Sanitation and Hygiene When the Water Is Off

When the water is off you need four things: a bucket toilet lined with two trash bags and dry cat litter, the right bleach mix for each job, a jug-and-soap station for handwashing, and a sealed, out-of-the-way spot for trash and waste bags. Bleach is mixed differently depending on what it's for. Drinking water gets 8 drops per gallon of 6% bleach. Dishes get 1 tablespoon per gallon. Surfaces get 5 tablespoons per gallon. Don't mix those up.

The rest of this post goes through each one: what to buy, how to set it up, and how to keep a house of four from getting sick over a long weekend with dry taps.

01First, figure out which problem you have

The answer changes depending on why the water stopped.

• Water off, sewer working. A city main break, or a well pump with no power. The drains still work. You can flush by pouring a bucket of water quickly into the bowl. Use the dirty water for this: rinse water, melted snow, the stuff you'd never drink.
• Sewer not working or backed up. Flooding, a broken line, or the city telling you not to flush. Nothing goes down the drain. This is when you switch to the bucket toilet.

If you're on a well, power is usually the problem, and your septic system still takes waste. Our post on the water a well still has when the power is out covers getting more out of it.

For toilet-only details, see when the toilet won't flush. Here's the short version.

02The bucket toilet

King County, Washington's public health department gives the basic method. Line a 5-gallon pail, or the toilet bowl itself, with two heavy-duty plastic garbage bags. Put absorbent material in the bottom: cat litter, fireplace ash, or sawdust. At the end of each day, tie the bag off and move it somewhere protected like a garage, basement, or shed.

Seattle-area emergency groups go a step further with a two-bucket system. One bucket is for pee, the other for poop. Feces with no urine in it is drier, smells less, and takes up much less bag space. Kitsap County's twin-bucket sheet has you line the poo bucket with two bags and cover each deposit completely with litter, ash, or sawdust. Toilet paper goes in the poo bucket or the trash, never the pee bucket.

What to buy now:

• Two 5-gallon buckets with tight lids (hardware store, usually a few dollars each)
• A box of heavy-duty 13-gallon kitchen bags and a box of contractor bags
• A 20-plus-pound bag of clumping or clay cat litter
• Pool noodle or foam pipe insulation, slit and pressed onto the rim so you're not sitting on a plastic edge
• Toilet paper, nitrile gloves, and a roll of duct tape

Put it all inside one of the buckets, snap the lid on, and label it. That's your kit.

About bleach in the toilet bucket. Some older local guides say to pour a 1-to-10 bleach mix into the bucket after each use. Be careful with that. The CDC says never to mix bleach with other cleaners because the fumes can be dangerous, and urine breaks down into ammonia. In a closed bathroom, dry litter is the safer way to control odor. Save the bleach for wiping the seat, rim, and lid.

03Bleach: three jobs, three mixes

Use regular, unscented household bleach for all of these. Splashless, scented, and color-safe bleaches don't disinfect properly. Check the label for the sodium hypochlorite percentage, because bottles run from about 5% to 8.25%.

1. Drinking water: drops. From EPA's emergency disinfection guide:

• 6% bleach: 8 drops per gallon
• 8.25% bleach: 6 drops per gallon
• Stir and wait 30 minutes. It should smell slightly of chlorine. If it doesn't, dose again and wait 15 more minutes.
• If the water is cloudy, colored, or very cold, use double the bleach. Strain cloudy water through a coffee filter or clean cloth first.

The full how-to, including boiling and filters, is in Water Purification: Boil, Filter, Bleach, Tablets.

2. Dishes and food counters: one tablespoon. USDA's food safety guidance says to rinse dishes, then soak them 15 minutes in 1 tablespoon of unscented bleach per gallon of the cleanest water you have. Use the same mix on counters where food goes.

3. Surfaces, toilet seat, bucket lid: five tablespoons. The CDC's surface mix is 5 tablespoons (1/3 cup) per gallon or 4 teaspoons per quart of room-temperature water.

• Clean off visible dirt with soap first. Bleach doesn't work well on grime.
• Keep the surface wet for at least 1 minute.
• Open a window.
• Mix a fresh batch every day. CDC says it loses strength after 24 hours.

