Category Archives: Water

Our “Lights Out” Checklist

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preparing for lights outThe lights go out. What do you do? Let’s assume you’ve already sat there for a few moments, possibly in the dark, and they haven’t come back on yet. Do you know what you need to do in a power outage? Do you know what you need to get? Do you know where everything is located? And, the biggest question, does everyone else in your family also know your plan?

This is our plan, specific to our home. I’m providing it as an example of the items you may want to cover in your own plan. (It’s easy to procrastinate, I’m just now writing down our plan after we’ve been living in this house for over two years.)

LIGHTS OUT CHECKLIST

Is the power really out?

    • Check the fuse box to be sure everything is turned on correctly, and none of the breakers are tripped.
    • Look around the neighborhood, is everyone’s power out?

    Light

    • Get a flashlight and/or headlamp, located near the door in the mudroom.
    • Turn on the battery bank‘s inverter, if necessary reset the inverter (the manual is hanging on the side of the bar refrigerator).
    • If the battery bank doesn’t work, use the 800 amp inverter with the truck’s battery(s)(it’s located in the truck box) — connect it directly to the battery, and run extension cord into house.
    • Unroll the extension cord that’s already attached to the battery bank, it’s located on the wall beside the utility sink in the laundry room. This will be your central power outlet(s).
    • Get the lamp out of Sarah’s office, and the other lamp from the rec room, and put them in central locations.
    • Get the battery-powered lanterns out, located in the black box under the pool table, and put the batteries in them (stored with the lanterns). Put the small red one in the bathroom, keep the larger two available for use where needed.
    • Use caution when choosing to use fire for light. If candles or kerosene lanterns are used, place the fire extinguisher nearby. Long burning candles are in the cupboard in the workshop, kerosene lanterns are on the shelf in the bar.

    Heat

    • Unplug the furnace from the wall and plug it into the battery bank extension cord (this will power the blower, the furnace runs on propane).
    • If the battery bank is depleted, the furnace can be plugged directly into the generator.
    • Get the Buddy Heater (and it’s batteries), and a small propane tank, from the barn. Put the batteries into the Buddy Heater (for the blower). Attach heater to tank and turn it on, once running turn on blower (follow directions).

    Food

    • The microwave, plugged into the battery bank, can be used for short periods of time to heat food. The microwave can also be plugged into the generator as needed.
    • Propane grill, on the patio.
    • Propane stove, in the barn.
    • The Volcano Stove can be used with propane, or charcoal (outside, or in the garage/barn with door open).

    Water

    • Remember once the power goes out the well no longer pumps, there is less than 25 gallons of water in the pressure tank.
    • Bring in the 5-gallon yellow Igloo jug from the barn, also bring in a 5-gallon water jug. Put the Igloo on the kitchen table and use for drinking and cooking.
    • Only flush when “needed”; refill toilet tank with 3 gallons of water from the rain barrels or the pond.
    • Use hand wipes/disinfecting wipes for cleaning as needed.
    • The well pump can be plugged directly into the generator; the plug is near the pressure tank (use 220 volt cord).

    Entertainment

    • Board games.
    • The battery bank can run the TV and the DVD player.
    • Reading.
    • Electronic devices can be charged with the battery bank.

    Other things to remember

    • Open the refrigerator and/or freezer as little as possible.
    • Keep outside doors closed to maintain heat.
    • There is additional drinking water in 2-liter bottles on the top garage shelf.
    • Keep cell phones charged.
    • The landline phone will work, but only the one in Sarah’s office.

    Again, this is our list. We’ll test it next weekend when the girls are here; we’ve done this before, in suburbia, but it’s been a while and a lot of things have changed. Afterward, we’ll make changes as needed,  print it up, and post it where it can be found.

    make_a_listMake your plan. As we know, power outages tend to come during the worst of times. You may have a plan in your head, but what if you’re not home? Creating a plan doesn’t cost you anything — just innumerate the things you already have.

     

    (Note: The items highlighted in red are links to previous posts I’ve written on those topics)

    Plenty of Water, For Now

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    I woke up the other day and shuffled over to the toilet. As I prepared to go, I noticed the water was off-color; not terrible discolored, but not clear. After I flushed, the water was still off-color. I lifted the lid off the tank and nothing seemed amiss there. I went and looked at the downstairs toilet, it was also discolored. I began to get concerned.

