How I Prepared for the Drought
Three months without rain. My neighbors hauled water at $200 a load. I had 2,000 gallons ready. The work that made the difference happened two years earlier.
The summer of the drought, the family across the road spent $3,800 on water deliveries. Their garden died anyway. Their goats lost weight. They called the well company three times, hoping the diagnosis would change. It didn't.
They'd been "planning to set up water storage" for two years. They had the property, the budget, the time. What they didn't have, when the rain stopped, was tanks full of water.
I had two IBC totes, a rain barrel system, and a habit. The tanks held 2,000 gallons between them. The cost: $400, including the paint to block the sunlight. The work took one weekend. I did it two summers before the drought hit, when nothing was wrong and there was no urgency.
That's the entire trick. Drought preparation isn't a project you do during a drought. By then, the prices have spiked, the contractors are booked, and your neighbors are already in line at the water cooperative.
The mistake almost everyone makes
The mistake isn't lack of knowledge. The mistake is timing.
Most rural homeowners understand water storage in the abstract. They've seen IBC totes at the farm store. They know rain barrels exist. They've read articles. What they haven't done is the actual setup, because there's always something more pressing.
The fence needs mending. The roof needs flashing. The truck needs brakes. Water storage gets bumped because the well is working right now. There's water coming out of the tap right now. The crisis is theoretical and the to-do list is real.
Then the drought arrives and the math changes overnight. The same setup that would have cost you $400 and a weekend in May costs $3,800 in deliveries by August. And you still don't have a permanent solution — you've just paid more for a worse one.
What I did, in order
The work itself was simple. The discipline was doing it before I needed it.
Year one — assessment and starter capacity:
I figured out how much water my household actually uses in a normal week, then doubled it. We came out at roughly 200 gallons of "I need to keep things running" use, including the garden. So my drought-baseline target was 1,500-2,000 gallons of stored water — about ten weeks of independence at full normal use, or twenty weeks if I rationed garden watering.
I started with two rain barrels at $80 each off the downspouts behind the house. 110 gallons total. Not a real reserve, but enough to prove I'd actually use stored water for something. The rain barrels taught me what I needed to know — that 110 gallons was nothing, and that I needed real capacity.
Year two — the real capacity:
I bought two food-grade IBC totes from a feed supply store for $150 each. 550 gallons of capacity. Painted them black, then white over the top to reduce heat absorption. Set them on a level gravel pad behind the well house. Connected them at the bottom with a bulkhead fitting so they equalize. Plumbed the overflow into the garden swale.
Total cost: $400 with paint, fittings, and a transfer pump. Total time: one weekend.
Then I added the rainwater catchment system off the workshop roof. First-flush diverter, screen filter, a 3-inch line into the totes. Every inch of rain on the workshop's 600 square feet adds 360 gallons to my reserve — and the workshop sees more rain than I'd realized once I started measuring.
By the end of year two, I had 2,000 gallons of usable storage and the rain to keep it filled. The system was passive. It worked whether I was paying attention or not.
What changed when the drought hit
Three months without meaningful rain. The well dropped twelve feet. By July, the pump was pulling air more often than water. By August, neighbors were paying water haulers to fill their cisterns.
What I noticed wasn't the absence of crisis. It was the absence of anxiety.
The garden got watered from the totes instead of the well, taking pressure off the pump. The household pulled normal use from the well while the pump still had something to work with. The chickens drank rainwater that had been sitting since spring. None of it was rationed.
When the well finally caught a recharge in late September, my system filled back up over the next two weeks. Total cost of the drought to me: zero. Total cost of not being prepared, for the family across the road: $3,800 plus the dead garden plus the stressed livestock plus three months of fear.
The framework, broken out
If you want to do this on your own land, the framework is simple:
Calculate your minimum. Figure out your weekly water use under normal conditions. Drinking, cooking, hygiene, garden, livestock. Double it for safety. That's your daily target. Multiply by the number of days you want to be independent — 30, 60, 90 days. That's your storage capacity goal.
Match the container to the goal. Rain barrels for under 200 gallons. IBC totes for 200-1,500 gallons. Polyethylene or fiberglass tanks for 1,500-5,000 gallons. Concrete cisterns for permanent installations above 5,000 gallons. The full breakdown is in the Water Storage Guide.
Capture, don't just store. A static reserve drains and never refills. A capture system — rain catchment with first-flush diversion — keeps it full automatically. Every roof on your property is potential water.
Block the light. Algae needs sunlight. Translucent IBC totes turn into green soup in three weeks if you don't paint them or build an enclosure. Black paint first, white over the top.
Do it now. The current weather is irrelevant. Your tanks should fill with rain you don't yet need so you have water during the rain that doesn't come.
What it costs to wait
The math on procrastination is brutal. Here's what year-by-year delay actually costs:
| Decision | Year | Cost | Result |
|---|---|---|---|
| Set up storage in advance | Year 0 | $400 | 2,000 gallons available when needed |
| "I'll do it next spring" | Year 1 | $0 | No reserve |
| "I'll do it before fall" | Year 2 | $0 | No reserve |
| Drought hits | Year 2.5 | $3,800 in deliveries | Crisis-managed, no permanent solution |
| Set up storage after the crisis | Year 3 | $400 | Storage in place — but you've also paid $3,800 |
The neighbor across the road paid $4,200 over the same time period I paid $400. Same property type. Same options available. The only difference was when the work got done.
What this is really about
Drought preparation is a small, specific case of a bigger pattern: the systems that protect your family work because you built them before they were needed. After the failure isn't preparation. It's recovery.
The rain barrel I set up in year one wasn't useful as a reserve — it was useful as proof that I'd actually do this. Once I'd proven that to myself, the totes were just bigger versions of the same decision. By the time the drought arrived, the work was finished and the system was running on its own.
The question isn't whether your area will have a drought, a freeze, or a power outage. It will. The question is whether you'll have done the small amount of work, in the small amount of time, before any of those things happen.
Related resources
- Water Storage Guide — comprehensive technical breakdown of containers, tanks, and cisterns at every scale
- Off-Grid Water Systems Guide — the broader water security pillar
- Water Purification Arsenal — making stored water safe to drink
- Berkey vs Sawyer Water Filters — filter comparison
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