Making A Specialty Kit

The Water Purification Bucket is a unique concept that every prepper should have on hand. It is a bucket with supplies in it designed to collect, filter, and purify water. During an emergency, your water storage can only get you so far. The average person will go through a minimum of two gallons of water a day. That’s 28 gallons in a two-week period for a single person. If a crisis lasts months or years, you’ll eventually run out. One of the first things to go in a disaster would be the water lines, as many will become destroyed or contaminated by sewage entering through the storm drainage system. By putting together a Water Purification Bucket you’ll have all the supplies you need on hand to ensure your family has the means of getting water when what you stored runs out.

The Bucket

The bucket acts as the foundation for the project. You can carry water from its source back to base camp, where it can be filtered and treated. The bucket must hold enough to meet your family’s daily water needs of two gallons of water a day. Mine is a five-gallon bucket with a lid from the American Red Cross from a flood clean-up drive in 2017. Any bucket would work, and the lid is just an added element that isn’t required but strongly suggested. I recommend getting two buckets, one for the dirty, untreated water and the other for the clean water.

Collection

Once the water stops coming out of the tap, you’ll need to know at least three outside sources of water, if not more. I keep multiple tools on hand to collect from as many sources as I can. I have a tarp and a spool of rope to set up a rain catcher. A couple of screwdrivers, a siphon pump, and a wrench to collect from the pipes of abandoned homes, or to drain the hot water tank (please don’t break into homes until you tapped all other resources out). The gallon baggies and twine are used to set up dew catchers on plants. At the bottom of the bucket, I have two instruction cards, one that explains how to set up a water tank and the other a well for long-term water storage. Never rely on just one outside source for your water. This is because anything could cut you off from or destroy that source in seconds, leaving you without water for days or more.

Filters

This is the first step in making the water potable (drinkable). All found water must be filtered. I cannot stress that enough. Because of how critical this step is, I have multiple options, each with its own assignment in the bucket. I have a large one for groups. A small individual one for each person in my home. Last, a couple of packs of coffee filters to make a homemade water filtration system. Get a clean two-liter plastic bottle, and cut off the bottom. Next, layer it with charcoal, coffee filter, sand, coffee filter, and gravel. Remove the cap and tie a coffee filter around the nozzle of the bottle with twine or string. Point it nozzle down into your clean water bucket, then slowly pour water into the top of it, making sure not to overfill it. A picture of the two-liter bottle filter can be found at the bottom of this article.

Treatments

Once the water is filtered, it’s ready to be treated. There are many ways to treat water, but the two most common ones are with bleach or by boiling it. I explained the Bleach Method at https://shopping-feedback.today/lifehack/purifying-water-101%3C/a%3E, so I’ll break down the Boiling Method in this article. First, you’ll want to clean your water treatment pot by either washing it or wiping the inside with a disinfectant wipe. This will make sure you don’t cross-contaminate your filtered water with foreign objects, like dirt. Put the pot over an open flame, uncovered, until it is at a rolling boil. Once boiling, start the timer for one minute. When the timer goes off, remove from heat and loosely cover with foil. I often have the foil pre-measured to prevent burns. Wait until completely cool. Transfer it to a sterilized, closed container for proper water storage. To improve the taste, shift it between a couple of containers to add air to it. By adding air, you’ll improve the quality, which is what gives it its flavor.