How much water do you keep?
 

I'm trying to decide on the best way to store water. What do you store yours in and how often do you change it out? Where do you store it at?
Thanks!

I've got a 275 gal tote for rain water collection. That's for non potable water/watering the garden. It held chlorine before so if I scrubbed it out real good I'd feel ok drinking from it in a pinch. I've got another 32 gallons worth of aqua containers. A couple 7s and a few 6s. These are for basic storage, watering trees out of the reach of the hose, camping, etc. I'd like to add at least one more tote and bring my small container storage up to 50+ gallons.

We have a creek. It gets changed out every day. From time to time I pull 500 gallons to go in the cistern. No water bills since 2007.

We have a 500 gallon potable tank mounted on a trailer that we fill at a spring too far from the house to pipe. The spring has a hand pump. We keep about 50 gallons in one gallon jugs for drinking water and refill as we use them. Our livestock and house use untreated but filtered water from the creek out front, we don't drink it, too expensive to filter for drinking and we have a spring. And finally, we have a 1 acre, 5' deep seasonal pond, from late October through mid July. We bought the tank off of craigslist, it's an ex commercial usage tank with a metal cage around it, we paid $125 for it.

I'm more likely to face a boil order due to a storm than a long-term water outage where I live, so I've only got 14 gallons stored. 4 are for drinking (in gallon jugs) and 10 are for cleaning/sanitation (in cleaned-out kitty litter jugs). That'd get me through a short-term water outage like a burst main or the immediate aftermath of a storm. I've also got a homemade Berkey-style filter (2 5-gallon buckets and 2 Doulton ceramic filters, with two replacement filters in storage) for longer-term needs, such as if a hurricane or other storm put us under a boil order for a few days due to sewage backup.

Just a few gallons for now but I live near a good water source.

25 Gallons of potable water in the 3-season storage area. Most in 2-ltr pop bottles, rest in 2-4 gallon water cooler type bottles (from Sam's) Have a creek & a river nearby, so have a homemade filter bucket setup with 2 AquaCera filters and 2 replacement filters. Water had been a big hole in my preps until I got those filters the other day. Now I'm feeling "prepared". Ahhhhhh

Oh yeah... only filled the bottles this summer so will replace/refill in the early spring and repeat in late summer.

There is a cistern under the house and I'm sure it's full, but it hasn't been utilized since we've been here. (6 yrs)

We have two 50 gal containers in the garage for drinking. I also try to keep a couple cases of water bottles in storage. We have a big pool but it's salt water--we would have to desalinate it to use. I keep lots of extra pool shock handy, too.

Got a 40 gallon tank inside the house (hw tank), a 300 gallon tank outside the house, and an auxiliary 240 gallon tote, and a 50 million gallon tank up the hill about 50 yards (small lake)...

Only thing that'd bugger up the lake would be a Yellowstone supercaldera blowing... and even then, in a few weeks, I'd imagine all of that ash would sink to the bottom... probably would acidify the water... so we'd have just ~600 gallons on hand. Of course, most everyone wouldn't survive (us included) the initial conflagration, so it wouldn't matter...

We have a lake. A well, many ponds. Lots of rain. 3000 gallons in the cistern.

I have a 80 gallon tank outside and a 50 gallon one inside. I have a well and a source to convert it to solar if the power goes out, also a hand pump in case the solar won't work due to overcast weather, etc.

We're on city water at the tap. Storage water is 2 -55 gal drums in the shop that's not for drinking but all other use. Water available from ground spring and small creek close to house. We keep at least 3 cases of bottled water in stock and there's another 85 2-liter bottles of water stored in the back room. We're also surrounded with farm lakes and ponds and there's a water tower in sight south of the house. We also have a fire hydrant at the side of the house.

Two 1500 gallon tanks constantly filled by a spring, then gravity feeds on down to the house. Excess from the constant fill runs in a separate line, watering cows, chickens and 2 fish ponds.

We have 28 gallons that I change every two months for 3 people. It's stored in our dining room on the floor. lol. O.o

We store out emergency water in the ground. I suppose there are several hundred thousand gallons.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v6...s/DCP_2870.jpg

I didn't know that we were counting lakes and such too. I've got a lake/small pond out back that I can pull from.

I've got a pressurized well so there is constant flow with or without power. Also several creeks and streams on the property.

I have no idea, but pumping at over 30 gallons per minute doesn't affect the level of my water in storage. I keep mine in the ground too.

We live in town, city water, so we store water. We have 100 gallons stored continually in blue food grade barrels. We can get these locally for $10 a piece-cleaned (tomato sauce was in them....in a bag no less, so food never even touched the sides). We also keep 2 blue barrels we can fill is we know "something" is coming. Also, we have two WaterBOB's. We only have one tub so we can only fill one, but we could give our good neighbors the other, so save it in the event the one we used can't be reused.

We have 3 rain barrels (150 gallon ability) set up and could set up more (with the 2 extra barrels mentioned above) if need be. We have all the parts to make a water filter for the rain barrels, if needed for drinking verses just watering the garden.

