Water Storage

Coleman 5 gallon water storage container

Most people keep some spare bottles of water in the house, however; if you wake up one morning, turn on the faucet and nothing comes out, those bottles of water might not last very long depending on how long it takes to get the water back in operation.

Here's a nice rule of thumb for water storage:

• 1 gallon of water per person per day

At this point, I have 15 - 16 gallons of water stored for my wife and I to use if it's needed. I have some small sized bulk containers, some gallon sized containers, and two cases of 16 ounce bottles. I will continue adding to my water storage over the next few months and will most likely supplement it with a couple of 55 gallon blue barrels.
You don't need to spend thousands of dollars on a 1,000 gallon in ground cache of water. You can start simply and build your supplies over a period of weeks or months. If you live in an area prone to hurricanes or tornados you may want to step up the time table to a number of days, but affordable water containers are readily available locally.

Camping stores, big box stores, and hunting stores usually keep some suitable containers available year round. If you don't live near a retail store that carries them, you can order them from Amazon.

Reliance Aqua-Tainer 7 gallon water container

• The 5 gallon Coleman water storage container pictured above is listed for $12.99. 

• The 7 gallon Reliance Aqua-Tainer water container is listed for $16.99.

• And if you have some significant money already set aside for water storage, another option to consider is a 55 gallon water container from RSD Co. Inc. It's listed on Amazon for $99.00.

When storing water, please keep the weight per gallon in mind. A gallon of water weighs 8.3 pounds. A 55 gallon drum filled with water tops the scales at more than 450 pounds. Storing hundreds of gallons of water on the second story of a structure could cause major structural problems over a long period of time.

We store our water down in the basement where it's out of the way and where weight is not an issue.