What you need to know about storing water
05/06/20 16:39
Water is the most important item to store for emergency preparedness. People need water much more frequently than they need food. Here are some facts about how to store water, how much you should store, how to make your stored water accessible, and how to make sure it stays pure over time.
Your household water supply can easily be disrupted by very local issues, such as road work, broken mains, contamination, flooding, or even a plumbing problem in your own home. Water is a vulnerable necessity.
Water is easy and cheap to store in 55 gallon or 30 gallon drums.
It can also be stored in store-bought bottles, but that is a ridiculously expensive way to do it. Storing water in a drum costs a tiny fraction of the cost of storing water bottles from the store. Walmart sells the large Arrowhead 33.8 oz. water bottles for $1.38 each. To store 30 gallons of water in bottles would cost you $156.78 plus tax. Tap water in a 30 gallon drum would cost you 12 cents. 55 gallons of bottled water would cost you $287.43 plus tax. Tap water in a 55 gallon drum would cost you 22 cents. The cost of the drum and the pump must be added, but they will both last you a lifetime. They aren't disposed after each use like most water bottles.
Or you could fill your own water bottles. But don’t use milk jugs. They are biodegradable and will break down over time. Soda bottles could be used, but they absorb flavors, and whatever was in them first could flavor your water. You might have a cola taste in your stored water if you use these types of bottles. Re-using water bottles might work, but they are mostly made of extremely thin plastic, to save costs, are are intended for one-time use.
Ideally, use polyethylene-based plastics. Blue colored drums means they are food safe and BPA-free.
One person needs about 1/2 gallon of water per day to live, and another 1/2 gallon for hygiene. So, a rule of thumb is to store a gallon of water per day, for each person in your household. Three days of storage will get you through many disruptions. Two weeks will likely get you through a natural disaster. A year of storage would likely get you through a major societal disruption.
When storing drinking water, there are some very important things to be aware of.
1- Don’t fill the water drum using a garden hose. Garden hoses contain lots of toxic chemicals. See this: https://www.thoughtco.com/is-it-safe-to-drink-hose-water-609429.
Use a hose designed for drinking water! Walmart sells the Camco TastePURE 50’ Drinking Water hose for $18.47, for example.
2- It is very easy to place an empty drum anywhere you want it in your home. Then fill it with water. But the nearest faucet might not be one that you can attach a hose to. However, there are many economical adapters that will enable you to connect your drinking water hose to any faucet in your house.
3- If you use chlorinated water from your faucet, it could store just fine, even for years. In fact perfectly pure water will store indefinitely. Well water and other sources should be treated.
And even tap water should be treated, if there was even a small amount of contamination in your drum. You can ensure that most any water will store well by adding 2 tablespoons of household chlorine bleach to a 55 gallon drum of water. But it will taste of chlorine. And bleach isn't really made for drinking - just because it kills bacteria in water.
The best way to treat water and ensure it will last, when stored in a drum, is to use a stabilized oxygen water treatment. There are several options online, and it costs about $15 to treat a 55 gallon drum. But then the water will taste good, and stay pure for years.
Your household water supply can easily be disrupted by very local issues, such as road work, broken mains, contamination, flooding, or even a plumbing problem in your own home. Water is a vulnerable necessity.
Water is easy and cheap to store in 55 gallon or 30 gallon drums.
It can also be stored in store-bought bottles, but that is a ridiculously expensive way to do it. Storing water in a drum costs a tiny fraction of the cost of storing water bottles from the store. Walmart sells the large Arrowhead 33.8 oz. water bottles for $1.38 each. To store 30 gallons of water in bottles would cost you $156.78 plus tax. Tap water in a 30 gallon drum would cost you 12 cents. 55 gallons of bottled water would cost you $287.43 plus tax. Tap water in a 55 gallon drum would cost you 22 cents. The cost of the drum and the pump must be added, but they will both last you a lifetime. They aren't disposed after each use like most water bottles.