ETA: The water in barrels we treat with bleach. After one year we changed it out and tasted it....tasted like tap water, not chemically. After more reading on the net, we have decided to extend the length of time between water changes. We are now going 2 -3 years before rotating it out.

We keep two gallons of bleach and a creek.
Cabin Fever has the cutest well pump!

not enough

6 gallons per person actually stored without any draining of water heater or anything like that , working on more

change it out every 6 months

tastes ok after 6 months

I prefer smaller movable containers , the 6 gallon , 3 gallon and 1 gallon

i have some 55 gallon drums i can fill they are clean but stored dry, just not set up to fill and empty the 55's in the house and they are a bear to move full up and down stairs

We are on city water and have 200 gallons stored in water barrels that is non-potable. We also have two, 40 gallon hot water heaters in the basement, a couple cases of bottled water and about 20 gallons (refilled juice bottles) of stored tap water. Prior to a declared emergency, we could also fill 2 bathtubs.

We have one of the great lakes right outside, and lots of bleach. We probably should store more in the event that it gets more contaminated.

we have two 55 gallon drums down stairs we ordered for water storage. haven't filled them yet, but they are there. several filled 4 liter jugs. a near by creek. lake superior is close by. we also have water filters.


keith

If you are filling 2 liter bottles or similar item with water for drinking, how often do you change it out ? Did you notice any funny smell or taste when you went to change it ? I live in town and have city water, and it doesn't taste the best, but safe to drink.
I am thinking about buying gallon jugs of water already sealed, they have a shelf life of over a year and do not need any treatment. I can get them very cheaply.
They just take up quite a bit of space to store them.

For potable water I have a 10 gallon reserve water can that I use regularly for my coffee and pet water and refill with county water between monthly cleanings and I keep 25 chilled 20 oz soda bottles in the fridge. I also have my 40 gallon water heater outfitted with cut off valves and an in line air valve so I can isolate it from the water supply and the rest of my house and low pressurize the tank to run it to my bathroom sink in case our water supply is interrupted.

For flush water during county water interruptions I use the water from the heat mass barrels and algae tanks in my worm room/greenhouse and bucket flush.

If I were to face a long term (5 day or more) water outage I can resort to using the shallow cavern well of non potable water on my place and distill it if needed for potable use by using some of my wine making gear to make a water distillation unit.

In the 20 years I have lived here I have only had to use my water heater supply once and never had to resort to the well option except during a test to verify that I could adequately purify a 3 gallon batch of water in a few hours.

I have city water so I store. I have two 55 gal. blue barrels of potable water, 20 2 liter bottles filled for cats and chickens, four 55 gallon rain barrels, two cases of 20 ounce bottles, a small pond used for growing duck weed and cattails and 4 empty 5 gallon water containers and a very large bath tub that can be filled upon the announcement of need. If a long term crisis came about, there is a small creek nearby although I'm sure everyone else around here would head that way as well.

26,000 gallons rainwater, 2500 gallons well water.

Guys, I think I need more water!

We're undeniably lazy, so we keep some water on hand in old glass wine bottles. No one wants to haul water from the creek, especially in the winter. I want to say about five or six 3 liter glass bottles. (DH broke one last week, fortunately empty.) I trust glass a lot more than plastic. Enough to get us through maybe a 24-48 hour power outage without having to bother with accessing the water heater or whatever.
We change them out by using them to water houseplants, then refilling them. I don't think any water is older than three weeks, but I'm not exactly keeping track.
That's the other side of the two gallons of bleach (except I bought a third this week) and a creek answer. Lazy!

I'm one that's filling 2 liter plastic bottles with water from the tap. I don't change it out. Water that's a year stored is ok with taste. As for safety of using that for drinking water, I don't know.

I have 2 Brita water pitchers that provide some filtering at the countertop and have extra filters for these. The Brita pitchers don't necessarily make water safe to drink but the pitchers do soften the water and remove the bad taste. Water that has not been treated can be put through the Brita filtering to improve the taste, but not necessarily the safety of the water.

I keep bleach in quantity and also have several different water tablets that I have yet to try for water treatment. If I could have my druthers satisfied then I'd druther have the original contents of the 2 liters instead of the water.

As for not having the storage space for the 2 liter bottles, it's lucky for me that I have a small bedroom empty of furniture and not in use. I set the filled liters around the edge of the room on the floor next to the walls.

We are in the desert with only one natural source of ground water within 70 miles which is well known and on a popular hiking trail up in the mountains. So.... We have 3 330 gal tanks, 1 220 gal tank for us and a 100 and 250 gal water troughs for the animals that are full all the time and 90 gal tanks on the horse trailer and camper that we keep full in the summer. We are looking to convert our well to solar come spring if we can afford it. Lack of water is our biggest worry here. There is a cattle pasture with a water trough on a solar pump a mile from here so if we need to we can turn our horses loose out there and not use all our water on them. It belongs to my boss so they would still being there, if thing aren't bad enough to make someone eat them.