How I'm Storing Water for Emergencies & Water Shortages

1. Harvesting water

If you have the resources you can harvest rainwater with something like a 1000 liter tank connected to a downpipe or roof or shed. If you live near a stream you can collect and purify that water as well.

Just be careful because I know that the factories near me dump sewage into the streams. That’s why I would trust rainwater over river water. Either way, you would need to purify it.

We built our own charcoal water filtration system that works on gravity. There are ready-made filtration systems but we did not have that kind of money to spend so we made our own.

We spent $80 on the charcoal filters and that was the only really substantial expense. We have done water tests with strips and it says it’s clean so this system seems to get the job done.

2. Purification tablets

If you don’t have space for harvesting and storing large amounts of water, purification tablets are another great way to make sure you’ll have access to clean water.

They have a really long expiration date and usually, these types of things will last well beyond their expiration. They’re basically just chlorine tablets. They purify 20-25 liters of water and only cost a few dollars.

Alternatively, if you don’t have tablets, you can also use a mild bleach solution. You can put about 8 droplets of unscented bleach into a gallon. You might also want to invest in a large container with a tap that can hold your clean water and make it easily accessible.

3. Bottled water

I’ve seen so many videos where people are disregarding this as a main method of water storage and I don’t understand why. They’re already packaged and stored. If you leave them in a cool dry place they will last for years.

There are videos saying you can’t use bottled water for storage because it will leak, but that makes no sense to me. The whole issue with plastic is that it doesn't disintegrate so why would anyone think these bottles would disintegrate and leak in the time we would need them?

4. Tap water

You can use empty bottles to store tap water. Whenever I use a large bottle of water I then fill it with tap water. I mark it with the letter T so that I know it’s tap water and then I store it in the garage.

I’ve seen videos saying that you need to purify tap water before you store it but that’s just not true. Our tap water is already full of chlorine.

In my home, we store 400 liters of water in bottles and that is purely for brewing and drinking. There’s no need to overcomplicate things. I think people who are pushing complicated water storage systems probably have a lot of money. Using plastic bottles is just fine if you’re keeping them out of the sun and stored in a cool dry place.

Storing water for emergencies

I’m just an average person. I don’t have a huge income to buy fancy water storage systems but I really think these systems I mentioned above are all perfectly fine. It’s what works for me and I haven’t had any issues.

I hope you found this helpful. If you have any questions or ideas you would like to share please feel free to leave a comment in the comments section.