I need ideas on how to store water for a large family.
I have a family of nine. Our family has had to go without running water for two months after a hurricane/flooding damaged our well. Many in our county needed well work, so most of us had to wait. We now store water treated with bleach in several 55-gallon food-grade barrels on the north side of our house to prevent algae growth. The instructions for treating the water with bleach to kill bacteria and how to evaporate it off before drinking are on the internet. The barrels were "waste" from the food industry, and we got them from a company called Brock Drum for $11 each many years ago. I think they are $15 today.
We also have a 33,000-gallon pool we use for swimming and another we use as a pond which both double as backup water sources. We can get water manually from our well. We are also set up to catch rainwater from one roof.
I did not have a backup water source and was not set up to collect rainwater before the hurricane, but I made do by setting whatever containers I had under our roofline. It was more than adequate for our family and our animals. We bathed and cleaned with it, but it could have been boiled and used for drinking water. You will be amazed at how much water you can collect very quickly off of a roof!
We obtained drinking water from a historic church that still has a well they used to water horses hundreds of years ago.
DIY passive solar distillers are very easy to make out of various common items and will give you clean water to drink with very little effort. I like that option better than boiling because it requires no fuel. My plan is to use barrels for that use. Solar distillation is a good thing to research and have in your knowledge bank just in case. Blessings to you and yours!