Or you could fill your own water bottles. But don’t use milk jugs. They are biodegradable and will break down over time. Soda bottles could be used, but they absorb flavors, and whatever was in them first could flavor your water. You might have a cola taste in your stored water if you use these types of bottles. Re-using water bottles might work, but they are mostly made of extremely thin plastic, to save costs, are are intended for one-time use.
Ideally, use polyethylene-based plastics. Blue colored drums means they are food safe and BPA-free.
One person needs about 1/2 gallon of water per day to live, and another 1/2 gallon for hygiene. So, a rule of thumb is to store a gallon of water per day, for each person in your household. Three days of storage will get you through many disruptions. Two weeks will likely get you through a natural disaster. A year of storage would likely get you through a major societal disruption.
When storing drinking water, there are some very important things to be aware of.
1- Don’t fill the water drum using a garden hose. Garden hoses contain lots of toxic chemicals. See this: https://www.thoughtco.com/is-it-safe-to-drink-hose-water-609429.
Use a hose designed for drinking water! Walmart sells the Camco TastePURE 50’ Drinking Water hose for $18.47, for example.
2- It is very easy to place an empty drum anywhere you want it in your home. Then fill it with water. But the nearest faucet might not be one that you can attach a hose to. However, there are many economical adapters that will enable you to connect your drinking water hose to any faucet in your house.
3- If you use chlorinated water from your faucet, it could store just fine, even for years. In fact perfectly pure water will store indefinitely. Well water and other sources should be treated.
And even tap water should be treated, if there was even a small amount of contamination in your drum. You can ensure that most any water will store well by adding 2 tablespoons of household chlorine bleach to a 55 gallon drum of water. But it will taste of chlorine. And bleach isn't really made for drinking - just because it kills bacteria in water.
The best way to treat water and ensure it will last, when stored in a drum, is to use a stabilized oxygen water treatment. There are several options online, and it costs about $15 to treat a 55 gallon drum. But then the water will taste good, and stay pure for years.
Our guard deer chasing off turkeys
01/01/19 11:56
Our better-outdoors factory is located in the mountains next to our home. We truly love the outdoors. However, our local Turkeys have multiplied to the point that they are becoming a nuisance, overrunning our yard. So we trained our young deer to run the turkeys off. Herding turkeys is almost as tricky as herding cats. But with some real fancy footwork, our "guard deer" can do the job, of chasing off the turkeys.
Here is a video of the amazing footwork that we had to teach our deer in order to run off the unwanted turkeys.
Here is a video of the amazing footwork that we had to teach our deer in order to run off the unwanted turkeys.
Testing the features of the new boat
18/08/18 12:00
What a thrill it was to launch the new boat and test the new features. There was a lot to check out.
We had to verify that our displacement calculations were correct, so that the thrusters would get enough water. You see, with a trolling motor, you can adjust the shaft up and down to get the prop at the right depth. With built-in thrusters, the hull itself needs to be at the right depth. Success! The props get enough depth and provide thrust in about 4" of water!
Also, the pontoons mounted on the outriggers, start out up off the ground. This makes launching easier - no extra drag. But in the water, as people start climbing aboard, they start touching the water and adding flotation lift. This extra flotation kicks in AFTER the thrusters have enough depth. Success! Our calculations turned out to be right on.
Power? The thrusters produced more power than expected. The ducted-fan housing around the props produces more thrust than an open prop. We were impressed. We loaded the boat with 4 men, weighing over 800 lbs total (exceeding the Coast Guard rating), and the thrusters still pushed us along as well as our trolling motor could. The thrusters are amazing.
Steering? With a trolling motor, you turn the prop in the direction you want to go. Our thrusters are fixed in place, one on each side. Operating one thruster on a side was designed to turn the boat. But if that didn't produce enough turn, we thought that we could put the opposite side thruster into reverse to enhance the turn. Results were better than expected! Giving one thruster more power gives good turning; one thruster alone gives crisp turns. And if we use opposing directions with the two thrusters, the boat almost rotates in place. This is even better than we hoped for!
