One of the ironies about winter is that when you are surrounded by snow and ice it doesn’t necessarily mean that you’re water issues are over.
Once in a while someone asks me about how I keep water in a vehicle emergency kit in the winter. The answer is I keep it he same way i keep it in the summer – small pouches or small plastic bottles. But don’t they freeze? Yes.
See, the problem isn’t really about the water freezing. The problem is about how you thaw the water. The solution, of course, is pretty freakin’ obvious – the smaller the quantity of ice, the faster it will thaw.
Imagine a gallon of ice as a frozen block. Now imagine 128 1-ounce ice cubes lined up in a row. Which one will thaw completely faster? The ice cubes, of course.
There’s two ways I keep water in the vehicle – I use either the small 4 oz. ‘lifeboat ration’ water pouches or the small hand grenade sized plastic water bottles. Both are small enough you can shove them in a pocket or under your butt and thaw them out. The pouches are the easiest to thaw..they are about the size and thickness of a Pop Tart and you can thaw them in just a few minutes by sitting on them. Yes, it takes a lot of them to add up to a couple gallons of water (which you should always have in your vehicle). So what? Whether its 2 1-gallon jugs or 64 4-oz. pouches its still the same amount of water…the only difference is that it wont take two days for the pouches to thaw.
The pouches freeze quite well and I’ve never had one fail from being frozen, but, of course, whenthey are frozen try no to bang them around. The plastic water bottles have also never given me any problems and I’ve had them go through several freeze/thaw cycles. Fact is, most bottled water is packaged in bottles that are so darn tough you can pretty much ignore them. Roll a couple under the seats of your car and forget about ’em.
Melt snow and ice when you’re by the side of the road? Well, yeah, you can do that but you would be amazed at how much snow it takes to make an appreciable amount of water. I remember reading somewhere that 1″ of rain is the same amount of water as 10″ of snow.
What this means is that if you think you’re going to cut the top off an empty beer can with your pocket knife, scoop up a can full of snow, and melt it over your Zippo to drink..well..you need to do that about a dozen times to get one can full of water. Youre better off storing the stuff in your vehicle. Sure, you can do it as a last resort, but don’t you have better things to do with your heat sources?
So, for those who wonder how do you keep water in your vehicle in the winter without it freezing, the answer is: you don’t. You let it freeze, but you take steps to make sure its easy to thaw. I suppose if youre creative you could have a small ice chest in your vehicle to keep the water in and if you get stuck throw some chemical handwarmers in there to keep the water from refreezing once you thaw it.
Me, I go with the pouches….light, easy to transport, fit in my pockets, and they thaw fast.
