Water as emergency prep

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I live in the burbs with municipal water supply to the house. I installed a whole house water filter on the inlet to the house. I also have a separate reverse osmosis filter installed by the kitchen faucet. The filters on the kitchen system last a long time thanks to the whole house filter. I have to replace that one every year and that filter can be downright nasty when it's old. No idea if either filter catches the "forever chemicals" but trying to distill water for the whole family in large quantities isn't really practical.
 
Get a couple plastic 55 gallon drums and sanitize them. Either collect rainwater or fill them from your faucet. Then get some water purification device.

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I live in the sticks and have a well, I am just throwing this out there as an idea.
 
Instead of 55 gallon drums, I bought some purpose built rain barrels years ago. They look nice and had built in faucet, hose attachment, bug screen, etc. It is nice to have the rain water stored up.
 
I made a 16-foot "wine thief" PVC pipe sealed at the end with holes near the top. It can be lowered to any depth by a good nylon rope. It fills through the top holes, and you haul up a 16' column of water. Even my wife can do it (we tested it).
 
I'm having a hard time imagining what you are describing @Unca Walt . If you get a chance, could you post a picture of it (or a web page that illustrates it)?
 
For example, let's say he used schedule 40 2" PVC pipe. The average inside diameter is 2.047". Which means that you would get a gallon of water from every 70.2" of pipe. Or roughly 2.7 gallons per "dip".
 

You are correct that it is better water. My well water has zero taste. People who visit comment on the quality of it. My sister lives in town about 20 minutes from me and she's on "city water". It tastes so bad, she has to buy gallons of spring water to drink. The government tests my well water twice a year for free and sends me a report on it. No issues at all so far.
 
CiscoKid said:
My sister lives in town about 20 minutes from me and she's on "city water". It tastes so bad, she has to buy gallons of spring water to drink.
Click to expand...
What, you won't let her just come down and fill up a few five-gallon jugs?

Spring water is EXPENSIVE.
 
Funny story I read long ago, about a landlord with a well AND city water in Lake County, Ohio.

Now the whole of Northeast Ohio is over a huge salt dome. Normally it doesn't affect the well water - the aquifer and the water table are above it. Lake Erie somehow doesn't percolate down there - and there's salt mining near the shore, and - I'm not sure - maybe even under the edge of the lake. International Salt - the salt is mostly sold for road treatment in winter.

So. There's this guy renting a home, where there's a well that's salty. Also city water from the nearest village. And there's a country club nearby, also pulling village water. I mean, PULLING. They had an irrigation system, and since they were far enough from the water plant, they illegally installed pumps to SUCK water out of the system. All homes tapped into the water system in the area would have faucets hissing from the suction. When they were watering, all that the resident could do was switch to the well and wash, bathe and flush with salt water.

He was sick of it, as you could imagine. So the weekend before moving out, a hot summer weekend, he hooked up BOTH the well and the city water system and let the irrigation pumps suck out the briny well water, onto their nice manicured greens.

 
Casey Jones said:
What, you won't let her just come down and fill up a few five-gallon jugs?

Spring water is EXPENSIVE.
Click to expand...


She's in her 70's. She doesn't drive that much and, when she does, she sticks close to town.
 


I'm a golfer, so I recognize tragedy when I see it, but even I think that is funny.
 
CiscoKid said:
For example, let's say he used schedule 40 2" PVC pipe. The average inside diameter is 2.047". Which means that you would get a gallon of water from every 70.2" of pipe. Or roughly 2.7 gallons per "dip".
Click to expand...
Dang, @CiscoKid -- Your numbers are so spot on it is scary.

searcher said:
I think @Unca Walt was describing a well bucket. Shit load of "how to" vids on them.

Click to expand...
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
That's mine, but not as sexy as the way I did it. My rig has no moving parts, unlike those guys' rig. Just a 16' PVC pipe with holes near the top where the rope is tied.

The double benefit of my "wine thief" system is when the PVC pipe goes down the well... and the pipe sinks down (the bottom of the pipe is sealed) the water in the well reaches the holes at the top of the PVC, and it flows in and fills the pipe:

With right at two gallons of water or about enuf water that it weighs about as much as a sprinkler can. Easily handled by my dainty bride. Repeat as necessary.
 
Water only last so long. Get some of the filtering straws.
 
You can get a case of dehydrated water packets on Amazon.
 
Made front page in today's Inquirer. Insane rate increases royally screwing people over.

Water privatization is coming under renewed scrutiny from Pa. lawmakers and regulators as consumers sour on rate increases​

The biggest for-profit water utility in Pennsylvania announced in November that it planned to collect an additional $204 million from customers — less than a year after the company’s last rate hike.

It may have been a major strategic error.

Over the next couple months, public hearings held by the state’s utility regulator were packed with frustrated ratepayers whose complaints were echoed by politicians — notwithstanding Pennsylvania American Water’s assurances that the revenue would help fund $1 billion in upgrades to water and sewer plants and other infrastructure. An investment analyst who follows utilities later wrote that he’d been attending such rate case hearings for years and had “never seen anything like those we attended in recent days.”

For-profit utilities in Pennsylvania have scooped up more than 20 water and sewer systems from municipal governments during the last eight years, spurred by a state law that changed how such assets are valued. Municipalities have used sale proceeds to pay off debt, invest in capital projects, and avoid tax increases.

