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Buy it at the supermarket. Water is heavy, and paying to have it posted to you is a kind of madness.
Where to keep it
- Somewhere cool and dark. Sunlight and warmth make plastic bottles taste of plastic bottle.
- Off a concrete garage floor and away from paint, petrol and anything else with a smell.
- Check the date twice a year. Old bottled water is fine for washing and flushing.
If a cut to the supply is forecast, fill the carriers, the kettle, every pan and the bath. Bath water flushes toilets: pour half a bucket straight into the pan.
When the mains goes off
Water companies have a legal duty to provide an alternative supply, by bottle station or bowser, of at least 10 litres per person per day. Customers on the Priority Services Register get it delivered. So your own store only has to cover the gap until that turns up, which is exactly what the three days are for.
If you get a “boil water” notice, bring water to a rolling boil, let it cool, and keep it covered. That covers drinking, cooking and brushing teeth.
Purification, by budget
Most households will never need this. It earns its place if you’re on a private supply, live somewhere that floods, or simply sleep better for owning it.
Oasis water purification tablets
The emergency box
One tablet per litre, wait half an hour. Tastes faintly of swimming pool. Weighs nothing and lasts for years in the foil.
Sawyer Mini filter
One or two people
Screws onto a bottle or a pouch and filters out bacteria and parasites as you squeeze. The size of a marker pen.
LifeStraw Peak gravity filter, 3 litre
A family
Fill the bag, hang it on a door handle, and gravity does the pumping while you do something else.
British Berkefeld gravity filter
Private supplies and the thoroughly committed
A steel worktop unit with ceramic candles, made by a firm that’s been at it since Victoria. Filters several litres at a time with no power.
Filters like these deal with bugs. They do not remove chemicals, fuel or sewage contamination from floodwater. If the water company says don’t drink it even boiled, don’t.
What to skip. Rainwater from the butt as drinking water. It has been on your roof, with the pigeons.