A second nice benefit of the steering was the finger-tip control. With the trolling motor, you have a handle/throttle reaching inside the boat, that you rotate for speed and push back and forth for direction. With a full boat, it is sometimes in the way. The small dual throttles at the back of the boat were much easier to use. I could rest my hand on the throttle housing and just use my fingers to control speed and direction. And I had a nephew sitting across from me, who would have been completely in the way of the trolling motor handle. No problem with the small throttle.
Stability. We could stand up, lean over the sides, cast fishing poles, net fish, and overload one side, without ever worrying about rocking the boat too much. We could get more stability if we lengthened the outriggers and pushed the pontoons out further. But we found that we have all the stability we need, without making the boat footprint wider. Success!
Anchor. There is an anchor compartment in the bow. And we put a flip-up ring on the nose of the bow, to tie the anchor rope to. This worked, but it required threading the rope through the loop and tying a knot. All my grandkids aren't knot experts yet. We decided this loop, although it lays down flat for putting the bow away, wasn't the best design. We are going to replace it with a cleat. It will stick up a little more, but it will be so much easier to wrap the anchor rope in a figure eight and tie it off. No threading of a long rope. Fail. We will make this better on future builds.
Speed of getting the boat assembled and on the water. Even for the first time, this boat is so much faster to assemble than it was to inflate our old rubber boat, and put in the floorboards. But we did learn a few tricks. Using a small power screwdriver on one side was a lot faster than a ratchet on the other side, to attach the outriggers. Didn't think it would have made that much difference. At $9, I think we will have two power screwdrivers. Also, we learned that by leaving the outriggers a bit loose on the pontoons, they would slide into and out of the mounts on the main boat much easier. Then they could be tightened fully after snapping them in place.
Loading the boat into the back of the 4 wheel drive pickup. The boat with all components inside weighs 147 pounds. We targeted 140. Too much glue inside maybe? Hull thickness just a bit more than expected? Anyway, two people could lift the boat in and out of the tall truck bed without straining, using our fingers under the lip on each side. I thought the lip was fine for lifting. But one of my sons thinks we should make something better to grab hold of. We will work on that. Also, when hauling the boat over a very bumpy road, we noticed that the top compartment was slipping off its hinges. (The hinges are lift-off removable on purpose. By allowing the hulls to be separated, a single person could handle this boat, by loading and uploading one piece of the boat at a time.) But we are adding a small clip to hold the compartment hinges together when doing rough transport. Testing does expose some things that need to be improved.
Testing also gave us another new idea. We were catching a lot of fish out in the middle of this high-mounting lake. Those on shore were catching very few; because the lake edge is so shallow I think. But the kids kept wanting to keep all the fish they caught, probably not to eat - all claims to the contrary notwithstanding - but to show them off. So, a son on board suggested that we could create a great live well, just by putting fish netting into the water in the gap between the pontoons and the boat hull. The lake itself would become the live well - no aireation necessary. We wouldn't take up any room in the boat, and we wouldn't kill the fish on a stringer. We think we can come up with a nice "live well" accessory for the boat using netting and some clamps.
All in all, the boat exceeded our expectations.
We had to verify that our displacement calculations were correct, so that the thrusters would get enough water. You see, with a trolling motor, you can adjust the shaft up and down to get the prop at the right depth. With built-in thrusters, the hull itself needs to be at the right depth. Success! The props get enough depth and provide thrust in about 4" of water!
Also, the pontoons mounted on the outriggers, start out up off the ground. This makes launching easier - no extra drag. But in the water, as people start climbing aboard, they start touching the water and adding flotation lift. This extra flotation kicks in AFTER the thrusters have enough depth. Success! Our calculations turned out to be right on.
Power? The thrusters produced more power than expected. The ducted-fan housing around the props produces more thrust than an open prop. We were impressed. We loaded the boat with 4 men, weighing over 800 lbs total (exceeding the Coast Guard rating), and the thrusters still pushed us along as well as our trolling motor could. The thrusters are amazing.
Steering? With a trolling motor, you turn the prop in the direction you want to go. Our thrusters are fixed in place, one on each side. Operating one thruster on a side was designed to turn the boat. But if that didn't produce enough turn, we thought that we could put the opposite side thruster into reverse to enhance the turn. Results were better than expected! Giving one thruster more power gives good turning; one thruster alone gives crisp turns. And if we use opposing directions with the two thrusters, the boat almost rotates in place. This is even better than we hoped for!
