UK Prepping For Beginners, Step 3: Water

This article is part of an in-depth series on the getting prepared, and is tailored to absolute beginners. Each one is a deep dive into its specific topic, so for a more general overview on how to get started, check out the Beginner’s Guide To Prepping In The UK page on this site.

We often don’t consider access to water to be a problem in the UK – it falls from the sky with absolutely depressing frequency. However, our drinking water supply isn’t always guaranteed, and as we’ve seen with recent and dramatic price hikes from utility companies, plus the sewage and industrial waste that is increasingly pouring into our waterways, growing summer heat, and severity of extreme weather events… well, access to clean, safe drinking water may become an issue for a lot of us in the near future.

Even aside from some widespread disaster, small areas are affected by disruption to the water supply with surprising regularity – in the past 5 years I’ve had more than a handful of utilities workers knock on the door to warn us that the pipes weren’t going to be safe for a few days, including once while I was actually writing this article.

Thankfully, storing water is extremely easy, and nowhere near as thought-intensive as storing a food supply, so let’s get right down to it!

How To Build A Drinking Water Supply – Step By Step

1 – Consider What You Want As An Emergency Store

In my Beginner’s Guide To Prepping In The UK, I listed a rough baseline for water storage as:

“To cover drinking needs, WHO recommends 2 litres per person, per day. To cover drinking, sanitation and food hygiene, the US Department of Homeland Security recommends at least 1 gallon (4.5L) per person per day.” – (if you haven’t already read it, you can find the full post here)

I very, very strongly recommend opting for the 1-gallon-per-day calculation, since you currently have the luxury of not being a desperate, dehydrated disaster survivor, and might as well plan to be able to do extravagant, bougie things like “wash your hands” and “clean your dishes”. Your water consumption will probably be higher than you’re imagining, anyway, so err on the side of caution.

2 – Look At The Available Space You Have

Space, rather than money, is going to be the limiting factor for water storage. Water may be cheap and easy to acquire (for now, at least) but one thing that we simply can’t work around is that it’s bulky and heavy. It can’t be compressed, processed or packaged to make it smaller or lighter, so we’ve just got to deal with it as it is.

It would be absolutely impossible for me to store all the water my family would need for a three-month outage in my current situation, and I’m sure many of you who live in terraced houses or apartments will sympathise. The main thing to remember is that something is better than nothing.

The first three days’ worth of supplies is worth exponentially more than the supplies for Month Six – these are the supplies you are most likely to have to use, and which will provide the most important cover. Even if you can’t fit anything else, 3 days should be the minimum you’ll settle for.

If all you have is a case of bottled water in your wardrobe, that is much better than not having that case, when the taps run brown.

3 – Water Storage Options

So, finally, after plenty of preamble, we’re here: the actual beginner’s guide on how to store water for an emergency in the UK. Let’s start with the smallest, easiest and cheapest options, and go upward from there to larger and more expensive solutions.

Oh wait actually, I have a tiny bit more preamble first about how to treat and rotate your water so you don’t get giardia and die.

Side Note – Cycling Stored Water

The advice available online and in books about how often to cycle (replace) stored water can be bewildering, as no-one seems to agree. This is largely because no-one’s situation is identical to another – someone storing water in an outdoor drum which can be warmed by the sun will have a very different shelf life than someone storing it in an underground cistern, and will have to cycle the water sooner. I generally aim for 6 months for water stored in the house, and 3 months for water stored in butts or barrels outdoors. Sealed bottled water from the shop has a shelf life that is practically indefinite and shouldn’t ever need to be rotated.

Tony Nester, author of the fantastic When The Grid Goes Down, talks through several of his survival-school students who have different water storage solutions in place, and mentions that one of them cycles his water every 30 days, which, even to me, seems a bit extreme. Others are more laid back, replacing stored water every three months, or even yearly.

You’ll find a rhythm that works for you – but make sure to go with your gut on whether stored water needs to be replaced. Don’t take any chances with a waterborne disease.

