An Emergency Water Supply

[LazyPup]

In recent weeks as we see the news reports of hurricanes Katrina and Rita devastaing the Gulf Coast we have all had opportunity to reflect upon our own disasster preparedness plans.

Whenever a natural dissaster strikes often the electrical utility is the first thing to be knocked out, and along with that we loose our home well pumps or municipal water supplies. Most people do stock a minimum supply of bottled water to get them through the worst, but what do you do when the bottled water runs out and all the stores are closed?

Immediately turn off you house "Main Water" shut off valve. This will trap the fresh potable water in your pipes and isolate it from any contaminated water that may get into the municipal mains. You will now have 8 to 10 gallon of water trapped in the pipes that you can draw out though a faucett at a low point in the system.

Keep in mind that you also have another 40 to 60 gallons of potable water in the water heater. You can carefully draw it off by opening the water heater drain valve. (This is the same hot water you would be drawing at the kitchen faucett when you cook and it is perfectly safe to drink.) Before opening the drain valve you should open a hot water faucett to allow air to vent into the tank while draining water out. In this manner you will be able to draw water from the tank as needed by gravity flow and will not need electrical utility to access the water.

[albright]

good thinking

ya that sounds like it would work, good idea!

[Phelps]

lazyPup,

Good thinking. Surte beats heading for the ocean to try to drink salt water.

But I am not so sure this idea would meet code. I was a low grade licensed water operator in Texas 25 years ago and the big honchos in the health dept. down there were big on not allowing interconnects, even when a valve is in place, unless there was an air break (a series of 3 valves where the center valve can be bled), to make sure there was no cross contamination in case the abutting single valve had even the slightest leak to allow microbes to pass through.

This is a similar situation as to how they would not allow private wells to be tied into the community water system without such an air break as otherwise it would be considered a cross or interconnection.

Just a thought.

But I would indeed take you up on your advise in an emergency...and chance it. That's for sure.

[LazyPup]

There is no interconnect. In fact, there is absolutely no change in any piping. You simply turn off the main water shutoff valve to isolate all standing water that is currently in the house. You then use the bottom drain valve of the water heater to get the water by means of gravity flow.

Keep in mind that the water in the water heater was initially delivered to the water heater by your potable water supply system, whether that is a municipal main or a home well system. In turn, the water in the water heater remains clean and is perfectly suitable as potable water, otherwise we could not connect the hot water system to the kitchen sink faucett.

To be honest, I cannot take credit for thinking up the idea of using the water heater as a source of clean drinking water in an emergency. It was published in a 1965 civil defense manual.

While working in a school system in Massachusetts we had a civil defense shelter area in a maintenance service tunnel under the building and we had to install a drain cock on the bottom of a 600 gal steam powered water heater to provide a water supply for the Civil Defense Shelter.