Winter Water Woes

Okay, so with the deep freeze still with us, for a few days yet, I thought I would let people know how I have been keeping my water liquid. 

There are a few options, one is to store water in metal containers each one able to contain a gallon. 

Why? Well you can put the metal container on your stove and melt the solid block of ice, yet it is not too large or heavy to handle.

I have not found those yet, so I will go with my backup plan which is to have a number of smaller water containers, such as 1.5 litre water bottles. 

I keep filling them up at work and taking them home each day. This way I let work keep my water liquid during the day for me.

At home I fill up a hot water bottle and snuggle my bottles of water (and coffee creamer) in a bag wrapped in a towel.

This way the water (and coffee creamer) will stay (mostly) liquid by morning (mmm, coffee cream slushie). 

I still do my trick of filling my coffee percolator and kettle the night before. Logic and experience have taught me that one. 

This way it doesn’t matter if the water in them freezes overnight as I can simply put the kettle or coffee percolator on the stove . . . they’ll defrost quickly enough.

When the weather is warmer I can go back to filling my five gallon jugs of water at the grocery store, as I prefer. 

When I have water in them I shake the jugs up like a martini shaker. This is to break up the ice in them as at least you can pour out shards of ice into the kettle to melt.

With the weather in the deep freeze, though, my large jugs can and will freeze solid in no time flat. This makes them ineffective to use south of -20C

Just try defrosting a large block of ice . . . it may freeze fast, but it won’t melt fast. At least not without the heat of summer (which is a long time coming.)

My trick these days is to only bring home enough water to last me the night and morning. That way I can function yet not have useless blocks of ice. 

The absolute backup plan is to melt snow, but I haven’t done that yet, as I would prefer to do that and then put that melted water through some sort of water filter.

As always: Keep your head up, your attitude positive and keep moving forward!