Side Note – Treating Water For Storage

Since the water you’re storing came out of a tap and will have already been treated, you shouldn’t need to do anything drastic to it to keep it good during storage. However, it’s a good idea to treat it with a little colourless, plain bleach before storage, just to make sure that any tiny nasties that slipped the net don’t get the chance to multiply while the water sits in storage.

You should make sure to use plain, colourless, unscented bleach for this – the others contain additives and detergent agents that will make you sick if you drink the water.

Jim Cobb in his brilliant book Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide recommends “a few drops” of plain bleach per gallon of water, and reminds readers to swish some of the treated water up and onto the threads of the lid, to ensure that nothing grows there during storage either. I’ve seen other resources that recommend 2-4 drops of bleach per gallon, and I’ve never had any trouble splitting the difference at 3 drops for every gallon stored, so I’m going to say that’s what you should aim for.

Right, now I’m done. On to the storage methods.

Bottled Water

The go-to, the classic, and still one of the best. Bottles of water from the shop can be bought for literal pennies, have been professionally treated, bottled, and sealed, and have a shelf life of “basically forever”. Just keep them out of sunlight and make sure the plastic isn’t perishing and they should last you until you need them.

Bottles can be bought in lots of sizes and fit in wherever you’ve got some space, whether that’s under the bed, in the wardrobe, in an unused bottom drawer, in pallets under the stairs, or wherever you can fit them. Just make sure not to put them anywhere where they might freeze: the expanding ice will split the bottles and when they melt you’ll have a swamp on your hands.

Bottled water is ideal for tiding you over for a short disruption – our water was yellowish and smelled eggy this week, while I was writing this, and bottles of water made sure the tea supply wasn’t disrupted – but for longer-term situations of more intensive water storage, you may want something more space-efficient, like the stackable storage cubes mentioned below.

Ice

Don’t laugh, frozen water is literally something I recommend you keep – if you’ve got any spaces in your freezer, fill them with regular ice! This isn’t primarily a water storage option, but that is a happy side effect – it’s actually a buffer to help keep the food in the freezer cold if the power cuts out. Keeping ice in the spaces in your freezer helps pack it with thermal mass, keeping it cooler for longer, and making sure your food doesn’t spoil as quickly.

If the power doesn’t cut out but the water does, you’re free to take that ice out and let it melt. You won’t get much water this way, and if the power is out, you’ll be much better served by leaving it in the freezer to try to preserve the food. Still, every little helps.

Water Storage Cubes

Water storage cubes are a great way to store water in a space-efficient way – WaterBrick make stackable cubes that can be laid on top of one another to fit wherever you need them, and can be rearranged however you like. Here’s one of their offerings – a pack of 10 3.5-gallon bricks, together offering 35 gallons, or more than a month of water storage for a single person.

This sort of stackable system seems like a great idea to me for a few reasons. Each container is relatively small and portable – 3.5 gallons is heavy but not unmanageable if you need to move some water around – and the system can be scaled by just adding more bricks.

Don’t forget that any water you store in this way (or in any of the following ways that involve you storing your own tap water) should be treated with a drop of bleach to keep it good, and should be rotated out every few months – more on that in a minute. Let’s stay on topic for now and head on to the next, bigger water storage option you might look into:

Water Butts and Barrels

Water butts and barrels are a common enough sight, especially on allotments or in places where the houses have big gardens. They are usually connected to a guttering system and used to collect rainfall, and they can quickly store a lot of water – with the roof of your home or greenhouse (or ideally both) as the catchment area for the rain, then UK weather can provide quite a volume of water.

They’re inexpensive, like these ones on Amazon which are between 100L and 300L capacity each, and between £30 and £80 and time of writing.

You can also get poly-barrels for storing water, sometimes available new from garden centres or trade shops, and that are usually pretty cheap secondhand from restaurants and other food service businesses – just make very sure that you know what was in them beforehand, so you don’t wind up trying to store water in barrels that had garlic or olive oil or something in them. Besides being bad for the water, that’s just a smell that you’ll never be rid of. In any case, clean these thoroughly with bleach before using them to store water, and be sure to cycle the stored water out regularly.

