Any suggestions on where to get 40 gallons of water?

Hi C.D.,

We've been storing water for at least a dozen years.  We use food grade barrels that each hold 50 gallons; once a year, we remove the water, sterilize the inside of the barrels with a chlorox solution then thoroughly rinse them out and refill them with tap water.  Fortunately, in our area the tap water is good tasting and not the nasty kind you find in a lot of the big cities.  Since it already has chlorine in it, it keeps well.  Have never had a problem with mold or other growth.  Mormon friends originally suggested this method to us.  

We also keep 6 cases of 6 gal. each of the spring water you buy in the grocery stores; the expiration dates on the bottles tell you how long they will last.  Actually, we refill them once a year too (rotating them as we drink the water and empty out the containers) using tap water.  However, the plastic containers break down after 2 years, occasionally sooner than that; we store them in the garage just in case they leak.  Our area once had a water emergency and those jugs of water came in handy for a few days.

We also consider the water in our hot water tank as stored water good for use in an emergency.  And we have the Katadyn ceramic filters on hand for emergency use, just in case, but have never had to use them.

One last thing, we also keep a few bottles of chlorox on hand for use as a last resort to make water usable in an emergency.  Because I regularly use it anyway for laundry, it's not a problem to keep it rotated.  Now some people have valid objections to using it for making water drinkable; we considered other options and decided that this is what we would do but others may think differently.  Another thing, I've seen it written that you can't store cholox more than a few months.  I've used it after it was a year old and it still bleached the clothes just fine.  I always get the name brand without any added scents; that's an important detail if you think you'd ever add it to water you need for drinking.  Hopefully, no emergency would last so long that you'd have to use this method for more than a short period of time.  

Again, there are good people here who would take exception to our methods.  Gather your information and decide for yourself what will best work for you.

Best wishes, homestead grandma