In emergency can you drink pool water

As the water evaporates, it will collect on the sheet and can be transferred to a vessel of your choice. A faster method would be to heat the water and collect the steam on the sheet and then transfer it to a proper container.

Note that both of these methods are significantly harder to do in colder climates due to less sunlight and heat. In the United States of America, there is on average 1 swimming pool for every 10 households. The next thing to consider is that even your own well-maintained pool will begin to grow algae after a few days if the water is not circulated.

Assuming your pool still has chlorine tablets and chemicals used for disinfection available this means that they probably are not being properly distributed within your pool. If you can drink swamp or even fecal water with a Life Straw , like this one found on Amazon, then clearly you can safely drink weeks old pool water as well.

And you can. Otherwise, it will harden and become difficult to use in the future. The big disadvantage of using the Life Straw, however, is the inability to transport clean water or use the water for other purposes such as cleaning or cooking.

And even in an emergency setting, I doubt most people will want to share Life Straws so everyone would likely need a straw of their own. Each household should have at least 1 gallon of water per person per day for both drinking, cleaning, and cooking. Whether you do this with bottled water or other storage methods is irrelevant so long as the water will be uncontaminated when needed. In the event of a disaster, assuming you are home the first things you should do is fill as many sinks and bathtubs with tap water as possible before water is shut off to your area.

These sources of water should be used first, followed by your emergency supply. Only if all these sources of water have been exhausted and rescue is not imminent should you then consider preparing pool water for consumption. Otherwise, use that water for cleaning or bathing. A good rule of thumb when evaluating whether or not you can drink from any unknown water source is to just treat it as if you are in the wilderness. Can chlorine kill you? By itself in concentrated form, chlorine is toxic to humans.

Whether ingested or breathed it can cause serious damage or death. It is best to avoid drinking excess amounts of pool or hot tub water for this reason. How to make saltwater pools drinkable? Unlike freshwater pools, you would need to desalinate saltwater by distillation. The easiest way is to boil the water and capture the evaporation.

Hey, I'm Jim and the author of this website. I have always been interested in survival, fishing, camping, and anything in nature. In fact, while growing up I spent more time on the water than on land! I am also a best-selling author and have a degree in History, Anthropology, and Music. Recently got a hot tub for medical reasons with the wife and it is now part of the plan too.

The hottub itself might be used to garden later on or pushed around to collect roof rainwater. One can make filter for water and after filtration boil it more than 30 minutes and water is safe for use.

It is same for spring water or pool water. Filter you can make form several levels of stones, sand, charcoal, sand, textile and stones.

If SHTF, it will probably become a backyard aquaculture tank. In the mean time, I try to keep it chlorinated and clean great fun with the two boys and the dog LOLOL But yes, we will use what we have if we need it. What a great idea! PS: There is one type of chlorine that is supposed to be better if drinking — maybe someone else would have that info.

Sniff it -yeah — jump in? Looking locally there is a couple of inexpensive options that would hold around 70 gallons. Have to think this over a bit more. Dragged by two little boys? No telling what you might find in the water. The tank has a drain near the bottom on the side that is not too hard to open if you keep Vaseline on the threads.

I generally drain it during cold weather. I think I could probably keep it thawed with a livestock water heater, if I had to. Covered, possibly even an aquarium heater. The trouble with that is it is only available from roughly April to October so water for storage is mostly needed during the frozen winter months.

A stock tank pond would work, as least as far as I can tell right now, but it would be under a juniper tree so would be fighting that too. The Iraqi invasion of Kuwait in resulted in our staff at the Embassy being held hostage in place. I had left just a few months earlier for a new assignment, but had played everyday after work in the pool with beloved offspring.

In Southern California, some locations used to be set up with above ground pools established by fire fighters for the purpose of refilling dump-buckets of helicopters.

We had at least 1 set up next to the helipad at the park I used to work at. It was kind of weird setting up these tanks because it was like setting up an inverted tent. If there were no fires burning and the helicopter was not in service, we used to jump into the pool from the roof of the dispatch trailer and climb out using a ladder. I cannot verify if there was in inner tube holding an ice-chest containing inexpensive Mexican beer in said tank. Our supervisors just shook their heads and left us alone- most of the time.