A step up from barrels, we have:

A Cistern or Tank

If you’re lucky enough to have an underground water cistern, or the funds to install an underground tank, then first of all, congratulations on finally ascending to the throne after all those years – we all thought you were going to abdicate but it’s nice that you’re getting a go before William takes over. And thanks for the extra bank holiday last year.

All jokes aside though, if you can afford one of these, and you’ve got the space for it, then they’re a great idea – there are companies in the UK that sell underground rainwater catchment tanks that can hold 7000 litres of water – or 1,500 gallons, which, at the “gallon a day per person” rate we talked about above, comes out to almost a full year of water for a family of five.

Plus, since they’re underground, they don’t take up any otherwise usable space, which is one big problem that water storage otherwise has to solve. The downside, of course, is that you need to own enough diggable ground to install one, and then buy one and have it installed, and that is… running up into the multiple thousands of pounds. This is one I’ll have to do without.

Reusing Other Containers and Bottles

One very popular water storage solution is to use cola bottles and other plastic bottles that have been washed. If you’re planning on going the reduce-reuse-recycle route for water storage containers, and planning to reuse other bottles, here’s a quick run-down of how to do it safely.

The first thing to keep in mind is that you’ll need to be very, very careful about choosing containers. You should never use a container that has held a non-food product, especially a hazardous liquid like a cleaning product.

You should also avoid plastic containers that have been used for milk, oils, strong-tasting foodstuffs like garlic or chillis, or for acidic foods like juice or pickles/preserves. While not necessarily unsafe, plastic has an incredible ability to hold on to flavours and smells from these products that no amount of cleaning will get rid of, and that will contaminate your stored water.

Finally, you should avoid light, flimsy containers that aren’t intended to store liquids for long periods of time – they’ll perish and leak, and in any case would be tricky to handle without bursting them if you needed to move them anywhere.

Soft-drink bottles are popular because they tick all the boxes above, and are usually a good size and cheaply available (they even come with a drink inside). They’re a good solution for water storage but you’ll need to be absolutely sure that you got every molecule of sugar out of there while cleaning them, or you’re guaranteed to get something growing in there while the water sits in storage.

Preparing A Container For Storing Water

To prepare a container to safely store water, give it a thorough wash in hot soapy water first, then rinse until all the soap is gone. Then rinse it again, maybe a few times. You really don’t want any soap at all left on there. Don’t forget to give the lid the same treatment!

Once it’s completely clean, fill the container with a disinfecting solution of one tablespoon of bleach to one gallon of water, and let it sit for 30 minutes. Make sure to put the lid in this disinfecting solution too – you could submerge it in a bowl or a pan to make sure it’s saturated.

After 30 minutes, you can pour away the disinfectant solution and pour in clean, ready-to-store water, without rinsing the container in between. Screw the cap on tight, and you’re good.

There are also short-notice options which can be lifesavers if you have a little bit of warning that a water shutoff is coming – as featured in the occasional disaster movie where the hero runs upstairs and starts filling the bath as soon as he sees the flashes in the distance.

Emergency Short-Notice Water Storage: A WaterBOB

A WaterBOB is a handy thing to have in the house – it’s essentially a giant plastic bag that folds up small, and that fits inside a bathtub. If you’re worried that something is going to disrupt the water supply, you can unfold it, connect it to the cold tap of the bath, and fill it up with water.

You don’t need to worry about the bath being open to the air, or having any soap residue or other nasties in it – the WaterBOB is sealed and protects the water inside, preventing it from evaporating or being contaminated, and providing you with around 100 gallons of drinkable water. That’s a pretty great emergency cushion to have.

You can pick them up here for around £35 at time of writing.

Emergency Short-Notice Water Storage: Whatever You’ve Got To Hand

Ultimately, if you need to, you can store water in any pots, pans, bowls or dent-headed roommates that you have to hand. Just keep in mind that this water won’t keep, and should be kept covered at all times to prevent loss by evaporation and reduce the risk of contaminants getting to it.

