How to Find Water During a Disaster

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[00:00:25] For just about everything for the outdoors, go to MidwayUSA.com. I'm Larry Potterfield with MidwayUSA. Thanks for your business.

[00:00:55] Browse through our site for paint, stain, polish, and finish, as well as bluing and other metal finishing products. For just about everything for gunsmithing, shop MidwayUSA.com. All right, welcome back to the Survival and Basic Badass Podcast, Kevin and Chuck.

[00:01:22] Today, well, we're going to talk about water. We just did an episode on what to do about electricity when lights go out for short-term and long-term. And basically, I wanted to hit, what do you do about water when lights go out for short-term, long-term? You know, a lot of us have, you know, we come off municipal water. And if you live in the city or the town, the water shuts off.

[00:01:51] You have water for a little while. Kevin, how long? Usually a couple hours, right? Usually? Usually a couple of days. Oh, days even in municipal. A power failure is going to, you know, cause problems, obviously. But most municipal water systems have at least a three-day setup with generators and stuff like that. Okay. If you're on a smaller water system, that might not be the case.

[00:02:16] Most water that you get from, you know, from your town or county, wherever, it comes from a water tower. So you have the water in the water tower that's going to supply the pressure. And that's a lot of water. And that is a lot of water, but there's a lot of people that are drawn from it too. Okay. So, I mean, it varies. And, you know, you might want to look into it. But everybody's going to be different, you know? Figure out where your water comes from. What would you do?

[00:02:42] Would you call your local water department or how do you? Yeah, you could call them up. Every year they're supposed to put out an annual water quality report and it'll tell you what's in the water and all that sort of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. And all sorts of nonsense. Different states, you know, different. But most of the United States, you've got a day or two.

[00:03:08] You know, when your power goes out before the water starts, you start losing water pressure. Okay. And that would be the same for sewer? Like how long do we have before it starts backing up into my house when things go back? It won't back up. It'll just run over into the river. Okay. It just keeps going. It just keeps going out. It's just not, you know, you're just polluting all your water systems. So, you know.

[00:03:33] There is actually, you know, while we're talking about this, we should mention like you used to be able to just take water out of a stream or a river. And drink it. Drink it. Yeah, that was okay. You know, 99% of the time you'd be just fine. That's not the case anymore.

[00:03:52] So, they say 51% of rivers and streams, 55% of lakes, and 20% of estuaries are polluted to the point where you shouldn't swim in it, fish in it, or drink out of it, obviously. Now, I do feel like the standard for swimming in it has to be a lot lower than drinking it. Right. Is that a thing? Yeah, that is the case. But, you know, I think they say swimming because you give water in your mouth.

[00:04:20] I remember swimming in the Hudson River as a kid. And I had it. It was all in my mouth and stuff. And now, as an adult, I look back and I read the reports. And they find fecal coliform in that river all the time. Oh, Kevin. So, where does that pollution come from? Well, it comes from your sewer plant. Well, it comes from the sewer plant when the power is out. But it's not working properly. Yeah. For the most part, it's industrial agriculture runoff. That's what it is.

[00:04:50] It's, you know, animal waste. It's pesticides. It's stuff like that. Another big one is domestic sewage. So, when people have, like, septic tanks, they don't pump them out when they're supposed to. And then it rains and it overwhelms and it just flushes that stuff right out in a little stream or whatever. And it ends up getting into the river and gets everybody sick.

[00:05:17] So, Giardia is the big problem with drinking out of streams. And that's beavers pooping in your stream? Or is that? What's that? That is. But the beavers got it because hikers and… Pooped in the stream first? Yeah. They were pissing in the stream and they infected the beavers. And now the beavers are infecting everybody else. Now, what is it about people that make them want to piss in the stream? Can you explain that one to me mentally? It sounds like a toilet.

[00:05:47] You know what I mean? It has that special ring. You know? It's like a little bit closer to home, right? Yeah. Exactly. Exactly. And just as a general rule, don't piss in streams. Piss in the dirt. It'll kind of filter some of that stuff out. Okay. All right. Piss in the dirt. And then be like my dog where you kick a little dirt back over it. Right. I don't know what the deal is with that. All the dogs do that.