A quart spray bottle is plenty for a few days. Write "4 tsp bleach / quart, mix daily" on it with a marker so whoever is tired at 2 a.m. doesn't have to guess.

04Handwashing with no tap

This matters more than anything else on this page. Most of the stomach bugs that go through a house during an outage get passed by hand.

The CDC's rule still applies: soap and water, scrub for at least 20 seconds. If you don't have clean water, use hand sanitizer with at least 60% alcohol.

A simple station that works:

• A 2- to 5-gallon water jug with a spigot, set on the edge of a counter or a stool
• A bucket or dishpan under it to catch gray water
• A pump bottle of liquid soap
• Paper towels and a small trash can

Wet your hands, shut the spigot, lather and scrub for 20 seconds, then rinse. You'll use far less water than at a sink. Save the gray water for pour-flushing if the sewer works.

Use sanitizer in between, not in place of washing. Sanitizer doesn't do well on hands that are visibly greasy or dirty, so if you've been working on the generator or handling raw meat, wash with soap. Always wash after using the bucket toilet, before cooking, before eating, and after changing a diaper.

If the water you have isn't safe to drink, treat it before you wash with it. Use the drinking-water dose above.

05Bathing and teeth

You don't need a shower to stay healthy for a few days.

• Sponge bath: a basin with a quart or two of warm water, a washcloth, and soap. Wash face and hands first and the groin area last.
• Wipes: a large pack of unscented body wipes covers a lot of days. Wipes go in the trash, never in a toilet, working or not.
• Teeth: brush with treated or bottled water only, and spit into the gray-water bucket.
• Babies: wash and rinse bottles with safe water. Disposable diapers go in a lidded trash can with a liner.

In winter, warm the wash water on the stove so nobody skips it. See cooking when the power is out for safe ways to heat water indoors.

06Trash and the waste bags

When the garbage truck doesn't come, the pile grows fast. Raccoons, rats, and flies find it within days.

• Keep waste bags separate from kitchen trash. Tie each toilet bag closed, put it inside a second bag, and store it in a lidded can or tote in the garage or shed, away from kids and animals.
• Kitchen trash goes in lidded cans outside. Use duct tape or a bungee to keep the lids shut against raccoons.
• Don't burn it. Burning trash is illegal or restricted in many towns, and burning plastic bags of waste is a health hazard. Check your local and state rules.
• Dispose of the bags the way your officials say. King County notes that sealed waste bags may go out with regular garbage after a public announcement says so. Wait for that announcement. Don't toss them in a dumpster before it comes.
• Spoiled fridge food gets bagged and goes straight out. Our post on what in the fridge has to go on day two tells you what to toss.

07The one-bucket checklist

Build this today. It costs less than a week of takeout and fits in a closet corner.

• Two 5-gallon buckets with lids, plus foam for the rim
• Heavy-duty 13-gallon bags and contractor bags
• 20+ lb of cat litter
• Gloves, toilet paper, duct tape
• One jug of regular unscented bleach (it loses strength over time, so replace it about once a year)
• A dropper, a measuring spoon set, and a quart spray bottle labeled with the 4-teaspoon mix
• A water jug with a spigot, a pump bottle of soap, paper towels
• Two bottles of 60%+ alcohol hand sanitizer, a large pack of body wipes

Tape a card inside the lid with the three bleach numbers: 8 drops per gallon to drink, 1 tablespoon per gallon for dishes, 5 tablespoons per gallon for surfaces. Add this kit to your 72-hour kit checklist and you're covered for the first few days without water.

Related: Water Storage for a Family: How Much and How to Rotate It

Sources (6)

• EPA: Emergency Disinfection of Drinking Water
• CDC: Cleaning and Disinfecting with Bleach
• CDC: About Handwashing
• USDA FSIS: A Consumer's Guide to Food Safety, Severe Storms and Hurricanes
• King County Public Health: How to Create an Emergency Toilet
• Kitsap County DEM: Twin-Bucket Emergency Toilet

Photo: Bucket toilet with two buckets by Carol McCreary, CC BY-SA 2.0.