I'm sure this has been brought up before.

I was trying to figure the storage requirements in terms the actual "footprint" for water. Based on the readings and so forth it looks like a cubic foot of storage space per person per day is required.

Here's why (wisdom to follow): The recommendations vary from 3-10 gallons per day for a person for all uses of the water. A cubic foot of water equals about 7.5 gallons. Given that you will lose some "capacity" due to inefficiences in packaging and the actual structure to store the water that leaves around 5-6 gallons. That is unless you are using a bulk system. In which case pitch the whole thing.

If you want to figure storage requirements for any given amount of water take the amount of gallons desired and multiply by .1337. That is basically the reciprocal of 7.481 (actual gallons per cubic foot) The numbers came from some Coast Guard Haz Mat site.

Anyway, I was just playing around. It is boring at the store today.

"...The numbers came from some Coast Guard Haz Mat site..."

Leave it to the Coasties...

...apparently...

I can tell you when we were just drinking & cooking w/water from our 5g bottles 2 of us went through 6g in 7 days. Get rid of juice, milk, and soda and that number probably climbs to 8-10g a week for 2 people. That is for drinking and cooking only. (That's all we store for, we live close enough to refill / get cleaning water or go clean-up.)

The "survival Guru's" claim that 1 gal per person per day is the minimum but 2 gals per person per day is more realistic in considering all of a persons daily water needs.

That is why I wonder about the amount of little bags of water that comes in ready-made BoB's, 2 pouches per person per day. It is completely insufficient.

Yeah, I started a thread about them a while ago, the question was bassicly "how are you supposed to drink them, a little at a time or one in the morning and one in the afternoon", giving you about 8 oz of water...

Maybe, I should have prefaced with I am thinking of a sheltering-in-place scenario with the local water supply compromised.

Two gallons a day for drinking, cooking, hygiene, and whatever else? Still sounds a little low for me. Either way, I would rather have too much water on hand.

Since water is life, you can't have too much of a water supply at hand.

wildman800,

As long as the shelves and foundation/floor structure do not collapse I will be "piling up" the water. Because you are right...water is life.

It depends on what you are doing with it. If it's just drinking, I drink about a litre a day. Cooking adds more, so does simple washing, and flushing toilets, having a full bath and doing a week's laundry takes even more. The daily consumption you'd need to last a week is less than the daily consumption you'd need to last a year, because you can put off washing for a week.

What I do at home is keep potable and non-potable water on hand.

Potable water is for drinking, cooking, and body washing (via washrag).

Non-potable water can be purified, if necessary, but is used primarily for the porta potty and other cleaning purposes. When the porta potty is full, then use some additional water to make a clean flushing after dumping the porta potty down the toilet, if the sewage system is still functioning.