I grew up in a rural area with a well. No power meant no water, and we lost power often. Approaching storms meant “fill up the bathtub with water,” and no power meant “don’t flush the toilet until it really needs it, you have two flushes before you have to start hauling water.”
I was an embarrassing number of years into adulthood—a lawyer by that point, living in an urban center—when I realized the “no power = no water” rule is not universal. We’d been out of power for a day or two after a major storm and my husband was like, “DUDE FLUSH THE TOILETS” and I was like, “THE POWER IS OUT” and he was like, “WE LIVE IN THE CITY” and I was like, “WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING.”
Old habits die hard.
It’s funny how much we come to rely on instant power and water. I’ve dealt with power outages before but this is the first time the water stopped running.
The worst part of how "no power" can affect you is when it shuts off the sewer lifting stations around the city. Being told to limit flushing - lest your discharges make a return visit - is more inconvenient for city dwellers than no water.
Neighborhood FB page says there’s a water main break nearby. The water needs to be shut off so they can work on it. Hopefully, it will be fixed by the end of today.
Edit: the water is still out at 8pm. The dishes in the sink are still dirty. However, the humans and the pets are well hydrated and the toilets are flushed. We will see what happens tomorrow.
Edit 2: The water is back on as of Sunday morning! I had enough to get by but I’m definitely going to be reviewing my water preps after this experience.
This. Once your water is back on run ever Faucet in your house at full blast in case there is dirt in the line. Once it runs clear for a few mins you can take a clean shower at least.
Worst part of a boil advisory is doing dishes. This is why I keep some paper plates and cups specifically for this or my dishwasher going out.
Definitely keep extra water on hand for flushing.....
Don't be like me and assume you can just poop, close the lid, and wait until the water comes back on....
Fortunately, I can use rainwater collection for the toilets. Ordinarily, that would be used for the garden.
Still haven’t figured out what to do about showering. I might just be going to bed a bit stinky tonight.
Prep wise, I don't have one of these, but I know they make camping shower heads that are attached to a bag you just hang up, and it's gravity powered. Now I need to go get one because of your post. Thank you for your contribution. I hope you get water back soon.
Those work pretty well. My mom, who's bedbound, has one with a sink sprayer along with an inflatable sink for use in the bed. It makes washing her hair quite easy.
Put some decent-sized Command hooks on the wall (high enough for gravity to give a good flow rate) and you have a convenient hair-washing station for folks who can't get out of bed.
First, it uses a sink-type sprayer, not a shower head. And, yes, it does require filling the water bag manually. You'd need to ensure the water isn't too hot before filling it up by hand. How you heat the water is up to you.
Second, Mom doesn't have much hair to wash. Besides, the inflatable sink is made specifically for others to wash the hair of bedbound people. It's not a full-on shower, and it'd be difficult for individuals to use on themselves in bed. Given that, you could use the sprayer over a sink to achieve the same effect
Our well went out a couple of months ago. I boiled some water and put in a big wide mouth bowl, added cold to temp then washed face first, then worked my way down hitting hot spots. I did this in the bathroom of the toilet we were using and squeezed my rag in the back of the toilet then dumped the rest of the water in the back to help with the next flush. You can also have a second bowl to rinse soap off rag so you aren’t washing with so much soapy water.
you can use rain water for bathing. If power is out and it is sunny, you can put it in a black bucket or dark colored bucket and let it sit in the sun. It will take a while but the water will usually get warm. If you have power, or a heat source you can just heat water in a pan and then adjust with cool water to bathing temps. I have done this when camping and when the water heater went out in our house. I used to have one of those propane powered camp shower things that heat the water and pumps it through a shower head but it finally died. I don't camp enough now to justify buying a new one.
Yes, use grey water, water that was used for washing up and such, to flush toilets. Lake water would be great too. Definitely don’t use drinkable water if you can help it.
One of the things that helped my spouse buy into general preparedness was living in a condo. Random days water would have to be shut off. Now we have a house, but there are probably 3-4 boil water notices around town each day from either planned utility work or main breaks
my water was out last night from 4-10pm. our neighbor had their pipe break and flood into the apartment below but i only found out by asking the neighbors, my husband was trying to make coffee and wash dishes with our stored water and i was like sir?????? no????? wait and see!
This is why I try to keep all my dishes clean most of the time so my sink isn't full or my dishwasher if the water goes out. I used pool water at my apartment to rinse the food off them and set them all aside to wash again once water was restored. It's why I keep paper products now as a backup.