[00:06:17] I don't know why. There you go. So, hey, that way it's a surprise when you come up. You know, you don't see dog poop everywhere. Right. You just step in it and you can smell. Now we're going to talk about some off-grid ways to get water. Right. But there are more like, so, all right. So we have municipal water. And we could probably be storing water in our house if we live in the city and have municipal water. Um, we're going to talk about rain catchment off roofs in a minute.

[00:06:47] But I looked at, you know, those big, like you see a pallet, the metal frame with the plastic container for water storage. Yeah. Those are called totes. Totes. Right. So here's the thing with those. You can buy them. They're reasonably cheap for brand new, but the shipping is impossible. Um, like I actually messaged, I searched online for. They're around 200 bucks for a nice, good, clean tote, whatever.

[00:07:17] And all kinds of places sell them. And they're like, yeah, if you want it delivered to your house, expect about, I actually got quotes and they were like $630 for delivery. Oh shit. And I'm like, yeah, that's not going to work. Yeah. Cause you're looking at two to four, $600 to buy.

[00:07:35] So when I look at Craigslist or marketplace, they say anywhere from $50 to $90, I can go buy a used one or 50 to 150, I guess, depending how clean and nice. Now they all say food grade, right? When, when I see the ads, I mean, they're not all food grade. Don't get misused. So if it is food grade, it's got to have a green lid and a green like nozzle spout.

[00:08:05] Right. If it doesn't have the green, it wasn't technically food grade. Now the problem is even if they bought food grade, what did they use it for? Right. Right. Did they have to store food in it? Water in there. Right. Well, yeah, but did they keep clean water in there the whole time or did they use it to keep chlorine in there or, you know, some horrible chemical.

[00:08:29] Now, a lot of them that I see are always like, we used it for detergent and it was double washed, whatever that means. Yeah. I don't trust that either. Compared, compared, here's the thing though. So compared to $600 getting it shipped to my house, I feel like I could actually buy one of those that double washed and then take a sample of that and go get it tested. Yeah.

[00:08:57] Cause the testing probably cost me at most 50 bucks if I tested for everything, you know, usually test is like 20 bucks or whatever, but it depends what you're testing for. If I'm testing for everything in the world, I might be able to get it for like under a hundred bucks that testing. That's still cheaper than buying $600 delivered. So that's one option. The next thing. So I was like, well, that all sounds stressful and like a headache. I looked at Lowe's.

[00:09:26] Lowe's has the stackable 55 gallon, uh, freshwater, you know, storage tanks. It's called water prepared is the company. And at my Lowe's, every Lowe's is different, but my Lowe's, it ends up costing you 239 bucks. And I think you have to like order it, have it delivered to the store and whatever, but 239 ain't so bad.

[00:09:50] And I know I can go to my, like, uh, and buy clean plastic things at, uh, we have like a rural King now has 55 gallon plastic drums. I do feel like that. One of those would make me feel a lot better than when I got off Craig's list. And I don't know what's been in there. Right. That's one thing to keep in mind is water's heavy. You know, it's eight, 8.34 pounds per gallon. Yeah.

[00:10:19] So 55 gallon tote or 55 gallon container is going to weigh 450 pounds. Yeah. So, you know, don't put that on the second floor. If, uh, your Floyd, for your sir, are, you know, two by eights, you know? Okay. Um, I always see that sort of stuff. People have these back decks, you know, and they put their hot tub on it and fill it up with water and act like it's going to be just fine. You know, it's not going to be fine. You might want to kill yourself a little bit. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:10:49] So, all right. So that's one thing. So water storage, obviously we can talk about water bottles, keeping gallons of water, finding an extra place, like storing stuff under a bed or things like that, where it's out of the way and it's stored. Kevin water stores pretty good. I think we talked about, uh, just taste goes bad if over time it tastes flat. Yeah. Yeah.

[00:11:10] I mean, most water that you get, it has a little bit of air in it and that is the taste you're used to, you know, whether you're getting it from a stream or you're getting out of your faucet, it's always going to have a little bit of air in it. And you're used to that taste. Um, you know, obviously gross stuff can grow in water, but if you're putting clean water in a clean container, it's going to stay clean. It's fine. You know, um, that's the thing though. You have to make sure your container is clean and your water is clean.

