No Water

This past weekend I had a house full of family at my house to celebrate my middle daughter's third birthday. While we were all tucked away in our beds sleeping, during a 20 degree night a pipe broke somewhere within the water system (not in my house) and we were without water. My wife first noticed it at 0400 that morning, and told me about it. Well at 0600 my mom was asking if she needed to drive into town to buy some bottled water. I keep quite a bit of water stored, and pulled out a 7 gallon Reliance Aqua-Tainer water container. It worked really well for the intended purpose. I placed it on the counter top in the kitchen, took the lid off, turned it inside out, and placed the spigot on the outside. Then I turned it on it's side and we had water ready to go. I whole heartedly recommend these water containers. Even if you use other containers for storage, you might want to consider using the Aqua-Tainer 9410-03 for easy home use due to the spigot in it. I bought mine at Wal-Mart, and I have used them a couple of times just to make sure they worked as advertised. Thankfully the water lines were fixed that morning before we were lugging water upstairs for the toilets. Even after we had water it was not clear and we continued to use the stored water for the remained of the day. With 11 people at my house it would have been TSHTF with no potable water. If you do not store any water currently, then consider doing so. It is actually very inexpensive.


Aqua-Tainer 7G/26L (9410-03)

Water Container

 

I've used them too...and have them on hand. I live in Hurricane Alley..

I always have water around....

 

Yep, I have had two of them for years, and have used them occasionally. I recently added a few more to my preps.

 

I've been looking at them at my Walmart for a bit, thinking for camping, I have a few of the softer plastic collapsible we have been using. but it is time to replace them. Thanks for your view of them.

I'm typically not worried about water as where I live we are on a private well so as long as the power is on (or I run off generator) I can get water, that is unless Lake Superior runs dry

 

I got a well and a generator too but I still keep several containers of potable water in storage. I have a few of those containers and they do work great.

 

I try to keep water, 1 gallon jugs around, never know when you have to prime the pump again, but these containers are built a bit better, also like the spigot, at least the kids won't dump the supply trying to get a drink

 

We are in a trailer and a large portion of the plumbing is exposed to the outside air so it freezes up frequently for a wek or 2 at a time. We have 2 60gallon barrels that we keep in the kitchen filled with water and a barrle stand that holds one on its side about 18" off the floor. I took one cap off each and opened up the bottom of the 'hole' that has threads in it and screwed a hose spigot into the opening. It makes it so that if the water is out we have a barrel already on the stand and one for back up that you just turn on the spigot and get what you want. I also cheat a bit in that when ever the water gets runing I just run a hose into the kitchen and refill the barrels in place.

With the 3 of us a barrel usualy lasts us about a week for cooking, drinking, dishes, bathing and flushing toilets. Im hopeing for a warm front soon since we are about half way through the second barrel and I HATE when I have to haul them to the water tower, get soaked trying to fill them (hose from the tower is bigger than the hole), then wrestel 40 or so pound barrels holding around 550 lbs of water off the trailer and into the house/kitchen. lol

 

Similar thing happened to us a couple of years ago. The water supply line from the road to our house busted. It took a week to get someone out, dig it up, fix it and have it inspected before we could turn it on.

Years before that we did a lot of camping with family in southern Idaho in the summer (only for family!) and found the value of packing several 3-5 gal cans of water for washing and drinking out in the sage brush.

After that camping experience we started keeping a few of the water cans filled at the house just in case. When the supply line burst (rusted out) we had plenty of water for cooking and drinking. At first we used it for flushing but as we started to run low we made trips to the neaerst store during the day and used our water just for night time toilet.

 

man that is to much lifting and trouble.get yourself some nice insulation and wrap..wrap..wrap those pipes.i have 3 discs shot in my back ..no way will i or could i wrestle water around like that.save your back for the long haul of life.i didnt and now i am in trouble at times for it.i doubled the pipe insulation on my water lines and then wraped in regualr insulation till it was several inches thick.then i wrapped it all in heavy plastic to protect it from coming off..and lots of duct tape.it gets cold here at times and it has worked like a charm.but i do have underpinning to keep out cold winds and such.i want to get one of the counter top gravity fed water cans .but they are spendy for sure...but you can get drinking water from a mud puddle.good luck on the froze pipes.

 

Well I did end up geting a transfer pump that makes it so that I can haul the water in the tank on the trailer then pump it through the garden hose to fill the barrels and then all I have to do is trip the full one onto the stand when the first runs empty. I also have an appliance dolly I used for moveing them in before got the pump.

Wraping the pipes is a little problematic and I figure futile for us since we just have a 500 gal tank sitting on the ground we haul water and drain into it then the lines are exposed to get to the pump in the house, but there is also some insulation over most of the bottom of the trailer and would have to rip it all off to try to wrap the pipes.

I just want to get stuff paid off and supplies so can build the house and elimenate the problems in advance. Still plan to put a tank to hold at least 100-200 gal of water in the dead corner ( and a bit more) under the kitchen counter with a pump for the sink and set it up so it can be filled from the sink for a just in case.

 

We have 2 wells, one drilled and one hand dug. A well bucket and about 30' of rope with some musle power and we have all the water we need.

OGM