Why is it always bottled water suddenly gone before a hurricane? Do you know where you can get gallons of the stuff free? Your tap.

rant off

This why people need to stock up at Sam's Club months in advance.

Jeanette Isabelle

I hear that they are expecting plenty of water to come their way. Just not the kind they want.

I hope they are OK.

I agree that tap water is perfectly satisfactory for nearly all purposes. It is what I store. Since the highest and best use of water is the preparation of tea or coffee, contamination is a non-starter.

I too am always baffled by the run on bottled water, although I suppose if you aren't into common sense preparation you may not have any storage containers around. I keep several five and seven gallon water containers full at all times and I could fill quite a few Nalgenes if necessary.

good long term storage containers are not necessarily cheap, but many overlook the option of the water cooler carboys available for delivery or at the box stores... you need to plan ahead...as I get older, moving my 20L Scepter water cans is not as easy as it once was.. same with 6gal gasoline cans... make sure what you choose is transportable

Water is water- a flat of shrink wrapped bottles is heavy, too. Obviously the folks buying water just hours ahead of the storm barrelling down on them didn't plan far ahead. But just a little advanced planning could save a lot of money. Really good five-gallon and seven-gallon Aquatainers are less than $14 at Wally World. Heck, you can buy brand new clean 5 gallon pails with lids for $3 or less. It doesn't look like people are buying bottled water to bug out but to ride it out.

I have people look at me funny when i just drink straight from the tap. Some people don't think tap water is clean or something.

Obviously you don't need bottled water for at home. Anything that can hold water will work.

Personnaly i hate disposable things, but i do keep a few waterbottles in the back of my car.

I guess many people are not aware that a lot of the bottled water is just tap water filled into bottles and sold for a fairly high price. I carry Nalgene bottles filled with tap water in my backpack.
A few kilometers from my home there is a bottling plant. Their water is - to some people - much tastier than our tap water. That is kind of surprising as it is the same water.
Apart from that tap water has more and stricter regulations to follow than bottled water. So it could be expected to be at least as clean if not cleaner than bottled water.

I didn't see any rush of people buying hurricane supplies yesterday in south Louisiana. I do expect more people to be out today. Lowe's already has gensets set up on their floor space. There battery display had very little taken, virtually untouched.

Now the forecasts for this area is for Tropical Depression winds (gusting 40-50 mph) and that will still mean a lot of rainfall.

We're ready to bug out but it remains to be seen if we'll need to bugout.

I guess southern Californians are just better prepared (or have plenty of alternative liquids on hand). You never see a rush to buy bottled water just before an earthquake....

Now that is funny!

LOL that's due to the nature of earthquakes, not Californians.

What about after an earthquake?

Jeanette Isabelle

I believe that Californians drink Kool Aide

These filled 5 gallon water bottles run about $7.00 here, if you return your old empty one when you buy the new one. If you don't return the empty, a new one costs about $14. You can find them in the grocery stores, office supply stores, home improvement stores, etc.

Sooo ... you can "buy" one of these nice 5 gallon water bottles to keep (just don't return it) for $7 if you want. Not collapsible, but built sturdily. And they have a handle to carry with and a nice neck for pouring (although there really didn't intend them to be poured I don't thing). Once you've removed the cap, you can smack it back in place later, and it seals up nicely upon re-use (the lower part of the cap is torn off and thrown away however). I don't know how many times you could re-use the cap, since we throw ours away 95% of the time. You could fashion a new "cap" with Saran Wrap and a rubber band though. You can also get a 3 gallon version for slightly less money, if you can't manage the larger bottle.

We have these delivered (for a small additional cost), and we always keep around 6 bottles in queue in addition to the one that sits in the water chiller/dispenser. We cycle through the queue, first in first out, so the water we have on hand is "fresh" (no more than "6 bottles old" - the size of our queue).