A second nice benefit of the steering was the finger-tip control. With the trolling motor, you have a handle/throttle reaching inside the boat, that you rotate for speed and push back and forth for direction. With a full boat, it is sometimes in the way. The small dual throttles at the back of the boat were much easier to use. I could rest my hand on the throttle housing and just use my fingers to control speed and direction. And I had a nephew sitting across from me, who would have been completely in the way of the trolling motor handle. No problem with the small throttle.
Stability. We could stand up, lean over the sides, cast fishing poles, net fish, and overload one side, without ever worrying about rocking the boat too much. We could get more stability if we lengthened the outriggers and pushed the pontoons out further. But we found that we have all the stability we need, without making the boat footprint wider. Success!
Anchor. There is an anchor compartment in the bow. And we put a flip-up ring on the nose of the bow, to tie the anchor rope to. This worked, but it required threading the rope through the loop and tying a knot. All my grandkids aren't knot experts yet. We decided this loop, although it lays down flat for putting the bow away, wasn't the best design. We are going to replace it with a cleat. It will stick up a little more, but it will be so much easier to wrap the anchor rope in a figure eight and tie it off. No threading of a long rope. Fail. We will make this better on future builds.
Speed of getting the boat assembled and on the water. Even for the first time, this boat is so much faster to assemble than it was to inflate our old rubber boat, and put in the floorboards. But we did learn a few tricks. Using a small power screwdriver on one side was a lot faster than a ratchet on the other side, to attach the outriggers. Didn't think it would have made that much difference. At $9, I think we will have two power screwdrivers. Also, we learned that by leaving the outriggers a bit loose on the pontoons, they would slide into and out of the mounts on the main boat much easier. Then they could be tightened fully after snapping them in place.
Loading the boat into the back of the 4 wheel drive pickup. The boat with all components inside weighs 147 pounds. We targeted 140. Too much glue inside maybe? Hull thickness just a bit more than expected? Anyway, two people could lift the boat in and out of the tall truck bed without straining, using our fingers under the lip on each side. I thought the lip was fine for lifting. But one of my sons thinks we should make something better to grab hold of. We will work on that. Also, when hauling the boat over a very bumpy road, we noticed that the top compartment was slipping off its hinges. (The hinges are lift-off removable on purpose. By allowing the hulls to be separated, a single person could handle this boat, by loading and uploading one piece of the boat at a time.) But we are adding a small clip to hold the compartment hinges together when doing rough transport. Testing does expose some things that need to be improved.
Testing also gave us another new idea. We were catching a lot of fish out in the middle of this high-mounting lake. Those on shore were catching very few; because the lake edge is so shallow I think. But the kids kept wanting to keep all the fish they caught, probably not to eat - all claims to the contrary notwithstanding - but to show them off. So, a son on board suggested that we could create a great live well, just by putting fish netting into the water in the gap between the pontoons and the boat hull. The lake itself would become the live well - no aireation necessary. We wouldn't take up any room in the boat, and we wouldn't kill the fish on a stringer. We think we can come up with a nice "live well" accessory for the boat using netting and some clamps.
All in all, the boat exceeded our expectations.
A Water Pump That Works - and keeps working
27/02/15 09:54
Good hunters know, animals come to water. Water plays a critical role in animals daily behavior, and hunters who take that into consideration usually hunt better.
But hunters need water too. For us, with a large group, that means bringing the water with us. In campers and camp trailers, it is a no-brainer - until the pump fails, or the water tanks spring a leak - or worse - freeze in cold weather.
A solution that has served us well is to bring a couple of 55 gallon drums full of fresh water. That will last a group of 35+ about four days. Unless the pump fails.
We had one of those cheap siphon pumps that they sell everywhere the drums are sold. These must be a high volume item, since 55 gallon drums and those $12 pumps are even sold at Walmart. Maybe the pumps are a high-volume item because they fail so often and must be replaced.