I wonder about plastic pools and the possibility of PCBs and other bad things leaching into the water. Consuming fish from PCB infused water is also a concern. Some algaes produce toxins that can not be filtered and are very hazardous to ingest.

Copper is a known algaecide and bactericide. Tossing a piece of copper pipe into the pool might be beneficial but too much copper in the drinking water could also be harmful. With the plastic pools a fairly new concept has been the inflatable ring pools.

As the water level rises so does the ring allowing a larger capacity. I can see these being very useful in a flood situation as they would keep the contents separated from the all of the nasty stuff in the flood water. Floating off would be a concern as would puncture from floating debris. Maybe some kind of fence around it? In my area bears using it as a drinking source would also be a worry. I doubt that the ring would stand up to bear claws on it.

My dumb ass son, heavy on the dumb ass,lives in a large city in the desert. DA as I prefer to call him put in huge in ground pool costing over fifty thousand dollars. I was really happy because now dumb ass daughter-in-law could cook up their one week supply of food for the grand children! The pool is sanitized with some kind of salt solution that makes the water undrinkable no matter what you do.

If anyone has an idea that could possibly make this water drinkable please respond. Do you have the name of the product? Or even the chemical name? A couple of poles, lots of fuel and a pot for the pool water and another for the water distilled off. Let us know what caliber of club proves efficacious. Your dumb-ass son is pretty smart with the salt-water system. Saves a lot of money on chemical and transportation. Big pain in the neck averted. Jane Foxe, For salt water I am pretty sure you would need to use a distiller for potable water.

Friend had problem when his ft well decided to take a 2 week vacation, early in the summer. The quick answer fro them was we hauled them filtered water from our home, Using mostly kitty litter jugs.. They were not physically able the time DH and I got on on replacing the pump and all the pipe, fun part was removing the well head. Might not last very long?

For salt water reverse osmosis is an option. PUR makes some for the marine industry. We had one of their early models on our sailboat Power Survivor 35 and it worked very well. PUR also makes manually operated reverse osmosis water makers for the Navy. The larger Survivor 35 models are included in the ship life raft survival kits and a smaller model 06 is include in pilot ejection seat kits. At the moment there are 8 of the Survivor 35s and 4 of the survivor 06s on eBay.

The 35 will make over 3. If not used the seals in the 35 will dry out and need to be replaced. If it is used the membrane needs to be treated with a biocide and on occasion may need to be replaced.

The 35 can be owner maintained. As I said though the 06 needs factory support. They were originally made by Katadyn then PUR. I think they might now be made by Recovery engineering. There are other makers of R. Lots of 12 volt systems for boats. When water evaporates, it leaves behind bacteria, parasites, particulates, and chemicals. As long as your collection container is clean, the evaporated water will condense into clean water droplets and collect in your container. If you have a heat source, boiling the water and collecting the evaporation will get you a drink a lot faster.

However, if all you have is sunlight and time, a solar still works great, too. This version of water still relies on a fuel source to heat the water. This is a good alternative for cloudy days or colder climates. Usually just suspending this above the bowl will be effective at keeping it cooler than the steam. Play with different heights above the bowl to find the ideal level for the sheet. Check out this simple and cool solar still design using only an aluminum can and a large plastic bottle.

The aluminum can in this example can be replaced with a smaller plastic container as long as it has a wide open top to it like these cans do. Think about it for a moment. Do you really want to add more chemicals to try to make it safe to drink? I would not suggest relying on your pool as the first option for survival. Relying on your pool as a source of emergency water is also not a good idea because it can become easily contaminated or turn stagnant.

This is especially true when the grid is down and your pool filter is not running. Also, the slew of chemicals your Poolman may be using can be difficult or impossible to remove. In an earthquake scenario, pool plaster and piping can become easily cracked causing it to drain completely.

So if you have to rely on your pool, the only sure way to make the water safe for consumption is to filter and distill it. Drink up! Now I want to hear from you! What are your thoughts when it comes to using your pool as a source of water? Share in the comments below!