This whole living off of a 30 Day Supply of Dehydrated Food has been a real eye opener. First, I now know I will need a lot more food to feed my family in the case of an emergency, but also, I am going to need to seriously reconsider my water storage. When, One Hundred Dollar a Month reader, Ellen C., made the following comment yesterday, I knew I wasn’t the only one surprised by the amount of water I would need on hand in the event of an emergency. So, I thought I would share what I’ve learned so far.
I love your challenge and agree with the concerns of the other commenters; however, I have a question rather than a comment. If I were to purchase this same product for my emergency stores, how much water would be reasonable to stockpile per person per day in your estimation? This should include the water necessary to cook the supplemental rice and beans. Thanks so much for your great articles!Ellen C.
I really like the food so far in my 1 Month Food Supply Value Kit, so I will definitely be buying one as part of my emergency preparedness after this little experiment is over. For EACH 30 day basic kit, you’d need 6 gallons of water. Since I would definitely be supplementing with rice and beans, I would need an additional 2 gallons of water for the 7 cups of brown rice and 7 gallons of water for the beans. Here’s the thing, though, those numbers assume that I am cooking the rice and beans 1/4 cup at a time. If you increase the amount of beans and rice you are re-hydrating/cooking, you will need a little less, because you wouldn’t use so much for re-hydrating and rinsing the beans each time. That being said, you could save some water by cooking larger batches at a time, assuming you could eat/store everything you’d cooked.
Okay, so that brings us up to 15 gallons for one person, for 30 days, BARE MINIMUM for preparing food.
Now, most websites will recommend another gallon per day, per person. 1/2 gallon for drinking and the other for hygiene {bathing, brushing teeth, etc.}. This gallon probably assumes some cooking is involved, though, I don’t believe it assumes dehydrated foods, so I am going to add it to the dehydrated food requirement. So, add 30 gallons to the 15 gallons, and you are looking at about 45 gallons per person for 30 days. Oh, and here is another kicker: if you have pets, they need a half gallon to a gallon a day too {depending on size of course}. Sooo, one cat or dog would add an additional 30 gallons to that 45 number.
Holy buckets {literally}, that is A LOT more water than I have stored for an emergency presently. Now the question YOU have to ask yourself, is how many days of food storage do I need? Natural disaster websites recommend 3 days. I know lots of people who aim more toward 6 months to a year.
By my math, with my family of four {and Lucy, of course}, living on bare minimums, I would need 195 gallons of water to make it 30 days {drinking water, hygiene and re-hydrating food}.
I’m curious, how many days worth of food storage do YOU aim for? Do you have enough water to make it? I know I definitely have to re-think my planning a bit!
~Mavis
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