The cheap pumps take a lot of pumping, and then the flow is not that great. We tried to get the kids to pump the water, to use up their excess energy and to “strengthen their arms”. That was ok until a kid came and said “no water is coming out”. After an impressive demonstration of pumping by me - with nothing coming out - I realized that the pump had failed.
Do you know how hard it is to tip a 55 gallon drum to pour water from it, without the whole thing crashing on its side and splashing water everywhere? Try it. It works ok after you have lost most of the water.
After trying to pour water from drums for a couple of days, I committed myself to finding a better water pump. It turns out that there a lot of other kinds of pumps out there. And they might be suited for pumping water for animals. Animals probably don’t mind if there are little rubber bits in the water from the rubber vanes in the rotary-type pumps. They may not mind the “metal taste” in some of those industrial pumps. And they won’t mind the work involved with the old fashioned lever pumps, as long as you are doing the pumping.
Thanks to the internet, I finally found the ideal pump - in New Zealand. They make an all-plastic water pump with no parts that wear - so no wear residue and no metal taste in the water. The pump spews water on both the up and down strokes. And it is so easy to use that it won’t build any muscles on even little kids. The flow is better than my kitchen faucet. (You have to actually try this pump to believe how much water it pumps with so little effort. It is a patented process.)
I imported some of these pumps. But 10 years later, we are still using the very original pump for our camps. It pumps the same today as it did then; there really is no wear. It has never failed. And most important to me, it pumps pure, clean water. Even if the animals don’t care, I do.
You don’t have to import yours by the case. You can get a single pump at www.better-outdoors.com. It will last you for many years of camping. And for us, it is also our emergency preparedness water supply pump, since it requires no electricity and not very much work. We have a stored water supply in our 55 gallon drums when we are not camping that is always there if we need it.
But hunters need water too. For us, with a large group, that means bringing the water with us. In campers and camp trailers, it is a no-brainer - until the pump fails, or the water tanks spring a leak - or worse - freeze in cold weather.
A solution that has served us well is to bring a couple of 55 gallon drums full of fresh water. That will last a group of 35+ about four days. Unless the pump fails.
We had one of those cheap siphon pumps that they sell everywhere the drums are sold. These must be a high volume item, since 55 gallon drums and those $12 pumps are even sold at Walmart. Maybe the pumps are a high-volume item because they fail so often and must be replaced.
The cheap pumps take a lot of pumping, and then the flow is not that great. We tried to get the kids to pump the water, to use up their excess energy and to “strengthen their arms”. That was ok until a kid came and said “no water is coming out”. After an impressive demonstration of pumping by me - with nothing coming out - I realized that the pump had failed.
Do you know how hard it is to tip a 55 gallon drum to pour water from it, without the whole thing crashing on its side and splashing water everywhere? Try it. It works ok after you have lost most of the water.
After trying to pour water from drums for a couple of days, I committed myself to finding a better water pump. It turns out that there a lot of other kinds of pumps out there. And they might be suited for pumping water for animals. Animals probably don’t mind if there are little rubber bits in the water from the rubber vanes in the rotary-type pumps. They may not mind the “metal taste” in some of those industrial pumps. And they won’t mind the work involved with the old fashioned lever pumps, as long as you are doing the pumping.
Thanks to the internet, I finally found the ideal pump - in New Zealand. They make an all-plastic water pump with no parts that wear - so no wear residue and no metal taste in the water. The pump spews water on both the up and down strokes. And it is so easy to use that it won’t build any muscles on even little kids. The flow is better than my kitchen faucet. (You have to actually try this pump to believe how much water it pumps with so little effort. It is a patented process.)
I imported some of these pumps. But 10 years later, we are still using the very original pump for our camps. It pumps the same today as it did then; there really is no wear. It has never failed. And most important to me, it pumps pure, clean water. Even if the animals don’t care, I do.
You don’t have to import yours by the case. You can get a single pump at www.better-outdoors.com. It will last you for many years of camping. And for us, it is also our emergency preparedness water supply pump, since it requires no electricity and not very much work. We have a stored water supply in our 55 gallon drums when we are not camping that is always there if we need it.