[00:11:37] Otherwise, you know, you might end up, you know, just making a nice little habitat for bacteria and stuff to grow in there. Right. Now the next thing, obviously a lot of places like towns, they push you into municipal water because they want to pay for running all that pipe to everybody's house. And the idea is if you're like, well, I'm staying on my well and they try and like force you, oh, you have to go to our thing.

[00:12:04] And that's because they want everybody paying the bill to have an equal share of the burden of us running the right. Right. And so if you have that old well set up, keeping it still kind of connected where you could switch one or the other. And some people use it where they use their well for watering their garden or their yard or whatever. And the other, no, I don't know what the rules are. You'd have to call your local government. And obviously me and Kevin comply with every rule. Every rule.

[00:12:34] That the government, you know, would set for us, but you might want to check with them on the legality of it. You know, maybe there's a workaround. Like I said, if you just use it for outside irrigation, they might be cool with it or whatever. Right. Keeping that backup might be a smart play. I'm just saying, um, I have a well where I live and my backup to the backup basically, because that's obviously opposite, you know, municipal water.

[00:13:01] I don't have municipal water is I have a solar pump that I set up in my well. And that's not an expensive thing. I mean, the well pump costs me 150. Um, because I wanted to be able to isolate the system. I had to buy a pressure tank. You know, that's that blue tank that you guys have that, whatever, that that's part of a well setup that you would have.

[00:13:26] Now, in theory, you could use the same pressure tank for my electric well and my solar well. But, you know, whatever. I have it separate so I can isolate the systems because mine actually come out of two different wells. Um, but they are connected normally where my regular well pump is providing it. So that's an option. Uh, 150 for the solar pump.

[00:13:52] Then, you know, hose wire, uh, figure another hundred bucks, 150 bucks. Cause they don't give you that long of a wire. If you have a deeper well, I think they only like the solar pump I got came in like 20 feet of electric wire. And they're like, but it's good for 200 feet. Well, yeah, but I have to power it. So, and 200 feet worth of wire. So I bought the appropriate amount of wire and whatever. So you have that hookup.

[00:14:22] You need solar panels. Um, I just bought two, I think they're 150 watt solar panels and then a, uh, a, uh, charge controller and then a battery. Um, now, obviously if I only have one battery, I can't store that much. It's not going to, you know, last that long. The more batteries you decide how much of a priority this thing is. If you're just really running water in the day while the sun's cooking and you should be okay. Right.

[00:14:51] So I think those, um, those solar powered, uh, pumps are like a godsend when it comes to, to preppers and stuff. You know what I mean? Really power failures. And you, if you have your own, well, you're going to have, you're going to have problems. You know, you're going to have problems right away. Right. How it goes out. You're not going to have your well running. Although I have an extra like minute, but cause I have two pressure tanks.

[00:15:15] That buys me a little bit more, except the problem is if you don't know that the water's out and you flush the toilet a couple of times, then your extra bonus water is gone. It's gone. Yeah. So keep that in mind. Um, so that's, that's the next. And then we move to more like off grid prepper solutions. Right. And here's where we get crazy. Yeah. Let's talk about the basics of cleaning water. So you've got water somewhere. You've got a stream. You've got a swimming pool.

[00:15:45] You got whatever. You got all sorts of access to dirty water. Okay. So the mud puddle, all you have to do is filter it and disinfect it. How do I filter it? Pretty, pretty straightforward. Well, the, the filter. Yeah. So if you've got pretty clean water, you can filter it through just about anything. You could filter it through a shirt. As long as it's not, as long as it's coming out clear, then you can disinfect it with a little bit of bleach.

[00:16:15] Three drops per gallon. Right. And that's traditional bleach. So I know they have concentrate. Not chlorine. Yeah. Not, yeah. Not concentrated. Just regular. Okay. I think it's eight and a half percent is bleach. So that's, that's it. So. And it says actually, if you go to the Clorox website, if you want to dig deeper into that, they tell you how to treat water with it. Yeah. It's eight drops per gallon. And I don't recommend the perfume flavored where it's like spring scent.

