Water Storage

Art Ludwig has been designing water systems since 1980. His company, Oasis Design, has produced practical guides on greywater, rainwater, and water storage that have become standards in preparedness, homesteading, and water engineering circles alike. This book, at around 125 pages, covers more practical ground on household water storage than references three times its length.

The scope runs from simple polyethylene tanks and buried cisterns through ferrocement construction, ponds, and groundwater systems — at every scale from a few hundred gallons for short-term disruption to tens of thousands for fire protection and long-term independence. Each system is covered for design, materials, construction, maintenance, and cost. The ferrocement section in particular draws consistent interest from readers who want to build their own tanks rather than buy them.

It also addresses fire protection and emergency use — the subtitle isn't decoration. If your property is in a fire-prone area, the fire storage and gravity-fed system sections have a different kind of urgency than the household disruption framing. Our Water guides link to this book wherever we discuss long-term storage system design.