While it’s covered, it shouldn’t go bad too quickly, but I wouldn’t want to rely on water kept in a normal kitchen pot for more than a few days – the risk of something growing there is just too high. If you can, treating this water with bleach as though you were going to store it for a longer period will certainly buy you some extra time, but I’m not comfortable providing a hard number here.

4 – Try To Create Layers Of Cover

Layering is an important part of being prepared for anything – prepper forums often say “two is one, and one is none”, meaning that if you only have one of something, then inevitably something will go wrong with it, leaving you stuck. By having two of that thing, you’re covered when the first one breaks, wears down, runs out, becomes contaminated, whatever happens to it.

It’s the same with water. It’s sensible to predict unseen future problems, and for something as vital as water, you should ideally keep a few sources separately to ensure that you stay adaptable and well-hydrated.

So, you might want to have a case of bottled water in the wardrobe, a stack of water cubes by the back door, and a rain barrel or two outside that’s rigged up to the guttering. If you have less space than that, you can look at a WaterBob (mentioned above) to allow you to store a bathtub-sized amount of water in an emergency (so long as you fill it up before the pipes go down) and use that to try to bolster your storage.

Making this easier is the fact that for washing, watering plants, or for animals to drink, then untreated rainwater should be fine – so a rain barrel or catchment system can provide a lot of that without you needing to worry about purifying every drop of it. Just to be on the safe side, you should use treated drinking water for washing dishes and cutlery, washing and preparing food, washing your hands and brushing your teeth, as these all have higher chances of something that was in the water winding up in your body.

In short: try not to put all your eggs in one basket, and make sure you’ve got a couple of different places where water is stored.

5 – DIY: finding and treating your own water

If you don’t have the space for thousands of gallons of water storage (and honestly, who does) then you’ll probably want to look into finding your own water. Even if you do have a lifetime’s supply in a secret aquifer, you should still look into it, because as I literally just said, you don’t want to put all your eggs in one basket.

So here are a few more baskets for your eggs.

Rain Catchment Systems

A rain catchment system is easy to set up if you’ve got access to guttering (I appreciate that in apartments this might not be possible).

All you need to do is divert the drainpipes for the guttering into barrels, and the entire roof of your house becomes a giant rain catcher. It’s possible to catch a LOT of water this way, and you can buy converter kits on Amazon for a tenner.

US prepping guru Jim Cobb, in his book Prepper’s Long-Term Survival Guide, puts it eloquently:

“Think about it like this: if your roof is about a thousand square feet, just half an inch of rainfall will give you about three hundred gallons of water flowing through those gutters and into barrels.”

You can also add rain gutters to sheds, greenhouses and any other roofed structure outside, to maximise that catchment area.

If you aren’t able to do this, you can still catch some rain by setting up a tarp to slope downwards into a bucket, forming a channel that any water that falls onto the tarp will naturally run into. Think of it as essentially making a big funnel for any drops of rain to fall into and be channeled into the bucket. Once you’ve started thinking along those lines, rain catchment systems are easy to come up with and can provide you with all the water you’ll need – especially with the “summer” we’ve just had.

Digging A Well

This is only an option if you have the land to fit a well, obviously, and depending on your local geography – the water table, the geology beneath your feet, etc – there may not be any water down there to tap into. However, if there is, then having access to your own well can be a great solution for water.

You may be able to rent the necessary equipment to bore a well yourself, but I’d recommend leaving it to the professionals – this sort of drilling is something that is technically possible for the average Joe, but probably better to know that it was done by an expert. You’ll need to consider how the water will be extracted and treated, too – if you’ll have an electric pump, how will it be powered if the grid fails? Can you swap in a manual alternative?

You may also need to apply for a licence to pump ground water, depending on your local area and how much water you are intending to extract – contact your local branch of the Environment Agency to check whether you’ll need to get a licence. They’ll be able to help you to apply for one, if you do need to get one, and will be able to provide all the necessary information and contacts you’ll need.

