Being Prepared

Being Prepared

Many people like to be prepared and preparing for any emergency can be much easier than many people think, in reality it takes a little thought to prepare and much more time to do the necessary things which need doing so firstly we need to prioritise and consider what we may need and cover. In any emergency situation you can guarantee that one thing will happen and this is that all the local shops will be ravaged of almost everything that they have as people panic buy, the food will be sold out within hours, you may lose services such as gas, electricity and water and other services such as sewage systems which are systems people rely upon.

This is not a definitive, in depth guide as people have different preferences and lifestyles, think of it more as a general overview which can be tailored to your skills and requirements and something to make you think what you need and the measures you can take over time to prepare for any major incident and how you can implement them over time to better cope with any arising situation. You will need to learn new skills and do some research to learn many of these skills and many of the things you may like to learn are available online so you need to do some research into specific areas to increase your knowledge levels to prepare you for something which is akin to living off grid, in many areas. Many of the things suggested can be done and you may do them as a couple or a simple project with children or other family members, you may pool resources in many areas such as finding and cutting wood, or even installing a log burner for heat and making a water turbine with enough power to provide LED lighting for your home powered solely by water.

Water is our first priority and any gardeners will probably have some form of water storage such as water butts connected to a greenhouse or shed roof and this can be a source of water, similarly, a stream or river is another source of water and always collect water from faster flowing parts of such sources, but! Its dirty water; fine but remember water can be cleaned and sterilised for nothing if you have the know how to build a water filter from waste and a source of heat to boil it. Water capacity is a major issue and you need as much of it as possible and the first job would be to increase your storage capacity to a reasonable level as an adult needs a minimum of 2 litres per day as a minimum and a family with 2 teenage children would need a minimum of 8 litres per day, if strenuous exercise or work are undertaken then this increases to 3-4 litres per person per day.
Storing water isn’t easy as it takes up space and cleaned water needs storing inside as some thief will always want your water if they know you have some and in such situations you cannot underestimate desperation as you can live without food for up to 3 weeks but you cannot live without water for much more than 3 days and if the mains water is off then a lot of people will not have the necessary skills or capabilities to make a water filter.
Water needs storing and as a minimum you need 2 X 25 litre (5 gallon) and more is better, food grade plastic drums, these need to be coloured if possible as the semi-transparent types often found for very little mean light penetrates them and the water can go off much quicker, alternatively you can keep them in a darkened room or cover them with something to block out the light from getting to them. Preparing two drums is cheap and easy as the caravan/motorhome/boating community have various sterilising solutions for their tanks and another alternative is baby sterilising fluid for bottles, mix this and place inside your drums with the lids on and sterilise. What about the plastic taste? Simple, get a bottle of the cheapest dilute orange squash you can find and put half into one drum and half into the other and dilute, stand upright for about 1 hour so the bottom is covered and then turn onto its sides so each side is covered and rotate after 1 hour to cover the next side, and finally turn the drum upside down so the top is covered, never tip it away as you put some into a container and take the lids off and stand them in it and use the remaining liquid to coat the outside of the container.

Make A Simple Water Filter    

You need some basic ingredients:

Powdered charcoal, the finer the better.
Sand, any type will suffice.
Fine gravel, around 2-5mm diameter.
Plastic bottle, size is irrelevant as you can scale them up or down.
Cloth, cotton is fine but a manmade polyester works fine and is often better for a water filter.

Cut the bottom off your bottle, insert your cloth inside it so it covers the neck inside your bottle and will hold all your filtering ingredients, add your powdered charcoal so it fully covers your cloth and level it out; add some sand and level this off, and finally add your fine gravel: aim to have about half to two thirds of your bottle filled. Place your filter bottle neck into a container or suspend it above another container so your water will pass through your filter and be collected, a winemaking demijohn is ideal for this.
Place your filter into the top of a container after removing the lid, preferably glass and not plastic, and run a pint of water through it, this washes the stones, sand, and charcoal, throw away this water and run another pint of water through it to finally clean the filtering medium and throw this away, repeat until the water runs clear.

