The average person should drink a half gallon to a gallon of water per day. We recommend prepping more than a gallon of water per person per day. This will cover your drinking needs as well as your other culinary water needs, such as cooking and brushing your teeth. A person can go a long time without food, but you can only go a few days without water. Because of that fact, we recommend having water storage and water filtration systems as well.
Water Storage
It’s important that you get yourself a good water storage. If you’re just starting out, that’ll probably look like a case or two of water bottles. As you are able, buy yourself some good water storage containers, fill them up, and then cycle them out every 6 months to a year. If you stored them correctly, water doesn’t go bad. We recommend cycling them out regularly just in case, and also it tastes better this way. For a beginner to intermediate prepper, or preppers in a smaller apartment, medium sized containers such as the one below is a great option. You can always add additional water supplies later. Multiple options and redundancies are actually what you want when prepping.
Most people don’t have a lot of room for large amounts of water. It’s still important to have a lot of water on hand. If you’ve got a little bit of a heads up that some disaster is coming, which you do with most severe weather events and other disasters, you can fill up your bath tub with water, which will hold, depending on the size of your tub, 30-100 gallons. Plan 1.5 gallons of water per day, that’s 5-16 days of water for a family of four.
If you use a tub linter like the Aquapod kit, you can fill your tub above the overflow drain, all the way up to the rim of your tub. If you bypass that overflow drain, the average tub can hold about 70 gallons of water. That about doubles your capacity. This kit also has a top cover to keep your drinkable water clean and safe for drinking without any additional treatment. It also has a siphon for easily filling bottles, pitchers, or any other water containers you may need. These are inexpensive and are really handy in an emergency. It also makes the tub water storage much safer if you have small children, though I still wouldn’t leave children unsupervised to play with it.
Water Filtration
There are a lot of options and styles for water filtration. The most basic is the life straw. It’s a straw with a filter built in. You suck water through, and its filtered. The only drawback is you can’t store filtered water this way. It’s extremely simple and compact though, which makes it a great option for a bugout situation, especially if you’re in an area with plentiful ground water.
For a water filter with storable water capability, I recommend the Platypus. I first used a Platypus on a boy scout backpacking trip. If 15 teenage boys aren’t able to break a scout masters water filter, or get sick drinking the water, it deserves its place in the hall of fame. This is an extremely popular option. It’s really simple. You fill up the dirty marked bag and it flows into the clean bag. Then you’ve got what you need when the time comes. This is an especially great option for groups.
Keep Learning
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