    I know that the water that goes into the toilet comes from the same source as water that goes to the sink, and since the toilet water didn’t look right I became worried about our drinking water. As a list of possible problems, and back-up water solutions, went through my head I mentioned it to Sarah. She casually reminded me that there had been signs up around the neighborhood that they were going to be flushing the water lines, and it was probably related to that. I flushed the toilet a few times, ran the sink for a little while, and they both again ran clear. Crisis averted (more like never existed).

    BUT, this made me reflect on one of our most important basic needs: clean drinking water. It was nice to know that our family is prepared for this type of emergency, we have:

    • water storageover 50 gallons of water stored in the garage (most in repurposed 2-liter soda bottles, which can also be reused for solar disinfection).
    • two 50-gallon barrels of water in the backyard.
    • two 50-gallon rain barrels in the backyard. We use these regularly, but here in Western WA they stay filled pretty well.
    • berkey filtera Berkey family size water filter
    • a small pond a block away (and 5-gallon water cans for collection/transport)
    • several unopened gallons of bleach
    • a 50-gallon water heater
    • extra fuel to boil water

    Restating from one of my early posts, But Water Is Heavy!, “. . . you can only live three to four days without access to clean drinking water. The ‘average’ adult human body is composed of approximately 60% water, the brain 75%.

    “Before a disaster strikes, water is an easy thing to acquire and store. It is cheap and available. To get your recommended three-day emergency supply, you can buy commercially bottled water for less than $1 a gallon. Do the math for what is needed for your family, spend the money and put it somewhere safe and you’re done. If you want to fill your own: use clean, food-grade, plastic containers. Two-liter soda bottles work very well, avoid using milk jugs (they’re not meant for longer storage). If the containers are clean and the water is clean there is no need to add bleach.”

    The first thing you should do, when you begin to prepare–before you do anything else–is to store water.

     

    What We Did This Week To Prep 10/12/12

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    The week started off with a drive in our new (to us) Ford F350 pickup truck to Josh’s house (Josh of Rural Relations with Josh), about two hours away. I had gotten together with him several times, but this was the first time meeting his family. We thoroughly enjoyed his wife and children and our time at their place. While there Josh taught me how to split wood (I grew up in the suburbs…), and Brynn and Alison enjoyed learning how to ride his off-road mini-bike. It was fun to see his place, “in real life”, and see what he describes in his blog posts. While there are some great aspects to his property, I also saw the disadvantages and hassles he has discussed. Again I’d encourage everyone, develop community, get to know both your neighbors and the like-minded preppers around you; take the initiative and reach out to them — I believe community will be the key to survival in the future.

    Our “father” rabbit, Winston, had an ear infection this week. So we went to our favorite rabbit resource, Rise and Shine Rabbitry, and determined he had a mild/moderate case of ear mites. We’ve been treating it by putting drops of olive oil mixed with tea tree oil into his ears and massaging it in. Apparently ear mites can live up to 28 days, so we’ll treat regularly for the next month. We definitely do not want them to spread to Clover, our pregnant doe, or her future babies.

    Summer here in Western Washington is pretty much over. After almost three months of sunny days, but without too hot of temperatures, it’s been one of the best summers we can remember. But now they say rain and the clouds are on the way again; possibly with very heavy rain this weekend.

    We’re done with summer gardening. We picked everything still on the vine and will can some salsa this weekend. We left most of the plants themselves in place, for now, and will pick them as needed to feed the rabbits. We just received our fall/winter crop seeds in the mail. We’ll be growing a bunch of greens, mainly for the rabbits, and a compost cover crop for the garden as a whole. After most of the plants are out of the garden we’ll cover the garden with the hay and manure from under the rabbit hutches as a fertilizer-rich mulch layer.

    What did you do?

