Congratulations! The simple fact that you’re reading about water storage puts you ahead of the pack. Believe me, it takes work to figure this stuff out for your family. My goal is to share with you what I’ve learned to help you create your own plan. I’ve broken my water plan into three phases: short, intermediate, and long-term storage.
Your short-term needs may last from two hours up to three days and can be covered by heading to your grocery store today. I want you to be able to satisfy your short-term needs right away should you lose access to water by the time you’re done reading this sentence. This is the easy stuff, as I write here: “I like having a number of options including: small water bottles, pints of water, gallons of water and larger containers (2.5 gallons or 5 gallons).”
Next, I’m thinking about water storage for the next couple of weeks or the intermediate term. “Here’s the numbers. At a minimum, you want to have at least one gallon per day per person to be able to survive in relative comfort. A gallon will provide the two quarts for drinking and two for light sanitation and cooking. But my thinking is, if you’re going to store water, why not be on the safe side? In places that are hot and muggy like Houston and Florida you’ll need to have it, as I explain here. For my family of four with a dog and a cat, my target is fifteen gallons per day or 220 gallons for two-weeks.
Finally, my long-term goal for water storage isn’t really storage. It is to use natural resources such as a river or water reservoir. If you don’t have access to a natural resource or a well, then you want to store as much as your physical property will allow. This is where you need to simply do as much as you can to improve your situation.
Please note, prices for water storage solutions have been all over the map in my research. Some prices are ten times what they should be because of increased demand from recent natural disasters. For example, I like the AquaPodKit for emergency water storage. It’s a 65-gallon one-time use, plastic liner for your bathtub that you fill before a storm. It’s back-ordered here for a reasonable $23.95. I’ve ordered one and who knows when I’ll get it, but stay away from the retailers selling it for $300. I’ll explain more in a future post.
