Fill your tub (seriously)
This is a short one, but I thought it made a lot of sense to point out. If the power goes out, in general, you will still have water for at least a while! One of the very best things you can do in that scenario is to FILL YOUR TUB. Maybe you don’t have a ton of water stored. But it is an easy thing to remember. If the power goes out, fill your tub with water as fast as you can. Even if you don’t wind up drinking it, you can still use it to flush toilets, or clean up, or wash dishes.
In general, houses fall in to one of a few different types:
1.) City Water. This is people who live in a city, or a metro area, and who get water from municipal sources. In this case, your faucet should still work for anywhere from 6 hours to maybe a few days. Eventually it will stop (depends on how your city’s system works… gravity from a water tower? Pumps?) but it should work for a while. So fill up!
2.) Rural Water. If you live in the country, you are probably on a well. Those usually take electricity to work, so if you lose power, you might have no water.
3.) Apartments. This one is also dependent. For a tall building (unless there’s water on the roof, as in some cities) many apartments rely on electric pumps to provide water pressure. In this case, if the power goes out, you might have none. But you should check!
So, remember if the power goes out (or if you think it MIGHT go out), fill the tub!
Now, maybe you use your tub a lot. Maybe you shower in it. Maybe you don’t, and it is a little dusty (or soapy). I don’t blame you for thinking you might not like to drink out of that. And also, it kind of sucks to “scoop” water out of a tub to drink. Enter… the Water BOB.
The WaterBOB is basically a big plastic “bag” that you can fill with water IN your tub, and then use the pump to get water out of it, while keeping it clean, and keeping dirt out of your water.
The WaterBOB sits inside your tub, and allows you to siphon water out as needed.
I keep one of these in the cabinet next to our tub, and the plan is to use that to fill up the tub as a first step after power goes out, so we will have at least a bunch of water to flush toilets and for the dog and cats to drink!
Cheap insurance!
Here are a few pictures of what it looks like as I unbox it (I keep it in the box, usually, so the parts don’t get lost). You get:
The bladder itself (folded plastic bag thing)
Two caps (there is a fill hole and another hole for the pump, and both have caps)
The pump (hand siphon, so no batteries) - Threads on to the bag/bladder through one of the aforementioned holes.
A “filler” tube…. Not sure what to call it, but it is basically a plastic sleeve that threads on to the inlet hole, and you put the sleeve over the faucet and then hold it around the faucet. This is a pretty low tech but ingenious way to make sure it fits ANY sort of faucet. This is the thing with the “read before using” label on it in the pictures below.
