Storing water for an emergency is one of the most important preps you can do, and with how easy it is to accomplish, there’s no reason for you to have at least a week’s worth of water for every member of your household right now.
There are lots of ways to store water for an emergency, but many require you to buy containers to store the water in. While this is the best option, as containers specialized for emergency water storage are easy to stack and strong enough to last through many fills and empties, it is possible to prep on the cheap by storing water in plastic pop bottles that you and your family use already.
There is a little prep that’s required to get these bottles ready for safe water storage, though. Follow the steps outlined below and start prepping your emergency water supply now.
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How Much Water?
So how much water do you need to store? Well, on average each person needs one gallon of clean water per day. This includes enough water to properly hydrate a typical person and give him or her water for sanitation purposes.
This number will go up in extremely hot or cold climates as well as dry environments. Children and anyone that is very active will need more, and individual needs will vary greatly. In extreme climates this water estimation can easily be doubled. (Extreme means the south in the summer and the north in the winter)
So, if counting yourself you have a family of four, that means you should ideally have 28 gallons (4 gallons x 7 days) of emergency water ready to go. The bare minimum should be 1 gallon per day for 3 days, or 12 gallons total.
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Plastic Bottle Preparation
As you finish with pop bottles (2-liter or larger are preferable) wash them out with tap water and dish soap immediately and allow them to dry. When you’re ready to fill them, give them another rinse with tap water, making sure the water hits every part of the inside of the bottle, cap included.
The next step is to sanitize the bottles. This can be done easily by mixing up a solution of 1 teaspoon of non-scented liquid household chlorine bleach to a quart of water. This means that for a 2-liter pop bottle, you’d use 2 teaspoons of bleach. (1 liter is 1.06 quarts)
Cap the bottle and gently shake the bottle to allow the solution to come in contact with the entire inside surface of the bottle. Do this for about 30 seconds to ensure full contact. DO NOT use a brush or other device to clean the inside of the bottle. This can create small scratches inside the bottle that can easily harbor bacteria.
When done, unscrew the cap and pour the solution out, allowing it to pour over the cap to sanitize it as well. Once the solution is poured out, give the bottle a rinse with tap water to make sure the bleach solution is gone.
Filling Your Bottles
Once the bottles are clean and sanitized, it’s time to fill them up. If you get your water from a commercially treated facility (community water source) then it should have already been treated with chlorine to sanitize it. If you get your water from a well, then you need one more step.
If you get well water or a non-chlorine treated source, fill the pop bottle with water from the tap and add 2 drops of the chlorine bleach used above. After 30 minutes the water will be clean and sanitized.
If your water comes from a city or community source that’s treated with chlorine, then all you need to do is fill your clean bottles with tap water. If you don’t notice a slight chlorine odor to your water, then it’s recommended that you add the 1-2 drops of bleach to your water just to be safe.
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Precautions
Make sure you don’t touch the inside of the clean bottle, the inside of the cap, or the rim of the bottle’s opening when filling. This can contaminate the water and defeat the whole sanitization process.
Water that is stored in this method is only good for six months. After six months you must empty the bottles and re-sanitize and re-fill them using the steps above. Discard any bottles that show signs of wear.
DO NOT use containers that held milk or juice, as the proteins in milk and sugars in fruit juice cannot be washed out, making these bottles impossible to fully clean.
Check out Ready.gov for more information on emergency water.
1 comment
Thanks, I bothers me to waste water bottles