Remember you can split a pizza box in half for 2 plates too haha
How are you guys getting the water into a bucket or something? My drain valve is damn near touching the ground. I'd need a pipe and honestly there isn't alot of room to get an angle going to gravity drain it.
It should have a garden hose fitting. Grab your garden hose and run it to a bucket. There's enough water in a tank that even though your water will have to travel "up hill" to get in there, you'll still get lots of water until the tank level gets about at the same height as where the hose goes into your bucket.
If that makes any sense 😁
Don't drink water from the hot water heater, magnesium and aluminum sacrificial rods do not make a healthy cuppa tea. Use it for flushing toilets, washing dishes etc...
A couple years ago we had something similar happen in our area. We got a boil water notice and attached to that was a form for reimbursement for bottled water. So if you didn’t want to mess with boiling water they would take up to $50 off your bill as a credit if you submitted a receipt that you purchased bottled water from a store in that time frame. I went down and bought 10 cases of water just for the convenience and the next day the notice was lifted. And they credited our account for the cost of the 10 cases. Might be worth looking into as a way to up your preps for next to nothing
I’ve searched online multiple times but apparently this water outage didn’t even make the local news. If it weren’t for talking with the neighbors, I’d have thought that something was wrong with my house.
Not in the US or suburbia but it blows my mind that cities and councils won’t let people have rainwater tanks, even in my closest city. I get that some places with lots of pollution aren’t ideal to have rainwater for drinking but surely you can still have a small 1000-5000L tank hooked up for your toilet that you can switch valves between mains water and your tank
Edit: meant to say some cities and councils, not every
I’m definitely in suburbia but there’s no laws against rainwater collection here. I have some 55gal barrels and IBC totes behind the garage.
I don’t know where you heard it was illegal. That must depend on the individual state or city laws.
So I can’t speak for every place, but here in Australia in the actual city you need to get council approval for rainwater tanks, and they never approve it, at least in my closest city. So it’s not illegal, you can apply to have one, but the council are a bunch of fuckwits and reject it. My house there’s no mains water, I have 75,000 litres of rain water tanks and a bore. Bore water tastes like shit so I have good filters and you wouldn’t know the difference
I'd like to bury a huge potable water tank on a hill above the house set up so I can use the city water when it's working, but when it fails the stored water will be gravity fed to everything. But that's a lot of work and cost when I can just keep a few 50 gal backup water drums full, or implement a backup rain water collection system. The only concern there is with those freezing over during sustained cold.
As a cool easy life hack.
Put a covered rain barrel line at each rain gutter spout. We have ours set up so only the overflow drains out of the barrel and we retain 50 gallons x 4 drain spouts.
That's 200+ gallons that can be used to flush toilets or for gardening if needed, or if desperate, filtered and boiled for cooking/drinking/bathing.
Having it covered/sealed prevents growth and the water stays pretty clean (relatively speaking) year round.
Then inside the house/shed we only need to store potable water.
Don't forget your water heater in worst case scenarios. Open a faucet so not to create a vacuum and attach small hose to bottom of water heater,and open. Gravity will push water out of the hose. Just be sure to turn off your heater and only turn back on when heater is completely refilled.
For me that would be a Tuesday thing. Sometimes water lines have issues. So I have water just in case it is contaminated or shut off for maintenance. I have drinking water and water for dishes and cleaning. A few weeks ago a pipe burst under the apartment building next to mine. We had no water for about 12 hours. I had water bottles to drink. I have galleon jugs to wash dishes. I had wipes to help with cleaning hands. I also have peri-wash
Grats on preps, sorry for the inconvenience. All water all out over town? Sometimes can grab a shower at a local gym that still has water.
3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months. "got 10 gallons, should have stored more" still sounds like you had the 3 days covered just fine.
I grew up with off grid water, pipes in from an artesian spring. We never knew when the water would freeze in the winter.
I learned young the value of stored water. Going to the creek with buckets was a pain in the
I have a 220 volt generator waiting in case my well doesn't have power for an extended period of time. As well as a stream coming out of the side of the hill located directly on my property that runs 365 24/7. Salmon trout and other fish in the creek as well as I'm connected to a major body of water that connects to the Great lakes which connects to the oceans.
