We all know that if one were to ask how much water to store that we would get as many different answers as questions. The Red Cross, ready.gov and FEMA all say 1 gal per day, and they even break it down to two quarts drinking and two quarts other. Doug recommends 5 gal per day per person for drinking and other uses.

I was pretty sure I was drinking more than two quarts per day so I tracked everything I drank for 7 days. I learned a lot about myself and what having enough water really means. Here is my TOTAL LIQUID CONSUMPTION over 7 days (in ounces). Comments to follow:

Day 1:
Water 43
Coke 24
Unsweet Iced Tea (Tea) 80
Day 1 total - 1 gal, 19 oz

Day 2:
Water 63
Coke 12
Diet Pepsi 12
Tea 66
Day 2 Total - 1 gal, 25 oz

Day 3:
Water 27
Coke 24
Tea 90
Day 3 Total - 1 gal, 13 oz

Day 4:
Water 26
Diet Pepsi 12
Tea 100
Day 4 Total - 1 gal, 10 oz

Day 5:
Water 56
Coke 40
Tea 47
Day 5 Total - 1 gal, 15 oz

Day 6:
Water 0!!!
Tea 100
Coke 12
Hi-C Fruit Punch 16
Day 6 Total - 1 gal, 0 oz

Day 7
Water 20
Coke 24
Tea 80
Day 7 Total - 1 gal (less 4 ounces)

As you can see, I averaged 139 ounces of fluid per day. This means I averaged 17 cups a day folks (or more than 4.25 quarts per day of beverages consumed).

Here are a few things I learned in general:
1. In a survival or natural disaster situtation, drinking only water would not be good for moral/familiarity, and it might even be boring. In a survival situation, this might be your only option, but in a bug-in situation, you should have plenty of teas, drink mixes and other options to enhance water.
2. We (or at least I) drink way more liquids than what the government and the Red Cross claim to be the "normally active" averages. Towards the end of the week I drank less, probably because I was tracking my consumption, and I can tell you that I felt thirsty at times.
3. This was done in winter, not in our super-sticky NC summers where consumption might even be more.

A few things I learned about myself which might help others:
1. I am addicted to Coca-Cola, and there is a certain time of the day (mid-day) were I absolutely crave a can, and my mouth starts salavating. Withdrawl might be difficult.
2. I drink alot of unsweet tea. I consider this equal to water in the benefit and not negative at all. Unless somebody can prove to my why it is bad, I will continue to drink large volumes of it.
3. I do not drink much milk! None in the week I tracked and none generally.
4. I need to drink some juice or something. See above.
5. I do not feel any need to drink coffee or alcohol, but perhaps coffee and alcohol drinkers feel the same things I do in relation to my tea and coke consumption?
6. The 7 gallons of water I have stored at my house for each person is not a week,s worth of water (and certainly not 2 weeks worth of drinking water as I assumed). You might think you have enough until you actually do the math, then you see you do not have enough, and we are not even talking about hygene/cooking.

Thoughts?

Well I am very confident that my daily liquid intake is well over 2 gallons a day. I bring a gallon of water & 3 cans of diet dew & 2 cans of diet A&W to work with me everyday - which is all usually gone by 5:00 pm. Also I usually drink another quart of diet A&W with dinner & at least another 1/2 gal. of water in the evening.

When you toss in 2 hours of working in the garden or cutting wood after work add at least another 1/2 gal. of water to the evening.

Things to factor in -

I'm 6'2" & 215 lbs.

I take Nexium for a birth defect where the flap at the top of my stomach doesn't close properly (I've had heart burn since I was 5 or 6 years old) - Nexium absolutely dehydrates me.

The caffiene in the Mountain Dew isn't helping the situation.

Also I eat more food/sweets than I need to.

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My wife is the other extreme on liquid intake. Most days she probably drinks less than 1/2 gallon. But she isn't on any medication. She weighs 125 lbs. And she is not a big eater.

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We are all wired up so differently that trying to nail it down to a set amount for the entire population is impossible. Each person needs to factor in their information.

If you took me off Nexium, Caffiene & cut out all the sugar I'm confident that I could survive on 1/2 gallon of water. But I agree with you that this would crazy! So the answer for me is to store a ton of water.

Why don't you try a few days with just water...
Tea and Coke is a diuretic and will cause you to LOSE water...

I do not know if this is accurate, but I was told that tea, coffee, Coke, etc. should not be counted, because, due to the caffeine, they cause you to lose just about as much water as you get from them...

