Surviving a Water Outage

Sooner or later, bad weather or other disasters will leave you without a constant and safe water supply. Here's the information you need to be ready to deal with that.

How to flush ~
Contrary to what many people assume, toilets do not require electricity to work. They also don't require running water. There are two ways to flush a toilet during a water outage. The first is simply to pour water into the tank on the back. Just fill it until the float starts to rise, and then push the handle to flush as you normally do. If you have rainwater, pool water, or some other source of water, just use a bucket to do that after each flush.

If you need to conserve water, you can use less water per flush by pouring the water directly into the bowl (by-passing the tank in back). Hold a bucket about waist-high, and pour water into the tank until the weight of the water causes it to start swirling. You can stop pouring then, and it will finish flushing on its own. Since that water never passes through the tank, you can use water that isn't as clean, without worrying about yucking up the inside of the tank. This is a handy way to get rid of dishwater and bathwater in a useful way.

How to wash dishes ~
If you have any advance warning, stock on paper plates and cups, and plastic utensils. Dish washing is a huge waste of freshwater. If your water outage is expected to be very short, just save up the dirty pots and pans until the water comes back on. But if you're going to be rationing water for a significant period of time, use rain water to wash in. If there's some reason to think your rain water isn't pure, do your final rinse in the cleanest water available, with a splash of bleach stirred in.