Dry-Flush Toilet means no pump-out
25/02/15 10:23
What to you like to do after a hunt or camp out?
I paid my nephew to pump out the camp trailer after my last trip. It’s the last thing I wanted to do after an otherwise great trip.
My brother paid a few thousand dollars to put a new holding tank under his camp trailer. It had cracked and was leaking. It either cracked from getting frozen on a trip. Or it cracked from hitting bottom on a very rough road. Or it just wore out. He is going to spend money to heat his new tank, so it won’t freeze again.
Last summer, we had a pitcher of water in our camp toilet, to flush stuff down the drain. The regular flush was no longer working and we didn’t have the parts to fix the toilet, up in the mountains.
But what can you do? When you gotta go, you gotta go.
Can you believe there actually is a better camp toilet? No pumping out ever. No stink and no flies. No water to freeze. In fact no water to carry for flushing at all. No plumbing to fail. Blessedly, you don’t even have to clean the toilet bowl between uses, or ever. The bowl is perfectly clean every time.
And no, I am not talking about permanent constipation.
It is called a “dry-flush” toilet. You do your thing, push a button and it wraps up everything in an odor-free bag, and presents a whole new, clean bowl. When it finally fills itself up, you lift out a black garbage bag, and throw the thing in the trash. Put a new clean cartridge into the toilet and you are literally ready to go.
The toilet installs anywhere because there is no plumbing. You just sit the bowl where you want, indoors or out, and it is ready to work. It runs on a battery that needs to be recharged occasionally.
One of my brothers removed the perfectly working flush toilet from his travel trailer and put in a dry-flush toilet. He no longer hauls waste water anywhere. He is also putting a dry-flush toilet on his pontoon boat. He got the canvas cover from Cabelas, where they sell them to cover porta-potties. But he will never have to clean and empty a porta-potty. He always was better at taking care of business.
Dry flush means that after a great hunt, you never have to poop-out your camper again. You never have to fix your camper plumbing or holding tanks again. The toilet can’t freeze on a winter hunt. And it is way less stinky. Check out the sanitation tab on www.better-outdoors.com.
Poop-out-free Toilet
I paid my nephew to pump out the camp trailer after my last trip. It’s the last thing I wanted to do after an otherwise great trip.
My brother paid a few thousand dollars to put a new holding tank under his camp trailer. It had cracked and was leaking. It either cracked from getting frozen on a trip. Or it cracked from hitting bottom on a very rough road. Or it just wore out. He is going to spend money to heat his new tank, so it won’t freeze again.
Last summer, we had a pitcher of water in our camp toilet, to flush stuff down the drain. The regular flush was no longer working and we didn’t have the parts to fix the toilet, up in the mountains.
But what can you do? When you gotta go, you gotta go.
Can you believe there actually is a better camp toilet? No pumping out ever. No stink and no flies. No water to freeze. In fact no water to carry for flushing at all. No plumbing to fail. Blessedly, you don’t even have to clean the toilet bowl between uses, or ever. The bowl is perfectly clean every time.
And no, I am not talking about permanent constipation.
It is called a “dry-flush” toilet. You do your thing, push a button and it wraps up everything in an odor-free bag, and presents a whole new, clean bowl. When it finally fills itself up, you lift out a black garbage bag, and throw the thing in the trash. Put a new clean cartridge into the toilet and you are literally ready to go.
The toilet installs anywhere because there is no plumbing. You just sit the bowl where you want, indoors or out, and it is ready to work. It runs on a battery that needs to be recharged occasionally.
One of my brothers removed the perfectly working flush toilet from his travel trailer and put in a dry-flush toilet. He no longer hauls waste water anywhere. He is also putting a dry-flush toilet on his pontoon boat. He got the canvas cover from Cabelas, where they sell them to cover porta-potties. But he will never have to clean and empty a porta-potty. He always was better at taking care of business.
Dry flush means that after a great hunt, you never have to poop-out your camper again. You never have to fix your camper plumbing or holding tanks again. The toilet can’t freeze on a winter hunt. And it is way less stinky. Check out the sanitation tab on www.better-outdoors.com.
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