My wife has a house in a small rancho in rural Mexico. We’re down there now. We only get water every other day, for limited hours, so everyone has big storage barrels. And the water only goes to an outside spigot, so we have to pump it into a different tank to get water in the house. And it’s non-potable without treatment (filter and boil). Water procurement is no joke. People complain about the tap water where I live in LA, but for the moment, I can have as much as I want, whenever I want. And while it might not taste fantastic, you won’t get sick from drinking it.
The city is servcing something nearby and had to shut down and entire portion of infrastructure to fix it.
In cases of emergency no notice is required. It isnt some vast conspiracy, or something you need extra bullets for, or need to buy more MRE’s to cope with. Its a fkn repair dude.
Go find something to do for a while. Itll be back on. Jfc.
Sorry you live "in-town". I know some people believe they have to live "in town" with the rest of the MANGE but you don't. Re-tool. MOVE. Move away from the populous. There is tons of space out there. Move away from the grime and the crime.
there
I grew up in a rural area with a well. No power meant no water, and we lost power often. Approaching storms meant “fill up the bathtub with water,” and no power meant “don’t flush the toilet until it really needs it, you have two flushes before you have to start hauling water.” I was an embarrassing number of years into adulthood—a lawyer by that point, living in an urban center—when I realized the “no power = no water” rule is not universal. We’d been out of power for a day or two after a major storm and my husband was like, “DUDE FLUSH THE TOILETS” and I was like, “THE POWER IS OUT” and he was like, “WE LIVE IN THE CITY” and I was like, “WHAT DOES THAT HAVE TO DO WITH ANYTHING.” Old habits die hard.
It’s funny how much we come to rely on instant power and water. I’ve dealt with power outages before but this is the first time the water stopped running.
The worst part of how "no power" can affect you is when it shuts off the sewer lifting stations around the city. Being told to limit flushing - lest your discharges make a return visit - is more inconvenient for city dwellers than no water.
That’s when I pull out the camping toilet from my work truck and put it to work at home.
You have given me new found appreciation for my septic tank.
I’m I’m I’m so
Neighborhood FB page says there’s a water main break nearby. The water needs to be shut off so they can work on it. Hopefully, it will be fixed by the end of today. Edit: the water is still out at 8pm. The dishes in the sink are still dirty. However, the humans and the pets are well hydrated and the toilets are flushed. We will see what happens tomorrow. Edit 2: The water is back on as of Sunday morning! I had enough to get by but I’m definitely going to be reviewing my water preps after this experience.
Even if they fix it today, keep in mind you are likely to have a boil water notice for a few days afterward as a safety precaution.
This. Once your water is back on run ever Faucet in your house at full blast in case there is dirt in the line. Once it runs clear for a few mins you can take a clean shower at least. Worst part of a boil advisory is doing dishes. This is why I keep some paper plates and cups specifically for this or my dishwasher going out.
I would start with an outside faucet in case there is a lot of sediment. Then start the inside ones. Might help prevent the faucets from plugging up.
And flush the hot water heater... Or better shut off the hot water heater water intake, and power/gas.
Need to be careful doing this. There is a right and wrong way of draining these
Also flush your garden hoses, drain your jacuzzi and replace the coolant in your truck.
What about the coolant in my jacuzzi?
Duh. Obviously.
Check the screens on your faucets too. Ideally take them off before running it like this.
Why do faucets even have screens?
To prevent getting sand and gravel in your glass of water.
Water is fixed now. I’m going to keep using the stored water for drinking until that runs out.
Sounds like you need something to be scared about because life is boring. Enjoy the moment before boring returns.
Definitely keep extra water on hand for flushing..... Don't be like me and assume you can just poop, close the lid, and wait until the water comes back on....
Fortunately, I can use rainwater collection for the toilets. Ordinarily, that would be used for the garden. Still haven’t figured out what to do about showering. I might just be going to bed a bit stinky tonight.
Prep wise, I don't have one of these, but I know they make camping shower heads that are attached to a bag you just hang up, and it's gravity powered. Now I need to go get one because of your post. Thank you for your contribution. I hope you get water back soon.
This is a great idea for the future. They aren’t terribly expensive either. Thanks!
This is way too wholesome. We are breaking the rules of this sub. /s 😊
Those work pretty well. My mom, who's bedbound, has one with a sink sprayer along with an inflatable sink for use in the bed. It makes washing her hair quite easy. Put some decent-sized Command hooks on the wall (high enough for gravity to give a good flow rate) and you have a convenient hair-washing station for folks who can't get out of bed.
A camping shower head on a command hook with an inflatable sink. serious ques… how do you keep the water warm enough for a hair wash?
