Cold again. This is really starting to get old, ya know? I’d hate for this to be the beginning of the new normal. A whole lotta people are gonna starve if the US can’t produce and export a whole lotta extra food. Global warming has always been a more human friendly trend than global cooling. I guess that’s why they hate it so much.
Spent yesterday getting ready to go to my rent house, then coming home. Don’t know what I’ll be doing today but it’s probably going to revolve around drinking water.
I opened two aquatainers last night and both were contaminated. One had the spigot crack, which let air and ‘stuff’ into the jug. There is nasty looking stuff on the bottom of the jug, and the water smells of mold or mildew.
The other jug was stored with the spigot reversed and inside the jug (as I learned to do years ago) but the screw cap had loosened. Faint ‘stale’ odor, and some sand or sediment at the bottom of the jug. Prepper fail.
Both jugs spent the summer and fall sitting in the driveway, heating and cooling every day, eventually pumping air into the jug. Previously I’ve had water in aquatainers, treated with bleach, that was perfectly drinkable after 7 years. That jug was stored in the proverbial ‘cool dark place’ though.
I didn’t find out until around midnight, since we haven’t had to even crack the stored drinking water to that point. My interim solution was to put a pot of tap water on the boil, so I could refill the brita filter and make coffee in the morning. That’s why I think I’ll be looking more closely at our stored water today, in the daylight.
I trusted the aquatainers to perform as they had in the past without considering that conditions had changed. Prepper fail.
The aquatainers are generally quite good and I recommend having some. They are about as big as can be reasonably handled at 7 gallons. They have a couple of weaknesses though. The spigots are fragile. To combat that, I take the cap off, unscrew the spigot and rescrew it into the cap from the inside. That puts it inside the jug when stored, which is safer for it. It must be sterile and spotlessly clean when you do that though. You can also replace the spigot with a plumbing fitting. The threads are standard, and a simple plug can be screwed in. It’s also a good idea to order and stock some replacements for the spigots, and for the cap over the breather hole. I’ve got several of each.
Like most plastics, they will become brittle and crack if left in the sun long enough- so don’t. The biggest downside, as far as I’m concerned, is you can’t stack them, and you can’t lay them on their side and leave them like that either for storage, or for dispensing.
When I fill them, I use chlorinated tap water and add plain bleach. There are a lot of official and semi-official recipes for bleach to water ratio, but they all boil down to– mix in bleach very thoroughly, adding more slowly until you can just barely smell it in the water. (this is for already potable water, follow the recipe and rules for treating suspected bad or dirty water).
Doing this, and keeping the container sealed and stored well, I had no problem with 7 years of storage. The water was clear, and only a bit ‘flat’. To fix that you can aerate by pouring from container to container a couple of times, or I just pour it through a Brita filter pitcher. It’s easier to use and chill that way anyway.
I use the same method for all the water I store. Scrupulously clean bottle/jug/container/tank, already chlorinated tap water, add plain bleach until you can smell it even after thorough mixing, seal well and protect from air, light, and heat.
Worst case, I might have to use the Sawyer filter on the stored water, or some other treatment option, or just use the contaminated water for flushing and washing while using the uncontaminated OTHER containers for drinking. That is one advantage of multiple smaller jugs, if one is contaminated the others are usually still fine. That’s one reason why I prefer smaller containers to one big tank. That and mobility issues. A 55 gallon drum weighs a lot, ~450 pounds. You aren’t putting a 55 gallon drum in the back of your BOV.
Water is your first need, and you should have plenty on hand. I think a minimum of 2 gallons per person, per day, half that for pets, is a good number for planning purposes. More is better. Plus you need the means to treat the water to make it safe to drink. Hiking filters are good, if they have small enough pores, and the chemical means should be on your shelf too-iodine tablets for your personal cup of water, gallons of bleach for bulk treatment.
More on water storage and redundancy later, for now, keep stacking.
nick