No Water. No Power. No Fun.

Practice, practice, practice. 2020 and 2021 have offered up lots of opportunities to practice our preps. From the panic buying last year to the supply chain issues this year to frightening projections of fuel shortages and rolling blackouts this winter Aside from all the madness we see in the world everyday, my power is currently out (running on solar right now) and we have been without water on several occasions. Inconvenient to say the least, but also a good lesson in putting those preps to use.

Now, a power outage is rarely more than an inconvenience and rarely lasts more than a couple of hours. Where it can become a problem is if it lasts an extended amount of time and affects your ability to shelter in place such as a loss of heat. The temps are mild here today and as such I haven’t yet fired up the generator (I still need to review that one for you), I was able to cook up some grub on the gas grill so all is well.

Water is a different challenge, being without water gets to be a major hassle very quickly. Thanks to all the new preppers moving out here in the boonies, the construction guys broke our water line 3 times in the last year. On one particular occasion its was out over 3 days as we couldn’t find the break. Seems a dump truck driver broke it, tried to fix it, reburied it and didn’t tell anyone. Well in his haste he didn’t clean the line properly and wound up clogging the regulator with mud. Fun! Anyway… So, following this lovely experience we decided to up our game when it comes to water. Now, if you’ve been following for awhile you may remember that we have 2 creeks on the property that could provide water. Is it possible to haul water up from them, yes, is it a pain in the rear, it certainly is.

While we keep a large amount of bottled water, and drink a lot as well, there is also the need for water to cook, clean, wash up and yes flush the toilet. We store a large amount of so called ‘grey water’ or water not intended for drinking in 2 liter bottles and other such containers. We had been buying some other clean water storage, but it seems many of those items are sitting in container ships. We came upon some nice 7 gallon water jugs that so far are still available although the price has been steadily rising.

Although there aren’t any instructions to do so, I’ve made it a habit to prep them by partially filling them, adding some baking soda, and letting them sit in the sun for a while. After a good airing out, dump, rinse then fill with fresh water. Storage time seems to wary widely depending on what source you read, but most agree than if it is chlorinated city water it should be good for about a year. That being the case, I label the jugs using painters tape and a sharpie and date them 6 months from the day they are filled.

Water is life and I feel most of us probably don’t have enough. I know I still don’t.

Hope for the best, prepare for the worst.