Gunner Quinn
Over the past several years we have experienced significant disruptions to our normal routines of life. In the big cities, the heavy hand of government. The ‘two weeks to flatten the curve’ turned into years with numerous stay home orders, social distancing, lockdowns of churches, face mask ‘requirements’ and ‘vaccination’ mandates. Vaccine passports, at one point it was said were required for travel between provinces and crossing the Canada-US border. Police were pulling people over on the roadways to check whether or not your reason to be out and about was considered ‘essential’. It all culminated in million-person waves of protest starting in Ottawa and spreading across the continent when truckers and farmers were joined with many of us who felt that we had already seen enough.
In that bastion of conservatism, Canada’s Alberta, several Christian pastors were being jailed for daring to open church on Sunday mornings. In Ontario, churches not submitting to the lockdown orders were fined millions of dollars while the locks on church buildings were forcibly changed by police. Eventually, the courts dismissed many charges, while permitting others to stand. Canadians who happened to be in US conservative states were shocked when they returned. Many of those taking the jabs to travel, have suffered severe adverse side effects.
For some, experiencing disruption has been the shut off of access to municipal utilities. The Agenda being followed by municipalities in the US and Canada is driven by the UN and affiliates, and it is demanding that utility meters be replaced with so-called SMART meters. These advanced data collection devices, use radio frequency transmissions to ease the collection of usage information to the agencies collecting billing data. These devices are opaque – they cannot be read like a traditional meter, but instead require a proprietary reader device which only the utilities possess and control.
Being prepared for calamity includes planning for water. At this juncture, this writer’s family is experiencing our third winter disconnected from municipal water. We did not raise a protest, rather, we decided to use this circumstance to practice our preparedness for the inevitable.
“Revolutions may come from empty stomachs within days, but almost instantaneous panic, chaos, and sheer violence will come from people driven by thirst with no water… within hours.” – The Civil Defense Manual
In this essay, I will describe how we measured and monitored water levels in storage containers that are not easily accessed or viewed. I also include a schematic for a very simple low power device which I built. But, first I will discuss water quantity requirements.
Dangerous Mythologies
We all have read, or seen videos, of people claiming that they are preparing for an end-of-the-world-as-we-know-it (TEOTWAWKI) event by stacking store-bought plastic bottles of water. And then there are more than a few who are saying they are planning to cope simply by rationing water to one gallon per person per day. The assumption that your water delivery system will not be impacted, seems presumptuous, but let’s work with that.
If you assume the half liter sized storebought water bottles, you are assuming about eight bottles per US gallon per day. That works out to 720 bottles per person over the course of a 90-day emergency.
At very least the storebought water bottles provide a way to measure consumption rates. But as a general solution, most of us reading this will have already dismissed the storebought plastic bottle as a non-solution.
But, how realistic is the assumption of, one gallon per day, per person?
Consider that one gallon might be a bare minimum consumed simply by food preparation and drinking in some climates. But, have you ever considered that these estimates might not be factoring in long days of working hard physically and sweating profusely – particularly in warm climates?
What considerations have been made of hygiene? Do we seriously think that people will go for entire seasons without washing? Do we ever consider whether lack of hygiene ever contributed to illness? History might suggest that good health and hygiene are somewhat linked. Quite possibly, hygiene might prove to be more essential than a cabinet full of pharmaceuticals?
Next, what considerations have been made of water quality? How is your emergency water going to be kept fresh? How is it going to be stored? How are you going to prevent it from freezing? How are you going to control microorganisms? Algae? And finally, how are you going to monitor what water quantities you have on hand?
It is imperative that we reflect on these things before a calamity befalls us. How long can you live on one gallon per day? How much do you actually expect to use after your assumptions get blown? Have you ever even tested your theories?
Forcing Our Hand
In the 20th century, East Bloc communist regimes infamously established control by restricting access to food. Here in the west, our rogue governments have shut off our access to water as a means of control. In 2022 and we were suddenly forced to rather carefully monitor our usage. Regular readers might recall that this experience was described in two parts in February 2024:
What has our experience been? Just the two of us, modest lifestyles, we have been consuming between 500 and 1,000 gallons per month. This does not include garden irrigation. But it does not include livestock. And without an ever-conscious mindset of conserving water, consumption rates have demonstrated that they can quickly escalate far beyond this.
Daily showers? Think, again. It is sponge-baths. During dry spells, we try to coordinate weekly showers or baths and laundry days with the arrival of precipitation. The math works out to more than 8 gallons per person, per day, bare minimum.
In our “bug out” travel trailer, we rely on a 20-gallon poly tank tucked away under the furniture. We use a waterless composting toilet. When we do not factor in showers or laundry – just drinking, cooking, and cleaning dishes – three or four days supply – the math works out to about 3 gallons per person, per day.
That has been our experience over the past three years. We can survive a couple of weeks backpacking with just a gallon per day – but that is highly unrealistic in a longer-term scenario.
Cistern
In some parts of the world people entirely depend on rainwater capture and storage to meet their primary water requirements. In 2023 we began our own underground cistern project, as described in a two-part article, back in April 2024:
Now that we have some measure of independence in terms of our water supply we also created a backup power system to ensure reliability.
Rather than rely on 12 volt pumps maintain pressure in the water pipes, we now have a 120 volt AC jet pump connected to a solar-powered inverter. Our backup power system was described in a three-part article, in June 2024:
The cistern storage system tripled our storage and it did so in a way where it was less vulnerable to winter freeze, and it also kept the water in summer cool and dark. However, there were also some down sides. Whereas our accessible IBC tote could be measured daily using a visual inspection, a simple dip stick – the buried cistern, like the water tank tucked behind the furniture, presented little opportunity for direct observation. But we needed a more sophisticated method to monitor the water level in the cistern.
Initial Failures
My search for commercial products to monitor water levels in a cistern yielded fancy, expensive, wireless level monitors that had rather undesirable dependencies. Dependencies such as WiFi and disposable batteries made these far less than ideal. And besides, none of these products fit the budget.
Next, I tried a float which was designed to turn on a sump pump when the water level reached a certain level and which would turn it off when it reached a set minimum. The sump pumps are driven by 120 VAC grid power, and the float system supplied 120 volts as it would turn on, and then 0 volts as it would turn off. To achieve this easily, the float plugged into a 120 volt receptacle, with the pump plugged into a piggyback receptacle integrated into this plug.
The first problem with this is that I did not want to control an AC appliance at all. I just wanted to have a signal of some sort so that I would not overfill the cistern. Secondly, it would also be beneficial to know how close to empty we were. And the third problem showed up in practice when the float tended to tangle in the crevices of the cistern.
Next, I tried a low-voltage DC switch designed to turn on bilge pump on boats. When the water level in the bilge was too high, it would close a switch using a closely hinged float. The product would have been somewhat useful, however in practice it turned out that it was reliant on subsequent wave action to reopen the switch when the water level had been sufficiently reduced. In a static application like a land-based water storage system, the lack of wave action also meant that the switch never turned off after the tank had been filled. Affordable, yes. But it was not doing what I needed it to do.
(To be concluded tomorrow, in Part 2.)
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