Water

[cozietoesie]

I had to have my mains water switched off for an extended period recently and I was quite staggered by how difficult that was to cope with. (I didn't have any opportunity to fill bath/buckets

I coped with any loss of power to the house much more easily than not having working toilets, for example. (And they soon were because I kept forgetting not to flush them - if this happens again, I'm going to go round, in the short term, and quickly put masking tape on handles.)

How does everyone else prepare for loss of water?

I have a 600 litre water bowser full sat under the car port, and another empty one sat on the carport roof waiting for me to get it down, fit a new tap and fill it

Hopefully won't need them but there is a few weeks worth for the 4 of us in one of those

Also have plenty of 5, 10 and 25 litre camping water carriers I could fill if I had notice to do so, if all else fails then a Berkey water filter for filtering whatever water I can get my hands on to a suitable quality for drinking

So you should be OK for drinking at least.

What shall you be doing about all the other uses of water, toileting being the big one?

We also have 2 sections of guttering leading into what I have discovered to be a large underground soak away tank with a manhole cover over it

It's on the list of jobs to do in that area of the garden to remove the manhole cover and build up around it to look like a well complete with little roof and wind up/down bucket

It doesn't ever seem to soak away other than the top few inches and is more like a storage / overflow tank, I would guess at around 1000 litres from the size of it last time I stuck my head into it with a torch to work out what it actually was

In a prolonged water shortage we would stop using the house toilets and get the camping porta potti toilet out instead as this uses far less water per flush and can have its top flush tank filled with rain water and flush chemical and this would last us between a few days and a week with the 10 litres the top holds

I think in a prolonged shortage we'd use the outside old-fashioned loo. We have a well and have used that and then used buckets to flush the loo and for drinking water (boiled on wood stove) for short term water and power cuts.

What astonished me was just how quickly the loss of water 'bit' - although it was arguably down to forgetfulness. (That hand automatically reaching out.) We only have 3 toilet cisterns in reserve here and for toileting purposes, we were through them long before the water came back on.

Your well sounds a good 'un, though, winchester.

If its likely to happen again a water butt filed by your drains will work fine for toilets, basic washing of clothes etc.
Drinking water is harder but you can buy straw filters or water purification tablets which would be fine for a couple of weeks assuming you don't have very small babies to look after.

I rather suspect that you have some nearby land with fair cover, winchester, so I'd be tempted, if I were you, to tell everyone to go out and pee behind a tree! From the outset.

The men and kids do that anyway in good (+degrees) weather

Good training.

I'm recalling that my great aunt would only make tea with water from the well at the top of her garden. (She didn't like 'that piped stuff'.) On holiday, we youngsters had to go up there of a morning to collect it. You had to stamp on the covering slate slab to drive the frogs away before you lowered the bucket in.

My OH aunt is the same. We have to take her bottled water (from sil well) in the winter but she only really likes water from her own well. They live within a mile of each other but she reckons it tastes different. Now piped water that would just be out of the question.

I suppose that the difference is that you can ensure the safety of your own water table? In a SHTF situation, not being able to do that might make me edgy these days. (Backaways, it wasn't so difficult.)

Yh tbh I'd rather her well water than ours as she is in a much more secluded area and we own a lot of the land around her so know its safe from there at least. In a shtf situation I guess all bets are off as no one would care who owned what anyway.

I guess the bets would be off right enough. The thought of chemicals leaching for decades doesn't thrill me, though. Backaways, you only had to worry (only - Huh!) about dead things. Now it's a bit different.

Still - you have to have water.

That is a bit worrying, waking up one morning and no water in the pipes, and realise you're thirsty. It happened in a neighbouring area due to a severe water loss, so the entire supply was turned off. I read about it in the papers. I have done nothing apart from purchasing an (empty) water carrier tucked away in the bathroom plus an IKEA cart to drag it on, should it be necessary to visit a fire hydrant, I read that's how they solve it, the municipality put up a water hydrant if the shortage drags on.

In my own experience, the water people come round with plastic bottles of water. For drinking that is.

As long as I don't need to leave my house, I would manage as I have a spring! I can remember 1976 we had no water due to the drought and water was brought round in bowsers, but the springs off of the hill were still running and could be used, it was the reservoirs that fed mains water that had run dry.
I live in another village in the same area now and the houses are fed from the main spring ( which also feeds the nearby town), but also have a small spring at the bottom of the garden.

Good for you all. That should help you relax a little.