You now have a water filter capable of cleaning and filtering the dirtiest of water and even your muddy water will be filtered and cleaned and you have replicated exactly what your water supply company does, albeit in miniature and without adding chemicals; now your water is filtered it will contain other contaminants such as bacteria which need destroying and to do this you take your filtered water and bring it to the boil, recommendations vary on boiling times and holding at a boil for 2 minutes should be a minimum, but holding at a boil for 5 minutes will exceed all recommendations so do this. Allow your filtered and boiled water to cool and place into your drinking water containers.

Can I improve the filtering of my water? Yes, you can make a second filter in exactly the same way as your first filter and use ¼ bottle of charcoal and ¼ bottle of sand and this gives it a second finer filtering after you run your filtered water through it, you merely omit the fine stones and use more charcoal and sand as fine filtering mediums.

How do I get charcoal? You can use the dust from barbeque lumpwood charcoal and crush it in a metal bowl using a hammer or even a rock to break it down, once broken down you can put it into a mortar and pestle and grind it very finely. Always use lumpwood charcoal and not the briquettes as briquettes are merely powdered charcoal with a chemical binding agent added and this binding agent is designed for burning and may be toxic when used in a filtering medium.
You can make small amounts of charcoal from wood by using pure and natural wood, split it down into small pieces or simply use twigs snapped to length and placed into a container such as a stainless steel tea or coffee container with a close fitting lid, not a tight fitting lid, and place it onto a fire for 30 minutes to 2 hours depending on the size and quantity of wood being burned. Charcoal is made by burning wood in an absence of, or very restricted air which must be less than that required for the wood to ignite.
If you have a bonfire you will often notice the burned and blackened wood around the outside of it after it burns out, this blackened, unburned wood is charcoal and you can scrape it from the wood and use it.

What type of sand should I use? In reality you can use any sand such as building sand or even children’s play sand, but avoid ballast as this contains sand and gravel and is too coarse to effectively filter efficiently and use finer sand as opposed to the coarser washed silver sand, basically the finer the better.  

Can I prepare and store these items? Yes, every time you have a bonfire you can fill a small container of twigs and make your charcoal, this gives you practise and useful knowledge of how long you need to burn the twigs for in your fire, it also gives you practise of how to grind your charcoal and the best method for grinding it finely. You can store it in clean glass containers with screw lids and when you screw the lids on you wrap the joint with tape to fully seal them if you desire, or you can store larger quantities in the various buckets with sealed lids. Bags of sand can be bought and stored, and fine gravel stones can be collected and washed and put into sealed buckets and they can be stacked in a shed or outbuilding in a convenient area.

Dealing with waste water

Waste water is very easily dealt with as you merely twist the outlet pipe from your sink and put a bucket underneath it and this catches all your waste water from washing up which can be used as grey water for watering garden areas used for growing food, or a greenhouse producing food. Never filter and reuse washing water for drinking as it contains washing up detergents which will taint your drinking water as they need diluting with other water to break them down which is why they are filtered and returned to rivers. Grey water should always be stored in containers which are separate from your water collected for filtering and boiling for drinking.

Improving your water collection is easy, if you have water collection in place on a shed or outhouse then moving it or splitting it to a house will improve your gathering capability as a house roof is much larger in area than a shed roof and more water collects on a larger roof and runs off.
If you don’t have a water collection system then make provisions to fit one to your house with the largest capacity and you can add a smaller one to any outbuildings or greenhouses.
Gathering water is fine but also remember that if you have water and other people don’t then they may want your water, if you have some barrels locked away in a shed or outbuilding then always empty your collection barrels into them on a regular basis and take a few simple precautions. Always have lids on your barrels, even on outside collection barrels, as other thieves may not be human and the last thing you want in your water collection barrels is a dead rat, mouse, or other vermin as they will be attracted to it for the water; flies and other flying insects may become a problem.
Always ensure that your outlet pipe from your roof is a close fit through your collection drum lid to eliminate these problems, in periods of heavy rain, always empty your drums frequently to your indoor collection containers for gathered and unfiltered water and treat this as a bonus as you may have a period with no, or limited rainfall such as a UK summer period and having untreated water ready for treatment is better than having none.