How is everyone storing water

[becky3086]

We don't store water anymore. We have a well, it doesn't have a working pump anymore but the well is still there and a bucket and rope will work in a pinch.

[Randy Vickery]

I have a deep well with the ability to hook my generator up direct to pump pure water.

[cathcoug]

We have been buying and storing canning jars for years but just recently realized, "hey, why store them empty when we could store them with water in them?" This only works if you have an area that does not freeze and you can remember to rotate them every few months. We also invested in a hand pump for our well and some 55 gallon barrels. The hand pump was not cheap but takes a huge load off our minds on what to do when the powers out. We also recognize it may attract unwanted attention so we are working on a way to cammo it when the time comes.

[crossbow]

I have 8 five gallon plastic jugs from BJs, they come full, I also have a couple hundred 64oz juice bottles full just for drinking, then i have a four 50 gallon plastic barrels full for washing and flushing toilets, also have a spring out back of the house that runs yr around.

[BigJohn]

I store about 20 gallons of water for immediate needs (maybe 5-6 days). For longer term, if the grid is down, I will have to dismantle my well. I have a shallow water well that currently runs on electricity and runs a sprinkler system. I have a plan for how to convert it over to manual pumping, but I have never tried it. There is a relatively clean creek within 500m of my house, so I intend to purify creek water before I wreck my sprinkler system. I have a Big Berkey filter and some spare ceramic filters, plus polar-pur iodine crystals.

[RainyDayChick]

Because water is so vital to survival, it's THE area to have a lot of redundancy and a variety of options.

We keep 7 five gallon jugs on hand and rotate them via a water cooler; about 4 cases of 16 oz. bottled water which we consume and replace; our hot water tank; we have a small creek on our property which coupled w/our Berkey water filter could give us safe drinking water; we have two 55 gallon drums which we intend to hook up to our garage downspouts, but fill them with the hose to have water on hand for gardening purposes; and, during the summer months, we have a 15K gallon pool up which could supply lots of washing/flushing/general purpose water. We also have a plan in place; if there is a widespread power outage, we immediately fill our bathtubs with water to use for flushing toilets and hygiene.

Right now, we have water purification tablets and coffee filters in our BOB, but it's on our list to acquire several portable water filters for them. I think it's important to keep bottled water and small water filters in each vehicle at all times in case you're stranded.

[crossbow]

a year around running spring coming out of the hill in back of the house, i took one scoop to many with the back hoe yrs ago and out shot the water, i tried everything to cap it short of doing what they did with the oil well in the gulf, now that spring in looking pretty good.

[Matt In Oklahoma]

This week I just refilled my 6, 5gl containers and treated them with bleach, 2 have spigots for ease of pouring. I refill/treat them every 6 months. I'm hoping that's enough. 3 are the military plastic water cans and 1 is a civilian plastic can. The 2 with spigots are 1 and 1 military grade and civilian.
I have a creek close by, a well, we also maintain about a 3 day constantly rotated bottled water supply. I store a 90oz camelback that is refilled every couple of weeks as well as a 1litre filter bottle from Bota of Boulder in my BOB in the truck.
I attended a FREE class on basic water filtration at a store called Backwoods http://www.backwoods.com/ . The class was very informal but very good. They pulled one of everything we asked about from the shelf and covered it with us with a no BS sharing of knowledge and if they didn't know they tried to find out. They demonstrated the products and we all drank the water to try the different methods. I didn't expect a lot but I was impressed and I learned, all for free. I did purchase the liquid drops for purifying the water while there. I had been toying with the idea but the reminder of the taste of the military iodine tablets kept creeping back into my head. Yeach! These actually tasted like regular city water. Placed them with my BOB water filter bottle. That double tap oughta kill them buggies!

[Klayton]

We rotate a pallet of store bought drinking water for our cooking/drinking water.
We have rain barrels set up for emergency shower water and garden water.
Still want to move to a farm though, where I can have a well and a seriously huge cistern full of back up water.

Important key for water storage if you are using store bought water bottles: store in a cool & dark location. I mean pitch black kind of dark.

SHTF well power should be using battery powered well pump, 30gal pressurized reserevoir, and you keep the batteries green (charged) via solar panels and wind generators.

You will want purification tablets/bleach, and backup filtration device/system.
Yes RO (reverse osmosis) is the best out there, but you waste alot of water using RO. Wasting water in a survival situation is a punishable offense. =)
I guess if you were good, youi could design a catch system to try and recapture the blow off water in a RO system. But that just seems like another thing that could go wrong.