“Experts” (what would we do without them) in Australia are calling for an end to the flushing toilet. Al Gore (remember him?) is saying this might be it for civilization. Fact is, with few exceptions, if it sounds too crazy to be true, it probably is. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t things to be learned when the crazy starts a-flowing’.

For example, have you ever thought about how much water you use every day, and what life would be like if you couldn’t just turn on the tap and have and endless supply of potable water flowing into your sink?

Let me be clear about something right away: I’m not an enviro-nut. If I could wave a magic wand and do away with any organizations I wanted, Greenpeace and EarthFirst! and ELF and PETA would be among the first to go. What I’m talking about here is how much water the typical suburbanite uses, and how much he takes it for granted.

Ever wonder why water tanks are built so high in the air? It’s because water pressure - that force that causes water to stream into your home through faucets - is produced by gravity, as water descends from the nearest tank, gains momentum, and comes crashing through your plumbing and into your sinks and lavatories.

Why the tank? Because it’s easier and cheaper to pump water up into a tank, and let gravity do the job of bringing it into your home, than it is to rely exclusively on pumps to create the pressure needed to force it through your pipes and into your home.

The EPA says the typical American family can use about 400 gallons of water every day. Let’s say your family is not one of more profligate water-user, and uses only 300 gallons a day. Can you picture 300 gallons? If not, go look at your water heater. If you have a heated tank (as opposed to a tankless heater), it’s probably 30, 40 or 50 gallons. Now imagine somewhere between six and ten of those things. That’s how much water your family goes through in a day.

Have a tankless heater? Then take a look at your toilet tank. It holds about 5 gallons. Now visualize 60 of those.

How does that happen? how does your family use 300 gallons of water a day?

If you have 4 people in your family, and they each take one shower or bath a day, they can use about 40 gallons each. That’s 160 gallons right there. Two loads of laundry uses about 60 gallons. You’re now up to 230 gallons before you’ve flushed the first toilet, brushed your teeth, washed your hands, watered the yard, hosed off the patio, or any of the things you do every day without thinking about it.

Where does the other 70 or so gallons come from?

If each member of your family uses the bathroom four times a day, that’s at least 16 flushes. At 3 or 4 gallons per flush, that’s 50 or 60 gallons. Does anyone (or everyone) in your family run the water while they brush their teeth? If you do, and if you brush your teeth for even one minute, that’s probably a gallon per person per brushing, and obviously if you brush your teeth 3 times a day, that’s 12 gallons of water per day.

I’ll stop with the numbers now, and again point out that I’m anything but “green”-obsessed. Neither am I saying that you should get obsessive about your water use. If you live in a place where water is scarce, then sure - you need to stop running the water while you brush your teeth, and you might think about installing low-flow showers and toilets. You can make that call yourself by doing a simple cost-benefit analysis (how long will it take you to start realizing a benefit from reduced water use, given the cost of purchasing and installing the new fixtures?).

The one reason I bring all this up is to point out how much water we use every day without thinking about it, and to get you to thinking about what life will be like if you can no longer count on water by simply turning a handle on a faucet.

We’ve all seen what happens when the water is all of a sudden cut off. In my neighborhood, which is about 100 years old, the underground pipes are aging, decaying, busting, and being replaced as they do. The streets are a patchwork of asphalt where the water company has swooped in, dug up the street, repaired the pipes, and paved the street back over. What happens is that for anywhere from an hour or two, to half a day or more, there simply won’t be any water coming into the house. We’ll go to wash our hands - nothing. We’ll chuckle, go about our business, then half an hour later forget about it. We’ll go to the bathroom, take care of business, and flush. The toilet will flush, but won’t refill. No chuckle this time, but a frown, or maybe a curse word or two. This isn’t funny any more.

Now, in a crisis situation, the water won’t necessarily just suddenly go off. Back to the fact that water tanks are perched high atop towers: Guess what happens when the power is off for an extended period of time, and water can’t be pumped up into the tanks. What happens is that water pressure gradually starts to drop, until finally it just disappears altogether. The amount of time it will take to do that will vary from place to place given differences in population and the size of the tanks, but how long do you think it takes after the power goes out, for there to be a noticeable drop in pressure in your home? Three months? Three weeks?

