I’ve read that you can live 3 minutes without air; 3 days without water; and 3 weeks without food. A few weeks ago, we talked about storing water long-term. While I was writing that article, it got me to thinking about tools that enhance the usage of your stored water.
If you have stored water, these 5 tools will help you use your stored water effectively!
1.) Solar Shower
When you are without water, having a way to clean yourself and your family is of utmost importance. We have a solar shower that I highly recommend. Whether it’s two days that your water is off or two weeks, this will help you clean yourself adequately. This is a solar shower, so the temperature of your water will be dependant upon the amount of sunshine and the air temperature outside.
2.) Berkey Water System
We own a Berkey Water System with Black Berkey Filters and it is an amazing piece of equipment. We’ve had one for about six years and have had it in continuous use for three and a half. When we first moved to Central Illinois, I started getting an upset stomach on a regular basis and we finally narrowed down what was causing it to the water. That’s when we pulled out our Berkey and I no longer got upset stomachs regularly. It was amazing. The Berkey will filter out 99.99% of microorganisms and viruses without filtering out the vitamins and minerals. You can even get filters that will filter out fluoride and arsenic.
What’s wonderful about the Berkey though is no matter where you get your water from, putting it through the Berkey system will make it safe to drink. You can get your water from a stream, from a pond or a lake, or from your swimming pool. It will take care of no matter what is in it.
3.) Dish Pans
Now you might be wondering why in the world you need dish pans if you have a sink. When we were without water for 3 days having a container into which you can put water so that you can wash dishes. This gives you a way to rinse off your dishes, wash your dishes, and rinse your dishes all at once. That’s what we did and it worked wonderfully. We cleaned off our dishes in sink basin one, cleaned them in the dishpan, and rinsed them in the second basin using a 5-gallon camping water container with a spigot. The system worked well.
4.) Berkey Sport Water Filters
Berkey Water Filtration Systems are wonderful if you are in a stationary place. When you’re not in a stationary place, then having a Berkey Sport Water Filter is the way to go. It’s a portable way to not only filter water but to carry water with you too. It’s a 22 oz bottle that can be refilled 640 times! Quite an impressive little bottle. Like the Berkey Water Filtration System, you can fill it with water from streams, lakes, ponds, or other water sources. This gives you the ability to have clean water wherever you go.
5.) Misc 55 Gallon Barrel Tools
Heavy Duty 55 Gallon Barrel Dollies
If you’ve ever had to move a full water barrel, even if it’s just five feet, you find something out very quickly. Water is HEAVY. It weighs approximately 8 pounds per gallon. A 55-gallon drum full of water weighs 440 pounds. That’s A LOT. I know I mentioned that we recently moved, even moving our four 55 gallon drums into a place that we could empty them was SO HARD. We didn’t have these heavy-duty water barrel dollies, but they would have made life so much easier if we had!
Bung Wrench
Water barrel openings are a beast unto themselves. They almost look like they have a type of cross on them. Because of this in order to get water into or out of the water barrel, one of the water tools you need is called a bung wrench. This allows you to tighten or loosen the caps to a 55-gallon barrel.
Water Barrel Siphon
Putting a tube down into a water barrel and using your mouth to create suction so start water flowing is an option – though not a highly desirable one. There is, however, an easier and hygienic way to remove water from a 55-gallon barrel and that’s using a water barrel siphon. While it’s not a fast way to empty a barrel, if you are needing to remove water a bit at a time to cook, drink, or use it to clean, this is the perfect way to go about it.
So what about you? Do you have any other water tools that you think should be included? Let us know anything you’d like to add in the comments.
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vitamins are not generally found in water that comes out of your tap. and many minerals are removed by filters–iron would be an example of of a mineral that is removed by many filters. what is removed is determined first by the size of the particulates the filter can remove. some filters have additional ways to remove contaminants–such as an electrostatic charge.
we also have had a berkey filter for several years. the chlorine is clearly removed as evidenced by it being neither smelled or tasted after filtering. we added the fluoride filter as we the read a study indicating fluoride is not good for aging bones, but may make bones more brittle. why take chances?
I learned when washing dishes by hand that you need a third dishpan, a sanitize dishpan. If at any point your cookware, cutting boards, knives, etc. came in contact with raw meat. You use one blue tablet called Steramine Sanitizing Quatemary Tablets (Amazon) per gallon of water. You dunk your rinsed dishes & silverware, etc. in the sanitized water. Shake off excess water & best to air dry things as opposed to towel drying them to complete sanitizing. Wooden drying racks are best for this. So for me, I would first scrape off food on plates, pans & silverware as best as I could in the garbage and set up my dishwashing station with 3 dishpans…wash, rinse & sanitize.