Something I have been thinking about lately is the need for water and how to be prepared to have that should we face some sort of emergency when electricity (which powers our pump) is not available. Thankfully so far we have never lost electricity for any extended period (beyond a few hours) of time but many others in our nation have. This summer even in our area after a storm went through many people were without electricity for days. Of course just recently many in the East that were hit by Hurricane Sandy lost their electricity. I have also heard talk of blackouts possible for other reasons besides storms - I think it would be great to be prepared!
I have in the past worked and doing somethings to make sure we had some water. Here how we are prepared so far:
- I have some cleaned out milk jugs filled with water and stored.
- We have a water filter. The type that you use when backpacking. This is only good for a limited number of gallons and you are supposed to filter the water from a swift moving place like a river. Thankfully we live in MN where there are a lot of lakes and rivers but still the only water we are really close to is a swamp (not so good for drinking water!) and so we would have to travel (car or bike) to get to water to filter.
- We have water purification tablets. (Stored in our van- in case we need water when out and about.)
- We have activated charcoal which though it makes a rather yucky looking drink it works to make it safe from bad stuff. We have this in both the van and house.
- Filling my canning jars as I empty them of food with hot water and seal them before place on the shelves again. I have seen this idea elsewhere but haven't put it into practice yet.
- Buying a hand pump. This is something I have been doing a lot of research on lately. I am leaning towards getting a pump that will fit on our current well along with our electric pump. We would be able to use both at the same time but of course if the electric one quit working we can fall back on the hand pump. Another possibility is buying a cheaper hand pump that needs to be on its own well. I believe that could work in our area because the water may be fairly shallow. We could possibly dig our own well -but there might be codes against this - I haven't really checked that option out.
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| Bison |
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| Simple Pump |
~An EZ water do-it-yourself kit for much less. We think it would work okay just not as easily. (around $250 cost). This is the other option that we are thinking about.
Have any of your bought hand pumps for your place? What have you purchased? I would love any advice that you might have!!!
What do you do at your home to be prepared concerning water?
I am linking up with Amy from Homestead Revival, Jill from The Prairie Homestead and Kendra at New Life on a Homestead
5 comments:
Canning water is a good idea. I don't like the idea of using water stored in milk jugs and such but to have some back up in glass jars is appealing to me.
~Anna
My husband found a well bucket on the internet that sounds possible. We havd a 250 ft deep well and are thinking about this.
Stephen at The Southern Agrarian has about 3 posts on his Bison water pump. You can find them here:
http://www.southernagrarian.com/?s=bison
Hope this helps!
Amy @ Homestead Revival
Hmmm canning water sounds interesting and I hadn't thought of that. Right now I have a little bit of water stored that I bought but I thought I read that you can't keep it very long but I would think canned water you could. I will have to look into that sometime.
We used to rent a place in the country (now we are in town) and our pump was electric and due to a storm we were without power for several days. We used a coleman stove outdoors to cook, showered once at a friend's house, hauled water from the lake nearby for pouring down the toilet to make it flush sometimes, and went to the store and bought a big bottle of water to drink. I only had one child then just a baby, and it was summer time. The worst was the heat- we only use fans but we didn't have any to work obviously and that was hard.
Thank you all for sharing ideas!
I appreciate that!
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