Woke Up to No Water This AM

[Ivan the Butcher]

At the farm house, we had a well and a generator, so I could always bypass any sort of problem and have water an power! At Christmas Eve 2003 we lost power for 11 1/2 days!!

After we moved to the condo, my wife heard a simple way for city dwellers to be a little more prepared. Every time you go to the grocery, buy a Gallon of water! ( 99 cents) At our house the reserve is 16 gallons.

A couple of years after moving in the condo, a 4" water main broke right under the area's electric transformer! We were without power for 10 hours and water for 48, with a couple of 3 hour interruptions of each over the next week and a half.

The condo association dropped off a 24 pack of 12 ounce bottles as soon as they got on the problem. Only 60 units out of 400 were effected, but of those 60 most were not smart enough to take a bucket to the pool to get toilet flushing water! I had a stack of 5 gallon paint buckets with lids I offered to loan the neighbors; but mostly they would rather complain than flush their toilets! I find most people even in such a minor emergency refuse to help themselves. THEY LIKE BEING VICTUMS! So to all of you who fixed it yourself, or even called the repair man yourself, my hat is off to you. YOU ARE AHEAD OF 95% of city dwellers!

Ivan

 

[Mustang93]

We have a deep well, pump at 380 FT. We've lost water over the years a hand full of times, failed pump was the longest at 4 days. I have a Miller Bobcat that will run most of my house including the 220vac well pump. Lat year I installed 4 50gal rain barrels (200gals total) on the gutter downspouts. So except a few months in the winter we have at least 50 gallons I can get easily for flushing and Sawyer filter if we need to purify some for drinking. We use them for watering the garden and plants but always reserve one for emergencies. I normally keep 12 gallons of bottled water in the basement and slowly use/rotate to keep it fresh. Creek Steward's book "disaster ready home" has some simple/economical things you can do to get though utility outages.

 

[Old Arkansawyer]

Two friends and I pulled a 403 foot well by hand and a car wheel rigged
up to bring the plastic pipe over to prevent kinks in the pipe. We got
about 20 feet of the pipe out then hooked the pickup on and pulled
away slowly. An example of Southern Engineering.