    Momma Bear: An Inexpensive Water Filter System

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    “Let there be work, bread, water and salt for all.”  -Nelson Mandela

    When I first became a prepper, I found the idea of water purification, and the expense of the many different purifiers on the market, to be a little overwhelming. When preparing for any disaster or grid-down scenario, it is imperative that each and every one of us know as many ways as possible to purify water. In our BOBs we carry both purification tablets and filters that attach to the end of our Nalgene water bottle straws. But, for mass water purification, it seems like there is no way to get clean water on the cheap except for bleach. In a perfect world we would all be rich enough to afford the best preps available, but this is the real world and I was a little depressed by the expense of water purifiers. But then I accidentally ran across Waves for Water.

    Waves for Water is a non-profit organization, spear-headed by professional surfers and supported by the surf company Hurley International, that provides water filters to those in need. Their goal is to bring clean drinking water (filters) to as many people as possible, primarily distributed by surfers bringing the filters to the third world nations in which they are surfing. It is a rather unique grass roots effort and I applaud them for it. The extra cool thing (in my opinion) is that they sell these filters to anyone, hoping that you will take some with you as a donation on your next vacation to a third world county.

    Waves for Water’s primary “family sized” filter is a silver-impregnated ceramic filter, meeting NSF standards (they also have a “community size” filter). I will not go into the specific statistics of its filtration such as microns and gallons and such (please see their website). But I will say that I was satisfied enough that I bought my filter for the low price of $25 (I think the shipping was like $12-15 though)! At this point I only have the one, but will be adding more as I balance out my preps (since we all know that building up our resources takes time and money).

    The filter itself is designed for the two bucket stacking method that many people use with the Berkey filters. It comes with the filter, a pre-filter sock, the spigot for the bottom bucket, and directions. There are also extensive directions and a video on the website. Like the other setups of this kind, it only took a couple of drill bits, two food safe buckets with lids, and I was in the water filtering business.

    This method is a slow filtering method designed for at home use. It is NOT an emergency style filtering device for use on the go. It was an inexpensive opportunity for my family to be able to have clean drinking water while also contributing to a grass-roots effort to bring water to those in need. I recognize that there are many other water filtration methods available out there, some that might not be generally heard of. If you know of others, I would love to learn more.

    What filtration method do you use?

    (Friday: What We Did This Week To Prep)

    Leah writes as ‘Momma Bear‘ from the perspective of the woman in the family being the main prepper (her husband is active-duty USMC and frequently gone). She is a regular contributer with her posts appearing the third Wednesday of each month. See her other post: Momma Bear Is The Prepper.

    Rain, Rain Don’t Go Away

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    Thoughts on Rain Barrels

    In last week’s post, What Goes In Must Come Out, I discussed using water collected in rain barrels to flush the toilet. I’ve been asked for more specifics about rain barrels and how much water would really be available.

    There are a lot of resources on how to build a rain barrel. A good article is Make Your Own Rain Barrel and a useful YouTube video is Urban Survival’s, How To Make A Rain Barrel. There are specifics you will have, such as what type of barrel you use and how you will deal with the overflow. But all rain barrels need to have three plumbing features:

    1. a downspout that drains the roof water into the barrel: I cut our downspout and diverted the water with a couple of downspout elbows
    2. a faucet at the bottom
    3. an overflow near the top: I used three-inch PVC pipe (and a downspout adapter) to channel the water back into the original downspout, which goes into the ground

    How much rain water can you collect? To figure that out go to save-the-rain.com. Enter your address and a Google Earth picture of your neighborhood will come up. Zoom in on your house, click each corner of your house until the roof area is covered, then hit Finished. The following Results will be displayed:

    • the area of your roof is, in square meters. (To convert to square feet multiply the square meters by 10.76.)
    • the amount of rain your area receives in a year, in millimeters. (To convert to inches multiply millimeters by 0.039)
    • the amount of water you could harvest, in liters. (To convert to gallons multiply by 0.264.)
    • and how many times, using that water, you could flush the average toilet. They are estimating the average flush to be 6 liters (or 1.58 gallons). Our toilet tank holds 3 gallons, so I’m basing my math on that number.

