Stowdry

Jason Parker

Testing emergency water gear at ReadyWater Prep from a suburb outside Houston, TX

About

Seven years in IT support means spending a lot of time on failure models: what broke, what the system was supposed to do, which assumption it violated. That habit is good for infrastructure and, it turns out, useful for evaluating water storage gear in a suburban garage. Getting there took a conversation.

A colleague named Tiffany asked me about water prep after flooding hit her parents' house. She brings a spreadsheet to what most people treat as a casual conversation, and she had seen enough of how I document things at work that she assumed I had real answers. I had vague ones. I could say "get a filter." I could not tell her which filter, how long it would hold up on non-tap source water, how to calculate the right storage volume for a family of four, or when a filter was the wrong tool entirely. She asked four questions I had no solid response to, and I spent the drive home realizing I had been carrying confidence without the underlying knowledge. That is a mismatch the job has trained me to fix.

Serious testing started in October 2024. The garage has become a year-round setup: food-grade containers in labeled rows along the left wall, a pegboard rack holding hose fittings and spare filter cartridges, a utility sink with a cold-water tap for fill and flush tests, and a concrete floor that is noticeably cooler underfoot at six in the morning before the Texas heat sets in. My neighbor Mel, who repairs HVAC systems professionally and approaches any piece of equipment with a built-in suspicion that it will fail, has been on-site for most of the larger tests. He watches something work once and immediately asks what happens the second time. My spouse has pointed out, on more than one occasion, that the footer-a116d1 situation in the garage has "become a thing." Both observations are accurate.

How I test

Minimum thirty days of real-condition use before anything goes in a review. Flow rate across multiple source water types and temperature conditions. Setup time from cold, without rereading the instructions, because several months may pass between when you buy something and when you actually need it. Weight when full. Lid seal after fifty-plus open-close cycles. Taste past week one on filtered sources. Any spec the product claims that testing did not confirm gets noted, with the number I measured and the conditions that produced it.

My results come from one suburban Houston household tested under short-term emergency conditions. Water emergencies carry real health risks, including waterborne illness from inadequate purification. What worked under my conditions may not apply directly to yours. Treat the information here as a starting point, verify your purification approach against your local health guidelines, and bring in a licensed professional for anything involving structural or medical questions specific to your situation.

What I don't cover

Rainwater harvesting, well water, off-grid homesteading, or anything that assumes rural property or a long-term infrastructure transition. This site covers short-term water disruptions for suburban households: hurricanes, flood events, boil-water advisories. Three to fourteen days.

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