Haertig... a friend uses a similar one... you can get a pump that fits the mouth if wanted

EARLIER POST - "I guess southern Californians are just better prepared (or have plenty of alternative liquids on hand). You never see a rush to buy bottled water just before an earthquake...."

I live in California.
Today seems normal ... blue skies, people playing golf.
I'm rushing out to buy some water now. Hope there's some left.

:-)

Pete

Take your turn and wait in line. We will be having a heat wave starting Sunday. I am sure the rush will be tremendous

I wonder how many people thought to grab their kitchen counter top water filters? would it do any good in storm water filled with junk?

I kind of doubt it. The problem isn't just the dirt and debris dub up, there's also gasoline, pesticides, toxic chemicals, etc from flooded factories, etc. I'm not aware of any commercially available filters that can take heavy metals and petrochemicals out of the water (although activated charcoal is supposed to reduce them somewhat).

No, those filters are designed for basically clean water. They exchange calcium ions and iron ions and remove some organic chemicals to some degree. If you couldn´t drink the water before filtering, you coundn´t drink it after filtering either.
Even dedicated filters for outdoors use might be of limited effect for storm water. The descriptions of those filters clearly state the limits.

I would stay away from ground water due to chemical contamination possibility. Take containers and rain water collection stuff, then filter that with a typical backpacking filter. Or boil it.
That's probably as safe as you're going to get after a massive flood disaster.

Just be aware that boiling won't automatically make water safe if it's been contaminated with chemicals. Some of them are hydrophilic and have a boiling point close enough to that of water that they aren't separated out by boiling.

When all else fails, beer can be trusted (in reasonable amounts)....

Does anyone know of a personal sized or BOV transportable sized water filtration system that would remove chemical and biological contamination?

There are several that make the claim to be able to do both, but I have not been able to test any with a lab. Most can effectively remove biological contaminants, as can boiling the water. Some chemicals might be removed by boiling as well, if they are more volatile than the water. Others might be removed (heavier metals and chemicals) by setting up a still of sorts, so the water steams away and then is condensed back into liquid. In an emergency situation I would probably try about anything I could if I needed water that badly.

The key to the ability to remove heavy metals and chemicals is an activated carbon filter component.

You can minimize the quantity of chemicals if you draw your water from a clean (or cleaner) source. Pay attention to the sources of contamination, direction of flow and the original source.

For potential water purification needs, I always carry a metal cup or pot to boil water in.

I have never used these but the Berkey filters look good. They are gravity filters that require no electricity, and are available in several sizes. They remove bacteria, viruses, and lots of chemical contaminants.

As one might expect, they are not cheap.

I have no affiliation with them.

http://www.getberkey.com/

I wonder if anyone,anywhere thought to collect rain water?

Rain water can contain contaminants from dust but in any situation short of a bad chemical plant fire or nuclear event one would think rain would be at least easy to sanitize. In a pinch I would try it before drinking urban flood water.

This is probably obvious enough that I almost shouldn't need to say it but the time to worry about water is before the flood! Water is so cheap that it's almost ridiculous, especially given the importance of clean water and how hard it is to come by in many parts of the world. It's sad how many people run thousands of gallons down the drain without in thought in normal times yet have nothing but what's in the toilet tank or water heater when trouble strikes.

an expedient way to collect rain water if you have gutters.. knock the end cap off if you have end gable roof, or make a short connector for you down spout with a hip roof... I use a 33gal plastic trash can... let the early rain get a chance to clean off the roof before placing the can... I fill a similar trash can in my shower stall with tap water... a .1 micron Sawyer 5gal bucket filter and pool shock complete my water system... I store about 17gal in containers plus a case or so of bottled water year round

The rule of thumb that I've always heard is to let the rain fall a good 15 minutes before collecting rainwater. 15 minutes allows the rain to clear the dust out of the air and pound contaminates off your roof and onto the ground.