[00:16:45] Yeah. You don't want that. You don't want that one in your, in your water. Right. And people make mistakes. I've seen that happen where somebody was taking care of their water system for a little apartment complex. Right. And they were just adding gallons of bleach and they got the country fresh one time and people weren't happy. People weren't happy. They, they didn't want country fresh taste. Right. Now, if you, when you're getting into dirtier water, you need to set up a better filtration system. Okay. Okay.

[00:17:14] So you were showing a picture a minute ago of a, of a basic setup where it's, uh, you know, it's rocks, you know, it's from bottom to top. You're going to fill it with, with twigs, you know, something to really catch, you know, catch everything above it. Then you're going to have gravel above that. And then a sand filter. Charcoal. Charcoal. We say charcoal. What do you know about that? Why are we doing that? So charcoal is, is great.

[00:17:42] You can, you know, they always say activated charcoal. It's not regular. Well, it's really regulated. It's regular charcoal. It's the same, does the same shit. Okay. So you want to get, you know, it's basically the stuff that you have in your fire pit. You know, the logs that aren't burnt. Yeah. You want to get the stuff broken up. You don't want wood. That's not it. You want to break up the charcoal there, smash it up a little bit. So it's a little bit finer.

[00:18:05] And what happens is the more surface area it has, the more it's going to absorb and it's very porous. And so microbes, chlorine, all that stuff is going to get locked up in that charcoal. Okay. And it's going to, it's going to filter out the smaller stuff that you can't really see. It'll clean out lead in your water. It'll clean out all sorts of stuff.

[00:18:32] So I'd say when you buy one, they almost all are activated charcoal filters. When you go to the store and buy one. Right. I guess that's kind of like, what is it? Lump coal where it's the burnt wood. They call it. And if you were lazy and didn't want to make your own. Right. You can buy a bag of that. Make sure it's not the, the. Not bricette. That you can, you know, match ready. You don't even need lighter fluid because the lighter fluid's already in there. Intregnated with gas basically. Yeah. You're, you're better off.

[00:19:03] You know, making it yourself. Right. Yeah. It's not hard. But, and then, so, and then just what? Another layer of sand and then rocks on top of that. Rocks on top. Yeah. The rocks are really. Keep the big sticks and leaves. Leaves and stuff. Yeah. Gotcha. So, so you're really wanting to filter out, you know, your first set up to be rocks like that to catch the big stuff. And then the sand to filter out the smaller stuff.

[00:19:27] Then the charcoal to lock in some of the smaller things that are going to filter right through the sand. You're going to want to run water through it for a little bit because it's going to come out looking black like charcoal. They say that with a brand new store filter too. So you want to run it until it's coming out clean. A hundred percent. And then that you still want to disinfect it though. And how do you disinfect it? I mean, just to be safe. Yeah.

[00:19:57] You do what you got to do, right? Five minutes of a roll of oil. You can do that on your oven, your camp stove over a fire, you know, be a man. Just build the fire. The big thing is like disinfecting is the key, but also it's not disinfecting. Bleach isn't going to get rid of toxins in the water. So if you have the nuclear waste coming into your stream, the bleach isn't really going to help that. Right. The charcoal will have a problem.

[00:20:26] The charcoal will help. Now, am I saying you could take nuclear waste and just run it through some charcoal? Probably. I wouldn't drink it. I'd recommend it. Yeah. It wouldn't be a great idea, but it's going to reduce the amount. That's what we're telling you of toxins that are in there. And again, you do what you do. I mean, there's always toxins. It's funny. I actually asked, uh, Chad GPT when I, when I do research, I kind of consult stuff on there and then I, you know, back it up.