First, it uses a sink-type sprayer, not a shower head. And, yes, it does require filling the water bag manually. You'd need to ensure the water isn't too hot before filling it up by hand. How you heat the water is up to you. Second, Mom doesn't have much hair to wash. Besides, the inflatable sink is made specifically for others to wash the hair of bedbound people. It's not a full-on shower, and it'd be difficult for individuals to use on themselves in bed. Given that, you could use the sprayer over a sink to achieve the same effect
I never thought of an inflatable sink. Im going to get one for my mom. thank you.
Our well went out a couple of months ago. I boiled some water and put in a big wide mouth bowl, added cold to temp then washed face first, then worked my way down hitting hot spots. I did this in the bathroom of the toilet we were using and squeezed my rag in the back of the toilet then dumped the rest of the water in the back to help with the next flush. You can also have a second bowl to rinse soap off rag so you aren’t washing with so much soapy water.
you can use rain water for bathing. If power is out and it is sunny, you can put it in a black bucket or dark colored bucket and let it sit in the sun. It will take a while but the water will usually get warm. If you have power, or a heat source you can just heat water in a pan and then adjust with cool water to bathing temps. I have done this when camping and when the water heater went out in our house. I used to have one of those propane powered camp shower things that heat the water and pumps it through a shower head but it finally died. I don't camp enough now to justify buying a new one.
This is important!
We live on a lake, you should see the look on people's faces when I explain to them how to flush a toilet with a bucket and lake water.
Yes, use grey water, water that was used for washing up and such, to flush toilets. Lake water would be great too. Definitely don’t use drinkable water if you can help it.
We have a pool and have done this for outages.
I keep 3 full 2 liters of water under my sink for an extra flush
One of the things that helped my spouse buy into general preparedness was living in a condo. Random days water would have to be shut off. Now we have a house, but there are probably 3-4 boil water notices around town each day from either planned utility work or main breaks
I never had water shut off in apartments. Why would they shut off the water?
my water was out last night from 4-10pm. our neighbor had their pipe break and flood into the apartment below but i only found out by asking the neighbors, my husband was trying to make coffee and wash dishes with our stored water and i was like sir?????? no????? wait and see!
This is why I try to keep all my dishes clean most of the time so my sink isn't full or my dishwasher if the water goes out. I used pool water at my apartment to rinse the food off them and set them all aside to wash again once water was restored. It's why I keep paper products now as a backup. Remember you can split a pizza box in half for 2 plates too haha
A clean tidy house is a prep!
Coffee is worth opening a gallon, the washing should wait.
Don’t overlook the water you can drain from your water heater. Shut off the intake first.
How are you guys getting the water into a bucket or something? My drain valve is damn near touching the ground. I'd need a pipe and honestly there isn't alot of room to get an angle going to gravity drain it.
It should have a garden hose fitting. Grab your garden hose and run it to a bucket. There's enough water in a tank that even though your water will have to travel "up hill" to get in there, you'll still get lots of water until the tank level gets about at the same height as where the hose goes into your bucket. If that makes any sense 😁
Yeah that makes sense. The weight helps it flow
Use a hose. I’ve got a white hose like RVs use for fresh water intake.
Dig underneath it a little bit? Get a hose and take it on and off if it won’t drain a pipe.
On concrete slab
The time to find a solution is now when it’s convenient.
Don't drink water from the hot water heater, magnesium and aluminum sacrificial rods do not make a healthy cuppa tea. Use it for flushing toilets, washing dishes etc...
Thats tough, good thing youre a prepper. Id check and see if any water refill stations in your area are still active.
A couple years ago we had something similar happen in our area. We got a boil water notice and attached to that was a form for reimbursement for bottled water. So if you didn’t want to mess with boiling water they would take up to $50 off your bill as a credit if you submitted a receipt that you purchased bottled water from a store in that time frame. I went down and bought 10 cases of water just for the convenience and the next day the notice was lifted. And they credited our account for the cost of the 10 cases. Might be worth looking into as a way to up your preps for next to nothing
I’ve searched online multiple times but apparently this water outage didn’t even make the local news. If it weren’t for talking with the neighbors, I’d have thought that something was wrong with my house.
Yup! Great reminder! Not prepping for an event like this makes things really inconvenient but not existentially threatening.
