
October 1st, 2008 at 9:31 pm
Hey, I’ve been thinking about solar power lately. Do you have any good information on solar power like what is needed to use solar power with batteries and hooking that into house wiring.
Any information on good places to pick up equipment would be great too.
October 1st, 2008 at 11:49 pm
Eric, I don’t have anything on hand specifically about solar power but I’ll put Google to work and see if I can get enough info to make some information available in an up coming post.
October 2nd, 2008 at 1:49 pm
Also, consider storing those flavor packets that you pour into water (like Crystal Light or something). This can help your stored water taste better if you are just going to drink it. I store them because my husband doesn’t like drinking plain water, so in an emergency he’d still be happy. :)
Hannah
October 2nd, 2008 at 3:03 pm
I also store a lot of those little pour in flavor packs at my house for myself. They taste good, their cheap and they contain no sugar (or at least the ones I buy have no sugar) so how can they be wrong :)
October 10th, 2008 at 2:10 pm
“Fill your water jugs to the top with regular tap water. If your tap water comes from a water utility company and is pretreated with chlorine then you are good to go else you will need to purify the water in some manner before storing it.”
I’m glad you mentioned this. I’ve seen some odd trends lately on some blogs that have sought to demonize chlorine as if it’s doing more harm — when in fact it’s the one thing that is eliminating the water-born illnesses that would be otherwise rampant. I’ve done some work for the American Chemistry Council, and so I’ve come to understand why and how that chlorine has revolutionized our water consumption since it was introduced 100 years ago.
October 10th, 2008 at 8:08 pm
Thanks for visiting Nora. While chlorine might not be the safest think in the world it does kill the bugs that can kill us and if used correctly I along with a whole lot of other folks still believe it’s safe to drink. As you know people have been drinking chlorinated water for years and years and we are all still alive. On the other side of that sword however is the fact that people smoked for years and years with no apparent risk also. It wasn’t until relatively recently that smoking was linked to cancer so who knows maybe those folks are right after all. I like playing devil’s advocate to :)
August 31st, 2009 at 7:29 pm
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