Well pump down. Have water on hand and can haul water from neighbor. But a water availability crisis could be serious and not just plan for the short term. But what about the long term. How vulnerable might you be?

Thankfully if it gets scarce I have a friend with a 10 acre fresh water lake and filtering equipment. He has told me many times to head to his place if needed.

I live next to a stream and a pond. Several water purifiers on hand. A few food grade 55 gallon water drums in my basement.

You can (and should) buy a manual well pump from a reliable MFG. (Bison, Flojak, etc.)

I live near 646,565 acre-feet of water. I think i am set. Yes, I have filtering equipment.

PC

quote:

Originally posted by Graniteguy:
You can (and should) buy a manual well pump from a reliable MFG. (Bison, Flojak, etc.)

Yep. They are spendy, but priceless should the SHTF.

And your generator will likely not power your well pump.

One of the best places to store water is in a pool above or in-ground, drop in a floating chlorinator and you'll have all the clean water you want.

I have five, 55 gallon drums of treated water on hand and the means to filter it again. The drums were bought new from an outfit that makes them specifically for water. I’m of the opinion that water doesn’t go “bad”, it’s all in the collection & storage method. Treatment and subsequent filtering all but assures it’s potable. The drums below are my favorite.

https://waterprepared.com/

I have several sources in case of any emergency.

Rainwater goes from an asphalt shingle roof to several open rain barrels. They overflow into gardens when they need to. They are used for the gardens as needed. To keep down mosquitoes we have goldfish in the barrels. We don’t feed then and rarely clean out the barrels. Rain occasionally flushes the barrels. The fish make it on their own. Multiple times we have had fish last several years in this way.

On our metal pole barn we have gutters & downspouts feeding to large, commercial totes. I believe they are 275 gallons each. This filters through a 5 gallon screened bucket to get leaves and debris out.
Secondary filtering happens here with a recycled sand pool pump. Occasionally I will run this pump, drawing from bottom and exhausting back into the top of the tote. Doing this filters most of the smallest particulate matter. Still not potable, but pretty close. Granted, my pump is electric so I run this with some frequency and can then cap the tank and use it as needed.

To make the water good for cooking/drinking I think the final work would be boiling and then filtering through my countertop Berkey filter.

21,000 gallons of filtered and chlorinated in my back yard at all times.

As bugout routes may require travel through cities how many have a silcock key in their kit? This key will give access to the locked hose bibs on high rise buildings and ample water stored in their water supply lines.

https://www.amazon.com/DURATEC...ps%2C218&sr=8-1&th=1

14 cases of distilled in the basement ( 1 gal. Jugs)

Got a river and an 880 acre freshwater lake right down the road, plus equipment to filter it. Would be a pain...definitely less convenient than a working well...but we're not gonna die.

I also have a spare well pump in the basement, although that won't help with a power outage or numerous other well problems.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
One of the best places to store water is in a pool above or in-ground, drop in a floating chlorinator and you'll have all the clean water you want.

Sounds good in theory and I believed it too at one point.

In practice, if you don’t run the pump because the power is out and you don’t have real 240v generator, then it doesn’t work. Floating chlorinator won’t cut it without water circulation and filtration. Plus, you want to guess how much crap winds up in the pool during a hurricane? With Charley, my pool cage, screens, the sliding glass doors from the one end of the lanai, palm fronds, neighbor’s pool furniture, etc. all in the pool. That was just wind.

Our current pool was under 3 feet of water during Helene and 4 feet of water two weeks later during Milton. All the houses on both sides of the river for miles are on septic systems plus the river is brackish mixed with all the boats that sank, yummy.

We had public utility water after every single hurricane. The current house has a deep well for the landscape irrigation. We could use that if needed.

Our real vulnerability would be if we had to leave and there was a real social collapse. We don’t have a way to bring water with us.

This message has been edited. Last edited by: trapper189,

We're fairly screwed in a protracted situation. In the winter there will be plenty of snow, but for 6 months there is no snow on the ground and not much rain. We would have to drive a couple of miles to a stream to fill containers.

We keep a month of water storage. After that it becomes tough.

We are fortunate to have creeks and springs on our property but there has been a slight decrease in the last few years of the creeks normal flow and the springs have been steady.

We have a 40,000 gallon swimming pool in the back yard but without those six pumps pushing the water around it doesn't take long for nature to do it's thing.

We keep lots of water on hand tucked about and we can pull from our well.

This place was once full of liquor stills so springs and creeks are plentiful.

But, the forcing of these bullshit data centers upon us will pull these aquifers and the river tributaries to lower and lower levels.

Catchment systems will be crucial as well as keeping crystalized chlorine (shock) on hand will help to cleanse water.