I would define water that tastes of plastic as “bad”. It might not be harmful, but it is certainly outside of it’s best use-by-date and by that definition would be expired. For something that’s as simple to rotate as water, it’s splitting hairs. Another thing to consider is that bottled water containers are getting thinner and less resilient in an attempt to reduce waste. The longer you keep them, the more likely they are to break down. Particularly if they are exposed to any UV from windows or other sources.
Yes, They’re probably OK, but would you really want to keep bottled water for 5 years when you can just rotate your stock?
I think of it the other way around: if you are not into prepping, it is very convenient if you don’t have to refresh your supply frequently. You might forget about it, or not get around to do it, and when you actually need the stuff it has expired. I wouldn’t buy special, expensive survival stuff, but if you’re at the supermarket, picking your stash by expiry date seems like a good idea.
It’s also very convenient to label everything with its expiry date, using a permanent marker to draw it on the top, so you can check everything without taking it out of storage.
As I see it, water is the single most important item, and the rest is kind of optional? At least if you do not have kids? Three days without food may be a major inconvenience, but it won’t kill you. Sadly, storing food does not even work for me. I was seriously obese and lost more than 30 kg over the last few years, mainly by restricting myself on the side of grocery shopping. So when I start hoarding canned goods, they simply do not last.
What I strongly disagree with is the endorsement of the online password storage service. Online in somebody’s cloud is the exact place where you do NOT want your passwords to be stored. I think by now we can tell that everybody gets hacked at some point.
Not sure, but if you are freezing, you can make them into a bible-lit version.
If there’s a choice between a 5 year old bottle of water with a plasticy taste and the water that has accumulated in a ditch, I know which one I’ll be drinking.
Man, I miss Bleach Eating Freaks and their Office Bricolage section.
I have some thoughts on water. Our solution is to have a big, clean river running through the property. But the backup plan is that we have rain collection barrels, and the water from the well pump goes through a storage container before it goes to the house system, so that is another 250 gallons that stays in the system if the power fails.
But one thing we did when we lived on the sailboat is that after we filled the fresh water tanks, we would pour a bottle of vodka in for preservation. We used 1 bottle per 400 gallons, and that worked for us, but I don’t know the optimal proportions.
My son has told me that we should have on hand the components to replace the electric well pump with a hand pump or windmill if needed. Probably a good idea.
As far as food goes, it is not hard to just keep some of what you already buy, and rotate it. One of our big things is rice. We eat it with every meal, so we keep a 100 pound bag in the pantry, and a couple more in the vault. When we empty the one in the kitchen, we pull one from the vault, and next time we get to town, buy another one for the vault. Most of our canned and dried stuff rotates through the vault. Every time we run out of something from the pantry, we replenish from the vault, and write the items on our shopping list. It just becomes part of the routine.
In the military, instead of bleach, we kept calcium hypochlorite powder. It was much easier to store long term and handle.
If you have some drop on the river through the property, you could rig up a hydraulic ram pump with a few cheap parts from Home Depot and plastic pipe. They use 90% of the flow to pump the rest up to 10x the head drop height. However, they won’t work in a well.
The river drop from the highest part of the property to the house is about 200 feet. But the horizontal distance is almost three miles.
You certainly wouldn’t need the full 200’. Just a section with 10-20’ drop would probably be fine.
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