[00:20:56] You know, I get the information and then find out more. And I was like, oh, you know, my property is agriculture and used to be a tobacco farm. And, and what, uh, what should I be testing for in my water? And even Chad GPT was like, that's an excellent question that nobody asks. Let me tell you. And they gave a breakdown and I'm like, this had cost me a million bucks if I set it away to get tested. I love how, how, how chat beat GPT now is like being super polite when you ask a question

[00:21:26] like, Oh, thank you for asking. What a great guy. And I'm like, yeah, I am pretty smart. I walked around with a big smile. Smoke up people's asses. Yep. Yeah. Yeah. That's how it was. I was like, all right, let's take that. But, uh, so then you, you move on and we get your water tested. They said like E. coli, they went through like, uh, roundup, you know, they, whatever

[00:21:55] glycol or whatever the hell it is that, you know, is roundup. And they recommended all the different fertilizer chemicals. They said there's usually actually an agriculture package kind of thing of, of testing that you can do like a little. And then they went into heavy metals and they were like, there's probably an old farmhouse. And I'm like, yeah, there is right next to the well. They're like, yeah, you might want to test for lead if you're doing that. And I'm like, crap. Yeah.

[00:22:21] A lot of those, um, you know, I think it was 19 sometime in the 1970s when they banned, um, lead, lead in, in pipes, but well, um, yeah. And pay a lot of stuff. Yeah. Yeah. But if you're pre 1970, you might want to test your water. Yeah. There's a possibility that you have lead in your pipes, not coming from the well, not coming from the water mains in your town, but coming from the pipes in your actual house. Like, yeah.

[00:22:51] Pipes a hundred percent. It's a possibility. My, whether I think the pain is getting down to where the water in my well is coming from. I'm not really that worried about it, but I know I had my well tested. I mean, that's not a, not a thing, but I just, that isn't like the forefront of my concern. So just something to think about there. And you know, I'm, I mean, honestly, like we're, we get real whammed up about lead and there's a certain amount of lead. That's okay. That's acceptable.

[00:23:19] I don't know how much lead in your water you're comfortable with. Yeah. But honestly, I mean, I could use to be a little dumber. ChatGPT already told me I'm like way smarter than everybody else. Right. Right. It's true. It's true. Because ChatPT, yeah, they said it. So it's good. I mean, the truth is though, lead kind of gives you superpowers, you know, makes you more aggressive and stupider. And that's really what you need.

[00:23:47] And when it comes down to like, you know, getting into fistfights, you know, never, never fight somebody that has less to lose than you, you know? So the crazier and stupid and more aggressive you are, the better you're going to do in a, in a fistfight. But if you look at the levels of violent crime and overlay it with the lead in water, you know,

[00:24:11] lead in pipes, it like matches right up, you know, add 18 years to it because that's how long it takes these kids to grow up and, and start robbing places. Violent crime has dropped significantly. Since we got rid of lead pipes. Since we got rid of lead in pipes. Yeah. I think that's the connection. You know, correlation doesn't mean causation, but it seems like. It does in Kevin's mind. Yeah. All right.

[00:24:36] So the next thing we could talk about is, uh, so we're back on the, the well thing. Now, another thing they call, uh, they have something called the well point. Now this is something you can go to tractor supply or Lowe's and buy. And basically a well point is like a metal spike with a screen with a point at the end. And then that connects to pipe like one inch pipe or whatever.

[00:25:05] And you can actually just bang that into the ground and put a hand pump on it. And you might get lucky. Now I say you might get lucky. Turns out you can do something called a divining rod to kind of figure out where to drill. Now a divining rod, they do it. You know, sometimes you have the guys with the stick, whatever, but usually people will take like two coat hangers. They'll bend it 90 degrees.

[00:25:34] And what I've seen people say, Oh, I don't want my hands to affect it, but they'll actually take a straw and cut a straw and put it around like the downward post of, of the metal coat hanger. And so that way you're not affecting it with your hand, you know, like it's floating free kind of in your hand. And basically if you hold them hanging apart, when you go over water, they'll usually come together.

[00:26:01] And I always thought it was kind of nonsense, but you can watch videos of guys doing it. And obviously I gave you the rough overview, right? You can dig down on YouTube of how to do it. But honestly, that's pretty much it. I mean, you're holding these. I, you say that it's true. I've never seen somebody do it. I haven't watched a lot of videos. I think it's witchcraft. I think that you probably are going to help you try and figure this out. All right.

