How much water do you actually need to store for 2 weeks with no access to running water?
We have our water bill set up for auto-pay, so I don’t look at it unless the amount seems off. We received a paper copy a few days ago and I was curious, so I opened it. My household of 2 adults and 2 large dogs uses an average of 60 gallons of water per day. This seemed outrageous, I was certain that we had a leak…until I Googled what is normal for an American household: 80-100 gallons per person(!) per day. My household is surprisingly well below average. We “should” be using closer to 200 gallons per day.
The average American uses 100 gallons of water per day when life is “normal”. That’s making me rethink my emergency water plan which allows for 2 gallons per person per day and 1 gallon per dog per day (I swear a dog only swallows 25% of the water they drink, the rest just drips out of their face). I know how to live comfortably on minimal water, but I never really measured what that minimal amount is; I’ve just used guidelines. My stash of 6 gallons per day suddenly seems very small.
Currently, the likelihood that we will have a scenario where there is absolutely no access to water anywhere is very, very low. An outage that lasts several hours is common where I live (about every 6 weeks), an outage that lasts several days has happened, but other parts of the city were not affected so we could go somewhere else nearby if needed. If we start having to deal with heavy rationing, this may not always be the case.
Has anyone here actually measured how much water they would use per day if services were out for a few weeks? Water for drinking, cooking, washing hands, bathing, pets/live stock, gardens, cleaning, laundry, toilets, etc? I know that I don’t need 60 gallons per person per day. If I conserve and am diligent, that number would be much lower, but I don’t know the real number.
I’m suddenly very aware of how much water is simply going down the drain.