Try three days.

That’s how long it takes for water pressure to drop by thirty, forty percent or even more.

Add to that the probability that whatever water is coming out of the tap after a few days, will be undrinkable as is. You may be fortunate enough only to have to boil it to make it safe, but that requires a way to boil it. Is your kitchen all-electric? Then you’re going to have to find another way to boil water. Do you have a gas grill? If it’s hooked into the natural gas lines, then you’re fortunate. In all likelihood you’ll be able to cook on your grill for at least a few weeks. If you have a propane grill, then you probably have a 5-gallon tank attached to it. How long will it last, if it’s completely full? Do you have a full spare?

Let’s go one step further:

Let’s imagine you’re caught in a power-down situation that lasts a week, with a boil-water notice on tap water, and no way to boil water. How much water do you have stored in your home, and how long will it last?

The experts say you’re going to need 1 gallon of water, per person, per day. That will allow for some drinking and cooking, and some minimal amount of hygiene - brushing your teeth, sponge-bath, whatever. There will be no baths or showers.

So you’re talking about needing - for a family of four - a minimum of 28 gallons of water. At Sam’s and Costco you can by boxes of water containing 6 one-gallon jugs. So you’re going to need 5 of these cases to last your family a week, and that’s just for the bare minimum. Five of these cases of water requires a pretty substantial amount of space - it will dominate the average closet.

Personally, my belief is that in a true crisis situation you can get by with less than a gallon per person per day, but it assumes you’re not in a hot climate, and that you’re not exerting a lot of effort and having to rehydrate yourself; but the rule of thumb of one gallon per person per day is one you should keep in mind for your preparations.

If you’re just now starting to think about preparedness, storing water is probably going to be one of those “gut-check” moments for you and your spouse. It’s different from buying a shotgun or a tent. You can always rationalize those purchases by saying you can use them for hunting or camping. Buying 30 gallons of water and finding a place to store it can’t be rationalized away. The only conclusion you’re going to be able to come to, as you’re hauling those boxes in from the store and finding a place to store them, is that you’re doing this in preparation for a crisis that will last a week and deprive you and your family of the single most critical consumable there is.

Obviously this assumes that you won’t be able to get to a store and replenish your water supplies, which admittedly is unlikely, at least in the first few days of a crisis that isn’t nationwide in scope. But, it’s well within the realm of possibility that you won’t be able to leave your house in the first few days, and that the influx of water into stores that’s often seen immediately after a crisis erupts will stop, and water will be hard to purchase. This is the situation you need to prepare for. Obviously, it’s unlikely that you’ll ever have to keep your family alive for an entire week solely on water you’ve stored in your house, but if you had to, could you? Think about it, then decide whether a trip to the store and $30 or $40 is worth it.

There are simple ways you can extend your bottle/jug supply, and keep from having to use your drinking supply for non-drinking purposes. For example, whenever we know there’s a hurricane or an ice storm on the way, we

  • Fill up our bathtub as high as we can. This gives us about 30 gallons for flushing toilets.
  • Fill up 2 or 3 one-gallon milk jugs (thoroughly washed) and put them in the freezer. This will keep freezer items frozen longer (they can extend safe temps in the freezer by as much as a day), and when they melt, they add that much to our safe drinking water supply. (If you have a deep-freeze, spend a few minutes throwing away any food that’s past its prime, and filling up the empty space with water frozen in jugs).
  • Fill up 4 or 5 of our largest cooking pots and cover them tightly with plastic wrap. This easily adds about another 15 gallons to our drinking water supply.

Using these simple last-minute additions, you can reserve enough water for 15-20 toilet flushes, and, if you keep 30 gallons of drinking water stored, increase this supply by well over 50%. The goal in a short-term crisis situation - meaning one that lasts 3 or 4 days - is not to have to touch your stored bottled water at all, or, if you have to, to use only a few gallons, which is replaced at only a few dollars’ expense.

There is plenty more to talk about in the way of short-term water storage, and sterilization/filtration for long-term use, and we’ll deal with those in later posts, but it’s fair to say that storing a week’s worth of water for your family (using the formula of one gallon per person per day) along with the last-minute storage techniques described above, is the absolute minimum you need to do in order to consider yourself prepared