Your family has an overall water consumption need. Potable water for drinking and hygiene as well as non potable water. The average recommendation is to have enough water to last two weeks.

Lets go over a breakdown of the water your family should require. This is a general rule of thumb and you may require more or less. This average is a great starting point and you are encouraged to fork out from here if need be.

You will need upwards of 8.5 gallons of water per person in your family.

• 1 gallon for drinking

• .5 gallons for hygiene

• 2-7 gallons for sanitation (dependent on toilet type)

So for the average family of 4 we use this simple formula to decide our families waste usage as follows:

• 4 people x 1.5 gallons per day x 14 days = 84 gallons of potable water being used.

If toilets are being used and taken into the overall water equation then we would also need a non potable water cache with usage as follows:

• 4 people x (3 gallon flush assumption) x 3 gallons per day x 14 days = 168 gallons of non potable water.

This leaves a total of 252 gallons of water needed. Well 252 may be  a challenge to store properly. If you have access to a pond, swimming pool, lake or stream you can easily draw from it for all of your non potable needs. This greatly reduces the overall challenge you face when confronting water storage.

We waste a of water in America. To put this into better perspective just see the 2000 census. The American census of 2000 has an estimate of 2.59 people per household, using 94,000 gallons of water each year. This averages out to be around 100 gallons of water used per person each day. 100 gallons! Compared to the rationed 4.5 gallons we mentioned earlier (1.5 gallons potable, 3 gallons non potable) you can clearly see not only how much we waste but how much we can live on when forced to ration.

Main photo from Flikr. Marsh photo via Jim Champion.