Apparently there’s a water outage in my local area and it’s doing my head in. Gotta ration toilet trips. Can’t wash my hands. (At least there’s hand sanitiser 😖) Can’t drink any water with my lunch. Southeast Water estimates it’ll be back in three hours… so far away, ugggggh
@jayeless Soooo… This is when you buy a 5 litre bottle of water to keep in the cupboard for next time. 😀 Good strategy anyway to have 5 litres per person — 3 days worth — in case of emergencies. I call ours 'earthquake water’.
@odd Oh sure. We all use way more water than that. But in an emergency that’ll get most people by if they're careful. And it's a pain to store too much water — you should refresh it each year and it takes a lot of space.
@Miraz True. I actually contacted the officials for food and drink safety to check how often water needs to be changed to be safe, and they said “you can keep it for years, if you keep it cold and dark”🙄 Well, I am in an apartment, so it’s at room temperature. So I change it more often. And I have hydrogen peroxide AND cleansing tablets just in case. Come to think of it, I might have become a Prepper! 😅
@Miraz This instance took me off-guard because we basically never have an unannounced outage like this, but that does sound like a sensible precaution because evidently, it can happen! I'll have to be careful how I phrase the suggestion to my partner though, because knowing him, I'll come home one day and find every cupboard in our flat filled with bottles of water… 😂 @odd
@odd @Miraz We keep a bunch of water (plus other emergency supplies), since we don't have any tap water when the power goes out, being on a well. We have three 5-gallon (about 19 litre) jugs, mainly for accessory use like flushing toilets, not that we usually bother with them, plus just got some smaller jugs for more convenient use.
@jayeless Heh, yes, that could be a bit too much. Unexpected outages can come from thunderstorms / lightning strikes, tree branches falling on power lines — all sorts of events, so a few emergency supplies can be quite handy. In Aotearoa New Zealand of course, we're a bit aware of earthquakes as potential disruptors.
@odd @Miraz Yeah, a hand-cranked pump might be more hassle than its worth, though I wouldn't mind the option in a pinch. The ideal solution would be a Tesla PowerWall battery bank and solar panels, so we never lose power. But those are way too expensive. A propane (LPG) powered whole-house generator is another option, though also expensive. We don't lose power often enough to be worthwhile.