Of course, in the event of the collapse of civilisation, you will probably not need a licence to dig a well. Just something to keep in mind.

Finding Local Water Sources

More convenient than running a bedrock drilling operation is just going outside and scooping the water up from a river, pond, or lake.

Thankfully for us, the UK is absolutely shot through with rivers, streams and lakes of all shapes and sizes. Springs bubble up all over the place, including in a park by my house, which is why it floods every year or so, and the vast majority of our towns and villages are built around a watercourse of some kind. However, these aren’t safe to drink as is – if you’ve been following the news you’ll know that our water treatment companies have been pumping so much raw sewage into the waterways that more than 50 triathletes recently became seriously ill just from swimming in one of our rivers.

You’ll need to be extremely sure that you’ve treated the water well enough that it’s safe to drink, because I guarantee that no matter how clear it might look, it’s got some living things in it that are just waiting for someone to come along and drink them so they can go to work on him.

At the minimum, collected water requires filtering with a cloth and then boiling, but if possible, more thorough treatment with a filter like a Sawyer Mini would be preferable in addition to a good boiling or treatment with water purification tablets.

As we noted above, water is also unhelpfully very bulky and very heavy, although if the only source available is a mile away, we’ll just have to work with it. If you use containers that seal, you could transport them by car, if you’re able to get close enough, or you could use stackable containers with tight-fitting lids and load them up on one of those two-wheeled loader carts to make getting them home easier.

Finally, if the water source is over terrain that’s too rough for wheels, a pole across your shoulders with water containers hanging balanced from each end will be easier to move with than just buckets or tubs on their own would be. You’ll look like a milkmaid, and you’ll wish you did more squats at the gym, but you’ll be able to get that water where it needs to go.

One note to consider if you’re planning to go this route for water: you are not likely to be the only person who knows about this water source. You should absolutely clue your community in and make sure that they are able to source water there together (many hands make light work, after all), but it is possible that someone will already be there when you get there, ready to defend “their” water. Just something to keep in mind.

Making A “Water Map” For Your Area

A water map is a great thing to have on hand – you can begin with something like an ordnance survey map, like the one shown above. It’ll get you started, but the water sources marked on there may not be as accessible as they seem on paper – you should do some exploring and see what the situation is actually like on the ground.

Feel free to annotate and edit your map as you find out more about your local geography – does a park near you have a low area that tends to fill with rainwater and form a temporary pond? Is the lake marked on the map overgrown with bad-smelling algae and unsafe to drink?

The more information you have, the faster you’ll be able to make decisions when it counts, and the better those decisions will be.

6 – Water Treatment Methods

Collecting water is only half the battle – anyone who has ever looked at the most common historical causes of death* can tell you that making that water safe to drink is the really important part. Thankfully there are several ways to treat water, some of which are very accessible even in super low-tech grid-down scenarios. Here are a few of the most popular and most reliable:

*just me? Surely someone else has done this.

Boiling

The go-to for treating suspicious water, boiling is available to pretty much anyone who can get a fire going, and does a tremendous job of killing the things that would otherwise kill you.

You don’t actually need to bring water to the boil to kill the microbes in it, but boiling is a good idea because it comes with its own convenient way to tell when the water is hot enough (you know, the bubbles).

It’s sensible to keep the water at a rolling boil for several minutes to ensure that everything is thoroughly dead – 8 minutes was the official recommended time the last time I checked, but 4-5 should be fine so long as you’re not dealing with some sort of super-giardia.

Boiling unfortunately does not remove any chemical contaminants from the water. Pesticides, heavy metals, petrochemical runoff or toxic bacterial/algal chemicals will still be there after boiling. You can reduce the risk of this by only harvesting running water or rainfall, or passing water through charcoal to try to absorb any unpleasant chemicals in it (though this won’t do wonders for the taste).