[00:26:30] Well, maybe people just get lucky, right? Hitting a well. So the idea is what they'll do is they'll walk until they come together. And then you want to hit it from like a couple of different angles to kind of prove that you're right. You're right. You know, that's the thing like, all right, there's definitely something here. The, you can, I've had people like map out a whole underground stream I've seen, you know, where it's going there.

[00:26:56] And so you can tap into that again, this is water. You still should probably get tested. It's still water out of the ground. You don't know what you're going to get, but you can definitely, you know, put in one of these and it's basically a pipe. And then you buy one of those little hand pumps for the top, believe it or not, a lot of the hand pumps are made with lead and lead paint. And you're like, well, that doesn't make any sense because drinking water.

[00:27:26] And why would I be getting water out if I wanted it not to be clean? But so just look into what you're buying is what I'm telling you. Um, so these spikes, the, this, this spike and you keep adding pipe. A lot of people get lucky at like 10 and 12 feet and not very deep, but I don't know about lucky and burying things in the ground is hard.

[00:27:51] Um, I would probably take like a post hole digger and give myself as much of the first like three feet that I could get. I just feel like it's just going to make less resistance and easier as I'm digging. Um, what people I've seen do is those, uh, fence posts, you know, the two handles with the concrete fence post pounders. They pounded in with that. If it's Sandy and stuff, you probably can get away with that. Um, I've also seen people rig up.

[00:28:20] You can make like a whole tripod with a weight and a rope and they like hammer it. Like you see them hammering the posts at the piers. If you ever been to a pier when they're doing work, I don't know. Me and Kevin were both in the Navy, so it's kind of normal for us. You just hear that constant banging of these freaking things, just hammering in posts the whole time. You're it's a nightmare, but anyway, you can do that. They make up like a tripod and a weight in a chain and a pulley, and they just keep like hammering it in.

[00:28:50] That's another way you could go. So again, something, if you want more detail, search out, you know, well points and how to do that. Yeah. But it's also pretty straightforward. Yeah. Uh, you know, still burn has a good point. Um, a lot of people have septic tanks, you know, that's a kind of thing. You don't want to put it there. That's a way you want to be 150 feet minimum away from a septic tank. Like just cause it's going to end up leaching into your water and you're going to be drinking your own piss. Yeah, exactly.

[00:29:18] I'd recommend not drinking your own piss. I mean, Bear Grylls says it's cool, but I'm not into it. You know, that goes back to the filter. Yeah. No, stay the heck away. That was, that was a good thing to point out. Now, maybe you're like, you know what, Chuck, I ain't getting no water out of the ground. I don't know what you're talking about, but again, one of those in your backyard, if you lived in the city might be kind of cool or we'll say suburbs, right? Right. If you're in New York city, you're probably not setting up a well point, but if you live

[00:29:48] right through the sidewalk, man, right. If you live in white plains, maybe, well, honestly, if you do it in the city through the sidewalk, it's a good chance. You're going to hit like a power line or maybe water. Can I recommend as a good rule for everyone, 811, call before you dig? Oh, I, let me, I've got so many stories about people calling me out and there's like just water spraying all over the yard.

[00:30:16] And the guy in the back go like, I don't know what happened. You don't know. You didn't call before you dig. Dig. So when our lines are on your own property, you should know, you know, call, call them. Even if you're not going to dig, mark it out. So, you know, for future situations, you know, a hundred percent. When I bought my property, I'm doing a lot of farming, tilling, and I just like to dig holes. You know, I have a tractor and as a bucket on it, I'm going to dig a hole. It's free. They're not going to charge you anything.

[00:30:46] They'll come out there for free and mark it out. Well, they were like a little weird, like where, and I'm like, I'm farming. It's my whole property. Well, yeah, but where? And I'm like, all right, just do this section. And they were like, and then when the guy came out, I'm like, well, what? He's like, no, there's nothing here. You know, like this is farmland. It's not, there's nothing like, you know, I had like, there's crisscross lines in my yard, like my lawn and stuff, but you go back where my fields are and pretty good.

[00:31:16] But, and if you live in a house, yeah, if you live in a house, um, you should know where your water's coming into your house. And basically between there and the road, it's usually a straight line, but also call somebody because they'll come out with a metal detector and check it and mark it. And your power line. Now, again, you know, a newer house, those power lines, you come from the power line near meter. That thing's going to be 24 inches deep.