    At our house here in Western Washington (where rain is plentiful) our results were:

    • roof area: 168.6 sq m = 1814.8 sq ft
    • average annual rainfall: 1100 mm = 43.3 in
    • potential rainwater harvest: 185,450 l = 48,990 gal
    • toilet flushes: 16,330 (3 gal tank) [flushes per day for a year: 45]

    For comparison, using the same roof area, Colorado Springs, CO (where I grew up) has an average rainfall of 19.6 inches (less than half of ours).

    • potential rainwater harvest: 22,174 gal
    • toilet flushes: 7,391 (3 gal tank) [flushes per day for a year: 20]

    There’s a lot of water draining off your roof available for collection. These numbers are assuming you collect all the water that lands on your roof (we’re collecting from two of our four downspouts). How much you store, and how you use it, is up to you.

    But Water is Heavy!

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    five basic needs: 1) food, 2) WATER, 3) shelter, 4) security, and 5) energy

    One gallon. Per person. Per day.

    As important as food is, you can only live three to four days without access to clean drinking water. The ‘average’ adult human body is composed of approximately 60% water, the brain 75%. Each day adults must replace about 1/2 gallon of water (approximately 2 1/2 liters). More is needed for cooking and cleaning. Even more is needed during exertion or warm weather.

    That is why emergency agencies recommend storing one gallon of water, per person per day, for three days.

    Before a disaster strikes, water is an easy thing to acquire and store. It is cheap and available. To get your recommended three-day emergency supply, you can buy commercially bottled water for less than $1 a gallon. Do the math for what is needed for your family, spend the money and put it somewhere safe and you’re done. If you want to fill own: use clean, food-grade, plastic containers. Two liter soda bottles work very well, avoid using milk jugs (they’re not meant for longer storage). If the containers are clean and the water is clean there is no need to add bleach.

    For a longer emergency situation there’s only so much water you can store, and access to additional safe drinking water is unreliable. Or what if you’re away from home–obviously there’s only so much you can carry?

    But one gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds. For a family of four to have the recommended amount, that’s 12 gallons or 99.6 pounds of water. No big deal if it just sits on your shelf in the basement. But what if we have to go somewhere? But what if we have to walk to get there? We still need water.

    There may be water available, how do you ensure ‘clean drinking water’?

    There are three common ways of purifying water: boiling, chemicals, and filters. Start by removing suspended particle, straining through a barrier (coffee filter, cheese cloth, even a clean shirt) or letting them settle to the bottom. Then pour that water into a clean container to purify.

    Boiling
    A regularly asked question is “How long do I boil the water?” This is important because, if we are in a situation to boil water, we may only have a finite amount of fuel available to burn. This question is best answered by explaining that water above 185° F (85° C) will kill all pathogens within a few minutes. So in the time it takes for the water to reach the boiling point (212° F) from 185° F, all pathogens will be killed and the water will be safe to drink. Bottom line: heat to rolling boil, let cool, it’s safe. Boiling is the best, safest, time-tested way to purify water. Done correctly it will work every time.

    Chemicals
    Chlorine bleach, is the most common household purification product, but not necessarily the most effective (bleach begins to break down within a year). Use household bleach that contains at least 5.25% sodium hypochlorite (do not use scented or color safe). Add 2 drops to a quart/liter (8 per gallon), double if water is cloudy. Purified water should have a slight bleach odor.

    Iodine is more effective than bleach and, when stored correctly (out of sunlight), will last for years. It comes in either tablet or liquid form. The unpleasant taste can be countered by adding a Vitamin C powdered drink mix after the water has been treated. In liquid form it comes as Tincture of Iodine (sold in pharmacies), add several drops per quart.

    All chemical water purification options require at least 20 minutes for the chemicals to do their job (longer for cold water). Be sure to loosen the cap on your water container and slosh some of the treated water onto the threads of the cap and bottle to eliminate outside contaminates.

    Filters
    There are many types of commercial water filters available. In preparing for a collapse situation, purchasing a family size, quality filter (with ceramic filters) will provide the best long-term solution.

    SODIS
    Lastly I wanted to mention solar water disinfection (SODIS). This method disinfects water using only sunlight and clear plastic food grade (PET) containers (2 liter soda bottles work best). Using clean bottles, expose to direct sunlight for at least six hours (or two days under very cloudy conditions) to purify.

    (Friday: What I Did This Week To Prep)