Water is extremely important in preparedness and self-sufficiency. A person can only live three days without water.

How much water does a person need to store? Ideally, a gallon a day per person for drinking water. For non-drinking water, I don’t think you can have enough water stored.

How many days of water storage do you need? This would depend on what you are preparing for. Right now, I am planning and buying three days’ worth of gallon size containers of drinking water. I also have six cases of bottled water on hand. I hope to increase the amount of water I have stored to seven days’ worth of water. I do know that we do not drink a gallon of water everyday, but I also need to factor in our cooking needs and teeth brushing.

When I figure out our water needs, I am doing so with the impression that our power will be gone. Our water pump is electric. No power, no water pump, no water. I am considering a generator and/or solar panels for back up to run our water system. Until then, I need to plan for our non-drinking water needs.

You can have two situations in which will impact your water storages. If you know you are going to lose power or the possibility might be there, you can fill your bathtub, empty buckets, dishpans, sinks, and other storage possibilities with tap water. Will that be enough? Who knows?

If you lose power right away and don’t have a back-up system for your water, you are going to want to have water stored. How? There are as many ways as you can think of. You can fill clean five gallon buckets with water and keep air-tight lids on them. You can buy 15-55 gallon water storage containers and keep them filled. You can always start by just filling clean empty milk jugs with water. Whatever containers you use, be sure they are BPA free.

Another possible idea would be having a rainwater storage container outdoors with a pump or a faucet to be able to draw water from the barrel. Also remember, you can always draw water out of your hot water tank. Be sure you know how now and not when an emergency hits!

This week I will be increasing our water storage and I would like to invite you all to work on this too! Plan out how much you need and how much you will use. Next week, I will be talking about ways to keep your water supply fresh and ways to filter your water. I will also talk about more ideas for water storage.

Thanks for reading! Have a great night!

Sharing is caring!