Disaster readiness tip

[sudsmaster]

As I live in earthquake country, and I now others here live in flood zones, I thought I'd share something I thought up today.

It may be old news to some, but I haven't heard of anyone else doing this... yet.

I confess to having taken a liking to boxed wine. Specifically Franzia White Zin. This is a sweetish wine in a glass bottle anyway, and it's not much worse out of the box. Anyway, my wine predilictions aside, as I was tossing out an empty box I decided to take it apart and see what it looked like.

As expected, it was a plastic bag with a tap. But when I looked closer at the tap, I figured that it might be possible to remove and replace the tap. A little twist of a screwdriver between the black tap and the white plastic neck took it off.

Then I rinsed out the bag well, and filled it with cold filtered water from the fridge. The tap snapped back in securely. I was able to get it all back into the original box, and a few strips of packing tape made it almost like new.

What I figure is that this is a cheap and convenient way to store water in case of emergency. It can also be used to provide chilled water in fridges that don't have water dispensers. Best of all, the containers are free and depending on your drinking habits, may also be plentiful. I plan of putting some in strategic areas around the property - both for emergencies and also to have relatively fresh drinking water when I'm working far from a potable tap.

The water had a very slight taste of wine, but I felt that was a good thing.

What do you think?

I'm calling my idea, "Water from Wine".

 

[brettsomers]

youd prolly have to figure a way to sanitize the wine bladder before filling with water, and boil the water first. keeping the water from breeding bacteria when stored at room temperature for lengths of time may be a challenge.

 

[launderess]

Oh heck, skip the water and leave the wine! *LOL*

Did you know the tradition in England and many parts of Europe for tea, beer and wine grew out of the fact all were better than the iffy quality of some local water? In the first case boiling water killed the germies, the others it was the booze!

Good idea though, but as another posted stated, you would have to find away to sterlise all components to keep germs/mould from growing in the stored water.

L.

 

[Designgeek]

Your best bet for storing water is to use larger containers with smooth sides that are easily opened up for access. Add a little bit of bleach to stored water.

And for an earthquake, expect to need a month's worth, and don't just calculate based on minimums. Calculate for all normal uses. While you're at it, forget about electricity for a month or two, and buy one of those hand-powered washers that looks like a giant cookie jar with a crank on the side. Instead of a toilet, get used to a plastic bucket lined with a plastic bag, preferably kept somewhere that the smell, or rather the ferocious stench of mixed urine and feces, won't infest the house. If you've still got a house left. Which is doubtful.

Loma Prieta was 60 miles away from us. Don't forget the inverse square law.

 

[jasonl]

Down here in 'cane country

You got barbecue and warm beer. OK, well, bottled water. An all-electric home sucks when the power's out. Make sure you have charcoal or LP gas for your BBQ pit so you can cook.

 

[tomturbomatic]

I usually drink 8th Continent soy milk. It is sold in plastic 1/2 gallon bottles. As I empty each one, I rinse it out, use chlorinated dw detergent and some scalding water to wash it out by shaking, then rinse with more scalding water. I fill it up leaving enough space to allow for the expansion when frozen and add it to my stock in a freezer downstairs.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Yesterday, Maryland announced that if a hurricane or other disaster strikes, don't count on the government to take care of you. They said to be prepared to go 48-72 hours on your emergency preparedness plans and supplies.

DG: If you keep adding a little chlorine bleach in that bucket, you can cut the smell way down.

 

[sudsmaster]

Actually, you only need to boil water if it is contaminated with fecal material or pathogens. Filtered tap water that is safe to drink will last perfectly well at room temperature in a sealed container for a very long time. The biggest problem can be algal growth if there is light; but the wine box does a good job of screening out light.

In clean filtered water, bacteria really don't have any food source to dine on, and therefore they are quite unlikely to multiply and cause a problem. Same for mold. The ability of the wine box bag to exclude air is a big plus in terms of mold control, anyway - mold doesn't like to grow in a 100% water environment, it needs some air.