Herbal tea is ok and green tea should be fine, too. But you're right, coffee, Coke or alcohol should be avoided if you are short on water.

2 quarts per day might be just enough in a temperate climate providing that you're resting most of the time. When on the trail I know I need a little over a gallon per day to stay hydrated. Some persons might need less, some more depending on the build. In a very hot climate or in a desert environment this figure may easily double or triple, especially if you're engaged in a strenuous activity.

All that my wife drinks (95% of the time) is water. She drinks it with no ice in a 32 ounce cup, so she is truly drinking a quart at a time, and she is most likely over 1 gal per day with no diuretic liquids.

Food for thought if I may.

My point is that the overall recommendation of 1/2 gal per day is way low for many people (if not most) in reality. And it is different to food. Yeah, we say 2000 calories/day and we actually eat 3200 or whatever, but this is vital to life. And an abrupt change in liquid intake might cause some sort of problem (physical or mental) to start.

Thank god I quit smoking last year.

I have switched from soda to water as my main drink during the day. Mafetone Recommended 3-4 Liters (minimum) per day: http://www.pccoach.com/products/books/book_fit_e4e.htm

I now carry a 1 liter nalgene bottle. Added 5 beads on the 550 Cord to count the number of fills each day. Easy to track my consumption.

If urine is not clear you are dehidrated.

Be sure not to drink "too much" water:
http://www.cyclingsite.com/collected_wisdom/touring_info/concerns/electrolytes.htm

My liquids consist mostly of water, tea, some diluted juice, and milk. Hardly ever drink soda anymore, and I can't handle coffee. The only liquids I count, though, are water and tea (no honey or sugar). There has been some back and forth whether coffee and tea can be counted, but I think if you're adding tons of cream and sugar they've kind of gone into the food category, like soda.

I record the amount of water I drink everyday now since I noticed that I get headaches when I don't drink enough. Some days I average only 5 (8 oz.) glasses and travel into headache country, other days 10. I really have to try and force myself to drink sometimes. Being small by some standards, 8 glasses a day feels pretty good for me most days.

I figured out years ago that the only time I ever get a headache is when I'm dehydrated. I can't tell you the last time I had a headache. (No it's not a secret it's just been too long for me to remember having one)

It's a recommendation, and I'm confident that most people will adjust as needed. I don't track my fluid intake at home, but my wife and I go to Burning Man every year, and we each take a 2-liter container of water with us whenever we go out. For our day's consumption, we each drink at least 2 liters of water, plus coffee and juice over the course of a morning; soda, tea, water, or juice at lunch; at least another 2 liters of water each in the afternoon; more soda, tea, or juice with supper, another liter or so of water in the evening; more water before bed, and maybe wine or port or rum and coloa during the day or before retiring. We also eat canned fruit and drink the syrup as snacks during the day.

And that's just drinking. We also use water to cook, and we may bathe in water on an occasion or two. We do not do laundry while we're there.

Drinking water drops way off when we get back home, of course, but then we're doing laundry again and using flush toilets. (And daily baths.)

Water requirements are way understated if they include only drinking water and even if they include drinking and cooking water. Laundry, bathing, and the toilet never seem to be taken into account. If you've got no water flowing from the hydrant, you can't flush your toilets unless you have access to water from another source (pool, nearby pond or creek).

Tea, coffee, coke, Mountain Dew. Caffeine or not, you are going to lose the water eventually. Drinking an average amount of caffeine might increase your cycle rate a small amount. I drink them and find that my cycle rate shortens by about 2 hours in a 24 hour period compared to when I am not imbibing quite so much. Then again, I also figured out that because I include them in my intake, I tend to take in more fluids during a 24 hour period, so perhaps it is just the increased volume that is affecting me, and not the caffeine at all.

As for beer, I think we established before that alchohol consumption does tend to stimulate increased kidney function by deregulating a certain control our system would normally have. I recall hearing that back in midieval times most folks drank beer instead of water because the water wasn't terribly healthy, this included children. I can't imagine that they were all dehydrating that badly or something would've changed for certain.

In any case, if you are considering consuming caffeine from a rationing perspective, I doubt that one or two cups a day is going to have such an adverse effect on you that you are going to suffer from it. What's more, I know how poorly I function when I am deprived of my caffeine fix, so it is well worth it for me to imbibe.

I do like milk a lot. Sometimes there's nothing better than a big cold glass to really quench my thirst in a way nothing else can. Same with buttermilk. I can empty a quart carton of buttermilk in about 10 seconds when the urge hits me. I like it really thick and cold, the bavarian style is the best.