Your household water plan

Eleven questions. Six sections back, built from your own numbers and made to print.

Free, no account, no email required to see any of it. The form runs in your browser and the answers stay in the address bar.

Who the water has to cover

People

Dogs

Cats

What the water has to do Drinking alone is a smaller number than drinking, cooking and washing.

Where you are

Housing

Region Used for one seasonal reminder and nothing else.

What you have right now

Gallons stored Count what you would actually drink. A case of 24 is 3.2.

Last filled or replaced Leave it blank if you do not know. The plan says so if you do.

Stored in

Case of 24 half liter bottles Sealed at the plant. Use the printed date, not the six month rule.
Six one gallon jugs Thin walls. These fail in storage more often than anything else here.
Five gallon stackable jug Refillable. Forty pounds full, which most people can still carry.
Seven gallon rigid container Fifty eight pounds full. Check the spigot before you need it.
Fifty five gallon drum Four hundred and sixty pounds full. It never moves again, and it needs a pump.
Bathtub liner, filled at the warning Zero storage cost and zero use until you fill it. It only counts with warning.

How you would treat water you find

A pot and a heat source Bacteria, viruses and protozoa, at a rolling boil for one minute.
Unscented household bleach Most bacteria and viruses in clear water, after thirty minutes.
Chlorine dioxide tablets Bacteria, viruses, and Cryptosporidium after a four hour wait.
Hollow fiber filter, 0.2 micron Bacteria and protozoa, at the rated flow.
Countertop gravity filter with carbon Sediment, taste, chlorine and many organic compounds.
Distiller or a solar still Nearly everything, including salt and metals.

Check only what you own today. The report names what the checked set leaves uncovered, which is the half nobody prints on the box.

daily need = people x gallons per person per day, plus 0.5 per dog and 0.0625 per cat days of water left = gallons on hand / daily need gap = (daily need x target days) - gallons on hand

The report needs JavaScript, because the arithmetic runs in your browser rather than on a server. Every formula it uses is printed above, so a pencil gets you the same answer.

The Water Gap Report

Your household water plan

Built at thewatergap.com/water-plan/ from your own answers.

1. Your number

0 days of water left

2. Your gap

Gallons short of each mark: 72 hours, Two weeks, One month.

Target	Gallons needed	You have	Short by	Why this mark

3. The shopping list

Three ways to close the two week gap. Prices are typical US retail, rounded, and they are here to size a decision rather than to quote a cart.

4. Your rotation calendar

Container	Replace every	Next due	Watch for

5. Your treatment plan

What none of it handles

6. Your weakest link

The fix:

One date a year

Every number here is arithmetic on what you typed, run in your browser. Nothing was uploaded to build this page. If you choose to email it to yourself, some of these values travel with the address, and they are listed by name on the privacy page.

Answer the questions above and the report builds itself here, free and without an email address.

Nothing above needed an address, and it still does not. Read how the storage side works or see where the daily number comes from.

Re-run this at thewatergap.com/water-plan/ when the household changes.