I do have 3 and 5 gallon water jugs - filled with straight tap water, stored away for bulk use in case of emergency. But the wine boxes provide readily available water for the first few days of a diasaster.

Tap water here contains chloramine, which is very long lasting and should help to prevent any overgrowth. The filter probably removes most of the chloramine, but I haven't had any problem drinking filtered water stored in recycled pint size plastic water bottles for months.

In case all my stored supplies of tap water give out, I also have a 1,000 gallon fish pond (poor fish) as well as an in-ground well. Water from either source would have to be boiled and possibly charcoal filtered to be potable in an emergency. And as many know, the hot water heater and what's left in toilet tanks can be emergency supplies as well.

 

[Cybrvanr]

I'm with Tomturbo...don't expect the government to bail you out! I'm not sure why everyone was pointing at the government to take care of them during katrina anyways.

I learned to be prepared during Hurricane Isabel when she hit here 2 years ago as an F2 hurricane. This year, they are predicting a pretty serious hit on the mid-atlantic coast!

As for my Emergency prepareness, I've got the camper in the yard. I have made sure that it's parked in a location that it won't be hit by any falling trees (that was a big problem during Isabel). It has a fridge that will run for close to 3 weeks on a single bottle of propane. The propane bottle also runs a small gas stove with oven in it too. It also has a shower in it as well, and a 30 gallon fresh water tank with a filtration system. I'm also keeping several old 1-gallon milk containers with water. One of the things I found out I can do with my water heater, which is installed in the attic, is that I can get water out of it at the tap when there's no water pressure. That's 55 gallons of storage. I just open the pressure relief valve so that it will "breathe" and then go downstairs, and open a tap! So, that's a total of over 80 gallons of water on storage for me!

For electricity. I have two 50 watt solar panels that charge a set of golf-car batteries. They will hold 250 amp-hours of electricity. With all the gas appliances in there, that ought to hold out pretty well, especially with the solar panels keeping them topped off by day. I've also got lots of solar lighting around the property to keep the place lit at night, and give security.

If all else fails, I can hitch up the camper to my van, and pull it to an area that is less devastated, and set up residence in an RV park or campground, and connect up to their utilities. Of course, I gotta make sure the van is all gassed up too!

Luckily, flooding should not be too serious of a problem. I am located at least a mile from any body of water (oddly enough, the neighborhood is called "lakeside") I am not forseeing flooding being a problem

 

[Designgeek]

48 to 72 hours sounds like a radical understatement. Depending on the kinds of disasters one has to face, 1 - 6 weeks or longer is more like it. If we get a major quake along the Hayward fault, figure 6 months to a year.

The Katrina zone is still largely wrecked; many lessons to learn from there.

As for counting on the government: there was a time when one could, and they would. One of the core functions of government is to protect the public safety and deal with emergencies.

NO American president has EVER lost an entire metropolitan area on his watch. Until now. Even the SF quake was not that. If the government can't even deal with an event that comes with three to five days' warning, how the hell do we expect it to deal with another major terrorist attack?

Lowering expectations doesn't cut it. There's no such thing as a "gentleman's C" in this course. It's time to get a competent government.

 

[sudsmaster]

I think it is difficult and perhaps misleading to extrapolate from a hurricane/flood type of disaster to an earthquake disaster. Quite different effects from each. What flooding may occur in the SF area is likely to be failure of largely argicultural levees in the Sacramento river delta. This will imperil water supplies for Southern California, but at least they will be out of the quake zone and will have other, albeit lesser, sources.

Electrical outtage is a given, but I don't think it will last weeks - it didn't in Loma Prieta. As with '06, the main peril will likely be from fire. We couldn't stop the Oakland Hills fire of '91 when it got going... and perhaps we'd have an even bigger one if a major quake were to hit... depending on the time of year and the winds.

Anyway, I don't think storing some extra water in used wine boxes is a sign of Armageddon. Do you?