Lesson 11 of 25
Water 1.2 Water Safety
Now that we have established the importance of water and how your body will suffer without it we have to discuss where to get it. You can't just drink from wherever you want. This is obvious for most people but to make this as basic as possible so that everyone is on the same page from this point forward it must be included. Pure water is not the best thing for us. Pure meaning distilled water or water that has almost all impurities removed. The minerals that are in the water for the most part are good for our bodies if not required. A clear fresh spring would probably be the top of the water gathering list.
Water that comes from lakes and streams can be used but it needs to be filtered, treated or boiled to make it safe. The reason for this is that the water you may be contaminated with bacteria and parasites that will make you sick. Filtering the water through a high filtration filter that is designed for it will take them out of the water while boiling it will kill them. The third option is to treat the water with a chemical like chlorine or iodine. These kill the contaminates but leave them in the water. This is how most of our municipal drinking water is treated.
The water from our home plumbing is safe as long as the source of the water isn't contaminated. If you have town or city water that is pumped in from the street it is probably going to be safe unless there has been a major disaster that has left the water treatment facility abandoned. If you find yourself in a long term crisis and are waiting it out at home you need to evaluate your water situation and make decisions early. Filling as many containers as possible in the beginning is a smart choice. You never know how long the water will stay on. Most water systems rely on gravity to provide the water pressure to get the water up to the upper floors of buildings and houses that are located on the top of hills etc... The water is pumped from the source, either a reservoir or a well into large water towers that hold the water. After a crisis the water will stay in that tank until it runs out.
If you have well water at your house chances are good that you have clean drinking water that has been pumped up from the water table a couple of hundred of feet below ground. Almost all contaminates get filtered out from the soil leaving the water safe to drink. Although sometimes your well housing itself can get contaminated from water coming down the pipe from the top. It is best to have it tested yearly or simply pour some bleach down the pipe every year and let it kill everything, A gallon of bleach in the pipe will kill anything in the pipe but can be dangerous to plastic pipes so dilute it with water before you dump it in. Let is sit for an hour and flush the pipes by running the water to pump the bleach out. Usually when the smell of bleach is gone it is safe to use but run it another ten minutes to be safe.
The well has one great Achilles heal and that is that it requires electricity to run the pump to get the water out. It is possible to have another well put in with a hand crank or to have a hand pump added to your existing pump. The easiest way to ensure that the water keeps flowing is to have a backup electric system like solar and batteries or a propane generator that you can use to run the pump to fill containers. It doesn't make sense to have your generator running all the time just for the convenience of running water when you can store water and save your fuel.
Water storage is the next part of the lesson. If you don't have the capacity to store water at home you need to consider that a top priority. Water containers don't need to be anything fancy they just have to be clean and safe to store water. You can use old milk or soda bottles that have been washed out to save costs. I would use my bathtub to store water only as a last resort or just for cleaning purposes. Remember we are trying to keep bacteria out of our bodies.
Urban water collection offers it own set of challenges. The chemicals that could be in water that is found could be not only bad for you but could be deadly. With how important water is, if you find yourself running low when a crisis outlasts your storage you need to find ways of gathering rain water or you need to find your way to a place where the water can be free of chemical contaminates. If you are completely opposed to leaving your home or neighborhood then you should use that information when doing your emergency planning and practice water collection now to be ready later.
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