[00:31:43] I know this cause I called before I dug and they told me, but like any other electric line, like, Oh, you have that lamp post at the end of your walk. That's only got to be 12 inches deep. And I'm not saying this advice for when you're laying it, I'm saying, be prepared. You might hit something at 12 inches. Right. That's what I'm saying. Like in a cool world, you know, a lot of towns, maybe it's 24 inches for all electrical and whatever, and then good.

[00:32:11] But I know where I live, like something extra, you can do like 12 inches. But the, and you know, it's even crazier. My internet, they brand that like two inches deep, dude. I don't even know how the grass is growing over it. So you don't want to be anywhere near that. Now I have star link. No problem. Now I just clutter up the sky with satellites. So, you know, it's a different thing, but all right.

[00:32:36] So moving right along next thing, you don't want to do a well, how about rain catchment off the roof? Now you need a gutter set up for that, but it's crazy. I couldn't believe the numbers, but they said that you can get 0.62 gallons per square foot of collection surface per inch of rainfall can be collected. So that's a lot of water hitting the roof, Kevin. Yeah.

[00:33:05] Um, that's, that's something now they talk about if you're taking it off the roof, obviously there is pollen on the roof. There is, you know, maybe some leaves and debris. Um, I downloaded a PDF from like the Texas water department. I think it is, but I have it in the show notes so you guys can download it. It actually is amazing. And it takes you through all the water catchment steps.

[00:33:34] But the big thing is they talk about having a, uh, first, first flush diverter where the water comes in and then basically they have it catch like two feet or a foot of pipe, you know, and they'll do like a six inch pipe. They say, uh, if you have a three inch diameter pipe and you have 33 inches, that'll give you

[00:33:59] a gallon of water, four inch pipe, 18 inches, eight inch pipe, six inches. You get the idea. Um, but basically it comes down. You can have it catch that first little bit, and then you can put a faucet on it to dump it out. And then after that first foot, and you can also like poke holes. So it drains out slowly out of the first catchment. So that way you don't have to go drain it every time it rains. That's one more thing.

[00:34:25] But again, you still are going to want to filter that water, but that's still something that kind of catch it. And like we talked about, you'd set up big storage containers for your water. So that's another thing. Now, I don't know. What if I'm off grid, Kevin? Like, what if I'm in the woods and I'm like, I need water. Do I have more options? Yeah. So there are some, some worse options that, uh, that will work, you know, like a gypsy well where we've talked about that before. Yes.

[00:34:56] You have a run in stream. How do we set that up exactly? So you're basically going to want to dig a hole adjacent to the stream and let the water filter through the dirt. Um, you know, you're going to have muddy water for a little while, so you have to let it sit and settle out. Um, that's not, it's not going to keep you from, you know, it's not going to keep you from really getting sick, but you're less likely to get sick than if you just drank right out of the street. Exactly.

[00:35:26] And if you could boil it, the combination of the two, you're pretty good. Mm-hmm. Pretty good. I mean, again, it's crapshoot, right? You're drinking water out of a dirt hole. Kevin, you're supposed to wash your hands when you play in the dirt. So, I mean, you know, there is a level there. There's another way that's actually a little safer and that's called like tapping a tree. Now, have you seen this tapping a tree in the woods for, for survival?

[00:35:54] So, I've seen, you can actually just dig a hole with a knife and if you set a, push a stick in there, like usually you'd whittle a stick clean and jam it in the hole in the fall and, and like that, it'll drip water out along that stick. And then you can put something to catch it underneath. Um, I don't know if you guys have ever seen a, now that would be good with like birch trees,

[00:36:23] like anything you think of people getting sap really is the, the kind of, you know, so your maple, uh, I think even oak trees, to be honest, uh, the, uh, they actually sell metal pipes that you can kind of hammer in. They sell metal pipes with a hook that you can hang a bucket on, um, that little pipe and hook. They're like 10 bucks.

