Written by

Craig Caudill

Water Containment – 4 strategies

Seeing as if you and I are mostly made of water, it would be in our best interest to make sure we have plenty of water around.  Modern society has done this for us in the way of running water out of multiple faucets in our homes, schools, and workplaces.  Simply go on a brief day hike and you will find that clean water is not so easy to come by.  Beyond that, what do you do if disaster strikes and the water you have come accustomed to have ready access to, ceases to be so easy.

Proper planning can help with this problem. One of the easiest ways to get water containment is to have rain barrels at your home and to keep them filled.

You can find rain barrels that are specifically manufactured for water containment at virtually all large home improvement stores. 

They can prove to be costly however, so if you can find barrels of any sort, add in a small dose of ingenuity and you will have yourself nearly 50 gallons of water that is ready to use at any moment.

Beyond a rain barrel there are many improvised methods to catching rain water that we would like to share with you.

Strategy 1

Simply dig a hole at the end of your gutter and line the hole with any sort of plastic such as painter’s plastic, tarp, heavy ply garbage bags, etc.    This is a readily made basin for catching water and can be done with a little muscle and proper plastic.

Strategy 2

Develop a meditation, or other similar rock garden pool.  You have seen these in many folks yards I am sure.  They add a nice place of serenity for you on a daily basis, as well as give you many gallons of water in an emergency.

Strategy 3

Simply attach a hose, or other wise direct, rainwater from you gutter into any number of plastic containers, such as tubs, a baby pool, garbage cans and so on.

Strategy 4

Have buckets placed about the boundry areas of your yard or property (so they are easy to mow around) and just let them be.  If you have children, you can let them decorate the buckets as well..

Again, these are simple strategies to help you catch rain water for water containment and have it available for your use.  Please take the time now to prep, for the situations that may come up that limit your ability to get clean water from your faucet.  As always purify water, even collected rain water, if you can do so.  It is generally accepted that rain water itself, is pure water, so you should feel comfortable drinking it.  However, it is the catch basins that can become contaminated, so it best to purify and otherwise cleanse water if possible.

Until next time, we hope to see you on, or off the trail.