Is rain water collected during a hurricane (or on either side of the main part of one) salty? With the high winds, I can imagine that sea water might get mixed up with water coming down form the clouds. I would think it might be salty, but I've never been in a hurricane to check it out. If rain is fresh water during a hurricane, your rain collection barrels should fill up in seconds!

haertig...never tasted it either... I use rain water only as a back up to flush toilet... also to shower if necessary... I have a pretty good filter system if needed, but store about 20gal and a couple of flats of water...we did not loose city water during the 2004/2005 outages, but has happened in the past

Yes, and if rainwater is to be regularly harvested, automatic devices are available or can be made to divert the initial roof run off to waste before sending the subsequent cleaner water to a tank or drum.
The usual technique is that the first flow of water fills a bucket or small drum, and that the weight of this vessel when full operates a pivot and thereby diverts subsequent flow into the tank.
The small vessel should preferably have a very small hole in it so that it will slowly empty and be available for the next rainfall.

We made our own DIY Berkey water filter system to use on our property up north. Much cheaper and the filters can be found on Amazon.com for about $100.00

There are videos on YouTube on how to make a DIY filtration system with a couple of 5 gallon buckets. I still would not trust the store bought nor the DIY filtration system to remove chemical contaminants though.

You can get other brands filter elements for less.


I have two Tulip siphon water filters as emergency water filter system; which does not need any DIY'ing. Just toss it in a container higher up, use the little pump to prime it and then let it flow down to a container placed lower. They do come with an o-ring, so you can convert them in a stacked bucket system.


Mine favorite system is the Quechua MSH system, which consists of:
- a black fabric water bag for dirty water collection when used for filtering, but also comes with a shower attachment to use as a solar shower.
- Water filter and hoses (uses the katadyn fiberglass pleated filter with carbon)
- A plastic clean water bag, but also comes with hose/tap attachment to use as a tap.

Everything can be joined by quick disconnects and really easy to use, but also really inexpensive. They discontinued it a few years ago...

the Sawyer bucket systems are extremely lightweight... filter uses hemo dialysis technology to produce the filter media, which can be back flushed with included syringe... .1 and .02 micron filter size... comes with a spade bit to cut the hole in the 5 gal bucket...

we save rain water for the house plants.i have three 30 gallon drums in the basement that could be used if I filtered it.
the 55 gallon drum under the down spout has wire mesh to keep out big stuff and some goldfish eat the bugs.
water is not a problem here as a old historical spring that run all year long is at the end of our street.yes I would filter that for drinking water but the old timers around here don't.

I'm surprised that there isn't a run on empty water containers before an event.

I can picture people buying them, then getting home and being mad that they were ripped off because there was no water in them! LOL

I wasn't brought up this way.. a friend's niece spent last Thursday emptying individual bottles of water RETURNED for credit to the Target store she works at...they cannot restock returned cases of water

How Nestle Makes Billions Selling You Groundwater In A Bottle Just so you know...

Yep, that is why I have my own containers and refill them regularly. I do like most of the Reliance water containers. Some are a bit fragile if you are moving them around a lot, but there are a couple of styles that are very durable and a good size for moving them around.

Jumbo-Tainer 7 gallon

Rhino

There were several local restaurants offering their washed empty food-grade buckets (they had contained ingredients originally) for free to anyone who wanted them. I thought that was a nice touch.

https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/04/bottled-water-doesn-t-mean-better/index.htm

The above article discusses some of the problems with bottled water. I am always amazed at the preference for water in bottles as opposed to that which is virtually free from the tap - $346 per year for bottled, compared to 48 cents per year, also according to Consumer Reports.

When you get right down to it, nothing is as critical or as important as potable water....

if you store water in 20 liter containers, you might drop by your local pharmacy and pick up a small 10ml syringe...I got mine free from Walgreens, and use it to add 2ml of Clorox bleach to the containers when I fill them with fresh water at the beginning of hurricane season

at 8 drops per gallon, 5 gallons equals 40 drops
20 drops per milliliter , so 2 ml