Exurban Living Notebook | Independence Journal

Exurban Living

The lifestyle companion to www.urbansurvival.com and www.peoplenomics.com

WHAT IF…

The Public Water Well goes ‘Poof’?

Remember the Rule of Threes? Three (3) days without water and you will become deceased. What happens if your local water source stops pumping? What are alternative sources for my drinking water?

Well, here in the Sunbelt, rain is normally not a problem. Just wait a few days, and the Gulf of Mexico will blow some rain your way. But what can you do to save enough of it to make a difference? Again, it’s all in thinking and planning.

Go here and print this page out and keep it handy:

http://www.i4at.org/surv/bleach.htm

This will guarantee you have something to drink. It may not be as clear as you are used to, and it may smell funny, but it will be drinkable.

Look at this link – you may want to invest a small amount of cash for guaranteed good water:

http://www.survivalunlimited.com/waterfilter.htm

For those of you who are barely at the edge of suburbia: if you have your own well, install a backup hand pump in case the power goes out. It will be work, but you will be able to obtain water for your needs.

Got a pool? Hot tub? Then you have half the battle won! You have water! But what about those of us who don’t have either?

You can drink rainwater, especially if it is caught fresh from the sky in a clean container. This is as fresh as it gets, and by simply putting out some clean plastic or glass containers, you will have drinking water. I know – you are already thinking about catching the runoff from your roof. But this water has a ways to go before it is truly clean enough to drink.

What we are talking about here is called “Rain Harvesting” by the water industry. We call it roof runoff, and depending on where you live in the Sunbelt, you may have entirely too much of it available. The problems associated with collecting rain from your roof include solids contamination, disinfection, storage, etc. You can simply go with Clorox and be fine for a week or so. Longer term, you might want to consider a rain gathering system or at least a cistern to store rainwater. Your raised bed gardens will love the rainwater, as it is full of friendly ions and nitrogen that plants love. Installing a cistern simply for your plants to use is a terrific idea, and it allows you to also have spare water handy. This incorporates another sustainable and survival-oriented option into your daily life once again.

A simple cistern (think BIG container) system consists of a really big plastic container (think 500-1000 gallons) which you place 1-4 feet off the ground near some convenient location next to your home, garage, carport or other building. This I hooked into a rain gutter and used to store water. The cistern should have a spigot or a pipe fitting about 6-12 inches from the bottom of the container. This will let solids settle to the bottom of this big tank. By having it above ground, you provide yourself a little water pressure to reach your gardens.

If you intend to use this for drinking, then I would suggest several modifications. Normal gutters have a lot of zinc in them, and can be made from a variety of materials. I would recommend that the gutter you use to collect your rainwater be copper. That way, you are sure not to have issues with metal contamination. Specify that the installers use silver solder when installing this copper run rather than caulk or lead solder. Place some fine screen over the top of this run to keep leaves and other roof crud out of the gutter. I use a layout like the one shown below.

The copper run is actually linked by a “false downspout” to the cistern. This is simply a downspout which runs down and across and back up to the cistern. Both the downspout and the ‘up-spout’ have holes drilled near their blind ends, but below the crossover pipe. This allows the rainwater to go down this “U-tube” arrangement and back up again. By letting some of the water be lost through ½” hole in each leg, solids are trapped and settle out in this section. Be sure and use screen over the entrance to the “false downspout” to help remove what the primary screen misses. You can drill and plug various holes until you have sized it right for the amount of rainfall you get in your area. You may not even need the holes, but we have a lot of rain here in Houston, and it usually comes in great, frog-floating storms. If you don’t want to go to the expense of copper for the “false downspout”, you can adapt PVC to do the same thing. The best way to describe this is that it is similar to a “leaky p-trap” in a sink installation, except the drain is into your cistern. You should also place a very fine mesh screen over the entrance into the cistern to screen out as much debris as is humanly possible.

Here are some very helpful links with respect to water:

http://cru.cahe.wsu.edu/CEPublications/misc0268e/misc0268E-19-24.pdf

http://www.uaf.edu/coop-ext/publications/freepubs/HCM-01557.pdf

http://www.composters.com/docs/rainbarrels.html

http://www.twdb.state.tx.us/publications/reports/RainHarv.pdf

Purifying your water is another issue entirely, but if you can add chlorine to a pool, then you can purify drinking water too. There is a wealth of information on chlorinating water, and lots of other ways to purify it on the internet. If you have electricity, UV radiation is probably the best in concert with rainwater, since rainwater is far and away the purest form of water and the least hardened with minerals.

There are two parts to purifying water – disinfecting it and clearing it. Sand filters can clear it and are environmentally friendly. But they are very bulky, and you will need to locate the correct sands for your filter. The upside is they work well with gravity fed systems. Cartridge filters will also work, but may require more water pressure than you have available. Read carefully before you buy a filter system for your home. Disinfecting can be done with chlorine or iodine or even Clorox. Personally, I prefer chlorine, provided it is mixed at a drinking water rather than a pool water ratio. But pool water drinks too when in a pinch. And you can always boil anything and make it sterile, right? Water is included – boiling kills everything that might harm you.

Here are some filtering links:

http://www.lenntech.com/Water-Purification-FAQ.htm

http://ewateronline.net/uv.htm

http://www.epsea.org/stills.html

http://www.zeotechcorp.com/Index.htm

http://www.trivitro.com/vitroclean/vitroclean.html

Finally, we come to something every one of you with an all-electric home will quickly miss: hot water! Gas-fired water heaters will likely work fine, but electric ones will be useless – gas pressure is built using gas as fuel, but electricity will be out. These links can help you out of your cold-shower mess:

http://www.motherearthnews.com/library/1979_September_October/A_Homemade_Solar_Water_Heater

http://www.greenplumbers.com.au/index.php?pageID=47

http://www.hhs.net/jbrown/solwater.htm

At a minimum, you should have a couple of food-grade plastic barrels for water handy just so you can store some when it rains, and a few gallons of Clorox. If you have to go and get your water from the municipal well, you will also need something to fetch it in. You will quickly find out that gallon buckets do not meet family water needs! Throw in one of those black-rubber shower bags for heating water while camping if you want to – they will work fine in Sunbelt heat.

Since we are already doing our own gardening, why not work a rain cistern into your home? It will lessen your water bill, it’s great for your garden, and then your family will not need to worry about water in ANY event… Throw in a solar water heater, and you will be set except for pumping it to the roof. But then, what are your kids going to do without a few chores every day?

[Oh yeah, don't forget our other article on making due with what's at hand at this link. - Editor]

Writer: oilman2@urbansurvival.com

Publisher: george@ure.net

Editor: elaine@ure.net