The acquisitions have at times prompted local political backlash as some customers have seen their monthly water bills double or even triple, in some cases exceeding their electric bills. At the same time, consumers are still grappling with elevated prices for key items such as groceries and housing.

More:

 
That's funny.

Our water system, owned by all the city's history by a private company, was seized by the city six years ago. First, the cost went through the stratosphere - Mountain Water Company didn't WANT to sell to the city, and tried a number of legal challenges.

Then, while this was going on - as you can reasonably imagine - all maintenance except for emergent or sanitary needs...it all stopped. It was actually a five-year legal battle - that's a lot of maintenance to defer.

The city finally got legal clearance to pay the low price they offered, and take it over. They fired the entire payroll and put the mayor's crony buddies, or those recommended by his buddies, in there to run it.

And THEN he had the balls to gripe, publicly, of all the deferred maintenance. That no one had accurate knowledge of. Of course, simply re-hiring the various knowledgeable persons to direct a maintenance catch-up, would go counter to the real purpose: padding out the Civil Service rolls with loyal voter-supporters.

The cost was over eight times what he had promised city council and the voters. And the hardest thing, for the mayor, was that he didn't get to benefit from all this new patronage-support - he's dead. After requiring city workers to take the bio-weapon (not sure if he was blocked, as Montana law forbids that; but other employers have found work-arounds and required the Jab) and even going on local television to demand that us Science Deniars do our duty and submit...one year to the day that he went on the boob toob, he "died unexpectedly" of a fast-acting cancer. Caused, of course, by Science Denial and Glow Bull Warming.

But my point is: You may well not want to advocate a municipal takeover, or start such a campaign. Bad as some Woke corporations are, today, government workers are notoriously worse - doing ANYTHING. Water is a serious matter.
 
Will you write the feckin book??!!
 

Bogota restricts water as reservoirs hit 'critical' lows

The mayor of Colombia's capital Bogota on Monday announced water restrictions as reservoirs in the sprawling Andean city hit "critical" levels.He announced cuts from Thursday due to "the critical levels of the reservoirs from which we draw drinking water from Bogota."
www.yahoo.com
 
I vaguely remember someone at the old place talking about water as an investment vehicle in the not-too-distant future. He / she may have been on to something.

As reservoirs go dry, Mexico City and Bogotá are staring down ‘Day Zero’

Cape Town, which beat a water crisis in 2018, holds lessons for cities grappling with an El Niño-fueled drought.
grist.org

After 5 years without drinkable water, Santee asks: When will our tap water be safe? - Flatwater Free Press

The Santee Sioux Nation reservation in northeast Nebraska has been under a no-drink order since 2019. Leaders hope a new state law could jumpstart funding needed to fix the problem.
flatwaterfreepress.org
 

UK: Tap Water Contaminated with "Fecal Matter" ​

May 29, 2024

8:53
 
Just know that the gubbermint cannot effectively treat water, any more than a Woketard-DEI gubbermint can do ANYTHING.

Boil the water. Know you're showering in fecal-coliform water, as you do.

Forewarned is forearmed.
 

Mexico City’s water crisis: serious concern as tap runs dry​

Jun 26, 2024

ABC News’ Matt Rivers reports on the dwindling clean water supply in one of the world’s largest cities, forcing many residents to resort to drastic measures to obtain the water they need to survive.

8:51
 
They simply need to go back to the Old Ways (circa 1910)... Hire water sellers:

 
Unca Walt said:
They simply need to go back to the Old Ways (circa 1910)... Hire water sellers:

View attachment 13130
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That would be painful.

For buyer and seller.

A healthy human needs about a gallon of water a day - in some form or another. Buying water by the cup from a water-vendor, is gonna add up.

But even at price-gouging levels, how much is the poor sod with the water-bag on his shoulders going to make? He's got five gallons on his back, at best. Even allowing a handful of reloads, he doesn't have much profit there.

I have little trouble envisioning things my generation has never seen - economic collapse, civil war, chaos. Unlike today's younger generation with their ignorance and Normalcy Biases.

But even I cannot envision living like that, with pennies of profit at the end of the day. Closest I ever came to that, was in Houston - my construction job shut down by the INS and a raid and mass-arrest, I was reduced to day-labor.

One night I was thinking of the profits, as I walked from Peakloads Laborcenter to my rented room. $26.

Even allowing for some price deflation, the water-vending gig won't pay that much.
 
That's the point -- do it or die. You sell water all day for (in extremis) enough to live another day. And people actually DID buy a cup at a time of water, now din' they... It was hard, gritty, and absolutely dead-end. But it was tomorrow, also.

BTW: Have you forgotten that iconic photo of a Depression Era mother with a worn face and several half-clothed kids sitting in hopelessness?

and this desperation:


Maybe you cannot imagine what has already happened... so rethink. Really rethink. The coming tsunami will affect everyone to an extent beyond those above pictures of recent history.

Profit comes when there is enough cohesion in the world for things like water pipes to cities replace the water vendors.
 
Telling us what they plan to do.

They can't control themselves. Sociopaths do this, almost universally.
 

Getting Fresh Water In A Disaster. Hurricane Helene's aftermath has complicated things.​

Oct 10, 2024

6:45
 
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