Storing your water

There is no magic number for shelf life. There are many deciding factors for water shelf life including the type of storage container, lighting, temperature and even purity of the source. With these deciding factors in consideration water can be stored for many years or compromised only after a couple of months. Follow the water storage guidelines listed. Before reading this article on storing water it wouldn’t hurt you to read a previous article in regard to water sanitation and hygiene in a disaster scenario, the importance of using Calcium Hypochlorite to disinfect your drinking water as well as another article explaining how to properly add up your families water needs.

Water storage guidelines

1. Store out of light
2. Keep away from pesticides, gasoline or other chemicals
3. Use FDA approved DOT #34 opaque containers
4. Pre-treat water that comes from a well
5. Cycle every 6 months or treat with a water preserver

Thinking with a portable state of mind here is a good tip. I gallon of water weighs 8 pounds.As mentioned above your family of four water ration cache of 252 gallons of water (for just 14 days) weighs in at around 2,016 lbs, or roughly ONE TON! In other words, water is heavy and if you need to port water from outside sources you will want containers small enough to comfortably relocate it to your home cache, as well as in and around your house in smaller quantities. Also if for some reason you were forced to relocate you wouldn’t be able to strap a 55 gallon water drum to your back and travel for any long distance easily. So keep two styles of container both large and small alike for your water storage needs.

You should also thoroughly clean and rinse containers used to store potable water during your initial water storage plan, being prior to disaster. Mix 1 gallon of water to 1 tablespoon of unscented liquid bleach together to create a solution suitable for cleaning the containers.

Brush it into the threads of the mouth and shake it around the container. Let it sit for ten minutes followed by a thorough rinse. Your containers are now ready to store potable water.

Can there be a better reason to implement a pond on your land?

Cover image via Wikipedia Andy F