Boiled water can taste very flat and weird – this is because it’s been deoxygenated by boiling. If you pour it several times from one container to another, it should taste normal again. Or you could just use it to make a brew. You definitely deserve one after all that water-gathering you’ve had to do.

Filtration

Filtration is the literal physical removal of nasties from your water. It’s best accomplished with a dedicated filter able to strain out bacteria and viruses, like the Sawyer Mini. I have two of these and I love them.

They’re palm-sized, incredibly light, and will filter out 99.999% of microbes and particulate in water. They’re convenient enough to just pop in your pocket, and have very long active lifespans if you take care of them. It’s best to pre-filter any water through a t-shirt or a bandana to remove any large particles like sand or bits of leaves and bugs that might be in there – they’re so big that you don’t need to waste filter space on them and you’ll have an easier time filtering the microbes out without the big stuff clogging the Sawyer.

Most ordinary filter systems do not remove chemical contaminants from the water – although many are now entering the market that can, like the Sawyer S3 Foam filter that is able to remove bacteria, viruses, protozoa, pesticides and heavy metals. I think I’m going to buy one of those.

For a home base, many preppers love Berkey water filters. They’re gravity fed and have large tanks, so all you need to do is pour in the water and leave it to do its work. However, they tend to be large, countertop units, so they’re best used as home filtration. I don’t have any experience with Berkey filter systems, but I’d love to try them (Berkey seriously, call me).

Chemical Treatment

Water purification tablets are a quick and easy solution to rendering water safe to drink, and they’re cheap enough and small enough that it’s almost silly not to have a few packets tucked away. They’re good for bug-out bags or car kits, and have a place in regular home water treatment too.

That said, it’s not 100% upsides – they have a very limited shelf life, especially once the packet or bottle is opened, they don’t do anything about particles or chemicals in the water, there’s a limited supply of them, and they usually leave the water with an odd taste.

As an adult, you can push through this, but kids may have a hard time drinking water treated this way, and it’s safe to say your cup of tea is probably ruined.

If you’re buying these, go for chlorine-based tablets rather than iodine-based ones. Iodine takes longer to work, generally, and will leave the water with an off colour and a stronger flavour that has some gag-worthy elements to it. Chlorine based tablets may taste slightly “swimming pool-y”, but that’s preferable any day of the week in my book.

UV Treatment

UV treatment involves shining a bright UV light in the water to kill any microbes. It’s quick and effective, and if you have a UV treatment option like a SteriPen, then water treatment will be a breeze.

Make sure the water is completely clear, as anything that can block the UV will prevent it from working properly. Then pop the UV pen in and blast the water with it for as long as the instructions recommend. UV treatment pens tend to come in two types: battery-powered and crank-operated. Crank-operated ones may be a pain in the moment, but they don’t rely on a stockpile of batteries to work.

However, if you have a rechargable battery system and some way to power it – like solar panels – then you may want to opt for the convenience and ease of a battery system. It’s up to you – just make sure, whatever happens, that you’ll be able to power it.

The SODIS Method

SODIS (solar disinfection) is a water disinfection method that’s becoming very popular in isolated areas that would otherwise struggle to reliably treat water. It’s good for treating large amounts at once, and works completely on its own while you’re free to do other things with your day.

It works the same way as UV treatment does, so to use it properly, you’ll need to make sure the water is clear and has no sediment or anything that could protect a microbe from the sun’s rays. Start with clear plastic bottles (not coloured – completely clear) and make sure to remove every scrap of label or sticker from it so there’s nothing to impede the sun.

Fill the bottles with clear, untreated water, and leave them lying in the sun for a full day. This needs good strong sunlight to work so is best used in summer here in the UK. If you can set this up on a roof, that’s ideal, but anywhere that gets all-day sun will work.

Ideally, you want the bottles to be on corrugated metal, like the example picture above, but a dark surface like a black tarp will work too. It’ll help catch the sun’s heat and warm the water up, which generally helps move the solar disinfection process along.

After one full day in the sun, the water should be ready to drink!

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