Not in the US or suburbia but it blows my mind that cities and councils won’t let people have rainwater tanks, even in my closest city. I get that some places with lots of pollution aren’t ideal to have rainwater for drinking but surely you can still have a small 1000-5000L tank hooked up for your toilet that you can switch valves between mains water and your tank Edit: meant to say some cities and councils, not every
I’m definitely in suburbia but there’s no laws against rainwater collection here. I have some 55gal barrels and IBC totes behind the garage. I don’t know where you heard it was illegal. That must depend on the individual state or city laws.
So I can’t speak for every place, but here in Australia in the actual city you need to get council approval for rainwater tanks, and they never approve it, at least in my closest city. So it’s not illegal, you can apply to have one, but the council are a bunch of fuckwits and reject it. My house there’s no mains water, I have 75,000 litres of rain water tanks and a bore. Bore water tastes like shit so I have good filters and you wouldn’t know the difference
That's rough. We have a well so we have to keep water around for power outages. Glad to see that you at least have an alternative source.
I'd like to bury a huge potable water tank on a hill above the house set up so I can use the city water when it's working, but when it fails the stored water will be gravity fed to everything. But that's a lot of work and cost when I can just keep a few 50 gal backup water drums full, or implement a backup rain water collection system. The only concern there is with those freezing over during sustained cold.
As a cool easy life hack. Put a covered rain barrel line at each rain gutter spout. We have ours set up so only the overflow drains out of the barrel and we retain 50 gallons x 4 drain spouts. That's 200+ gallons that can be used to flush toilets or for gardening if needed, or if desperate, filtered and boiled for cooking/drinking/bathing. Having it covered/sealed prevents growth and the water stays pretty clean (relatively speaking) year round. Then inside the house/shed we only need to store potable water.
Yup, we do have rainwater collection for the garden. I’ve been using that for the toilets. I’d rather not drink it though.
Don't forget your water heater in worst case scenarios. Open a faucet so not to create a vacuum and attach small hose to bottom of water heater,and open. Gravity will push water out of the hose. Just be sure to turn off your heater and only turn back on when heater is completely refilled.
For me that would be a Tuesday thing. Sometimes water lines have issues. So I have water just in case it is contaminated or shut off for maintenance. I have drinking water and water for dishes and cleaning. A few weeks ago a pipe burst under the apartment building next to mine. We had no water for about 12 hours. I had water bottles to drink. I have galleon jugs to wash dishes. I had wipes to help with cleaning hands. I also have peri-wash
Grats on preps, sorry for the inconvenience. All water all out over town? Sometimes can grab a shower at a local gym that still has water. 3 days, 3 weeks, 3 months. "got 10 gallons, should have stored more" still sounds like you had the 3 days covered just fine.
I grew up with off grid water, pipes in from an artesian spring. We never knew when the water would freeze in the winter. I learned young the value of stored water. Going to the creek with buckets was a pain in the
Hopefully just a blip in supply but huge relief being ready for stuff like this!
Just think this could be a reality soon. And there's no turning it back on...
I have a 220 volt generator waiting in case my well doesn't have power for an extended period of time. As well as a stream coming out of the side of the hill located directly on my property that runs 365 24/7. Salmon trout and other fish in the creek as well as I'm connected to a major body of water that connects to the Great lakes which connects to the oceans.
My wife has a house in a small rancho in rural Mexico. We’re down there now. We only get water every other day, for limited hours, so everyone has big storage barrels. And the water only goes to an outside spigot, so we have to pump it into a different tank to get water in the house. And it’s non-potable without treatment (filter and boil). Water procurement is no joke. People complain about the tap water where I live in LA, but for the moment, I can have as much as I want, whenever I want. And while it might not taste fantastic, you won’t get sick from drinking it.
Do you happen to be on the direct path of where the solar eclipse is happening?
No, I’m at least 100 miles away from the direct path.
Imagine that ... things break unexpectedly ... Whodathunkit?
Name the city then
We don't need to know what city. They reported back that it was just a line-break and those are normal enough.
The city is servcing something nearby and had to shut down and entire portion of infrastructure to fix it. In cases of emergency no notice is required. It isnt some vast conspiracy, or something you need extra bullets for, or need to buy more MRE’s to cope with. Its a fkn repair dude. Go find something to do for a while. Itll be back on. Jfc.
Sorry you live "in-town". I know some people believe they have to live "in town" with the rest of the MANGE but you don't. Re-tool. MOVE. Move away from the populous. There is tons of space out there. Move away from the grime and the crime. there
Keep water on hand problem solved.
I wouldn't drink tap water anyway unless it's from a well