[00:36:46] I'll get you like four of them or something, but that's something you could actually do where you could keep that in your go bag. It's just kind of one more option that you have. Yeah. It's going to be slow. It's not going to, you know, it's not going to come out like a faucet or anything. It's going to be a little drip and you're going to have to sit it, you know, set something underneath it and wait. And you kind of like want like one per tree. If you don't want the tree to die again, they like use common sense, right?

[00:37:13] Like if there's like a four foot diameter tree, you probably get away with two, right? Just, you know, you do you right. Um, another thing to think about is, uh, this one's a little crazier, a solar still. Now this is, they talk about people doing on a, uh, like if you're stuck on a boat out in the ocean, something like that.

[00:37:34] You can actually, you would, you would put the, the salt water around like a bucket or whatever you're going to catch it in and then run a piece of plastic with a low point. And then as the sun shines on it, that's the solar part, the water would evaporate. And then as it goes up into the air, it's going to condensate. And so they put the plastic over it with like a rock in the center. Cause you know, that low point, the water is going to go to it and then drip down into the bucket.

[00:38:04] Now, if you didn't have salt water and you had no water, hence we need a water still. Um, you could put like vegetation around it. Anything that's going to have moisture in it. That's going to evaporate and then go back in with that same setup. Um, just look up a quick picture on the internet. If you don't really see it in your mind, how I'm talking about it. I got to say, it's absolutely a good trick to have in your back pocket.

[00:38:31] Again, not super fast, but it is something that will get you water. It obviously depends on the humidity and everything where you are, how much sun you're getting, but it is another trick. But that's something where you're going to need overnight. That's not going to be something that you're going to set up and get in 20 minutes, most likely. Right. Um, but that is a cool trick for off grid and you know, whatever.

[00:38:57] Now, if you do have toxins in your water and you know, it's kind of bad, you can actually make a still. And distill water where you basically boil it. And it turns out you let the steam rise up and then you catch the evaporation, you know, a condensation. It evaporates out of the boiling pot and then you let it condensate into a new. And that's the same way. And alcohol still kind of works.

[00:39:25] You can make clean water that will be very clean. Um, so that is another option to purify water. Now, uh, I see a lot of people talk about like, uh, you can't drink distilled water. Um, you can, some people are more sensitive. I mean, historically for the past 10,000 years, people haven't been drinking distilled water because that's not a thing. Um, but I mean, a lot of the drinking water you get, uh, is distilled water.

[00:39:54] It's, it's what do they call it? A reverse osmosis. And they, they say purified water. If the bottle of water you get says purified water, that's distilled water. It's not, it's not great for you. You're probably better off with spring water. If you're going to pick Kevin, what I do now, this is my own personal. What I do. If I'm just drinking distilled water, I just eat a handful of dirt. There you go. Problem solved. It balances out, you know? Yeah. You got to put a little of that back in, you know?

[00:40:24] Now they say if you're on a starvation, uh, if you're in a starvation situation, you have no access to food. You're going to last a lot longer. If you drink at least one and a half liters of water a day, if you can't access food, you need to up your intake of water and it'll help. You know, you're still going to starve to death. Eventually you're going to help. Yeah, those are pretty much your water solutions and they're not amazing, but I got to say

[00:40:52] there's a lot of neat things and like rain catchment is a big thing. And honestly, digging a good well, you can also hand dig a well, but again, you got to find a spot. There's going to be water and you're going to have to shore up those sides, you know, to make sure that it's not collapsing back in. You know, you always see the big concrete cylinder, but you could do it with a pipe. You had a big metal pipe or something. You could do it. Um, so keep that in mind, but there's a lot of different ways, but the big thing is to

[00:41:19] look at this stuff and maybe get those few supplies beforehand. Um, Kevin recommends keeping some bleach on hand. I know we talk about that because being able to treat stuff, if you're unsure about it. Now, if you set up a well beforehand, you can get it tested and you don't have to worry about the bleach, but these are the things to do. And it's being a prepper, you know, you prepare. So that's it. You do it beforehand. You find the way to solve the problem.

[00:41:48] So that's what I got. Anyway, questions, concerns, email us at preppingbadass at gmail.com. Otherwise, I would say stay safe and we will talk to you guys next week.

[00:43:04] We'll see you next week. Bye. Bye. Bye.

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