Water Jug Refill Trips Calculator

There’s a particular brand of panic that sets in at 4 AM when you wake up realizing there’s no more water left and you’re a half-kilometre away from the next spigot by torchlight. The math was done in your head (or so you thought). And now it’s time for the walk.

Water is unforgiving. It is heavy. It doesn’t give a hoot about your itinerary. Whether your hike is a relaxing weekend or a miserable one often come down to planning the logistics of getting water from its source into your cup.

Why You Need to Plan Your Water Carefully

Water consumption are highly underestimated. People think they’ll be fine with two liters of drinking water per day. But you’re using water to wash dishes, wash hands, rinse out coffee grinds, boil pasta water, etc. These tasks is all unseen, yet very real. Throw in some cooking and washing needs and that number jump quickly. Bring a group and this demand multiplies rapidy.

The calculator will run the numbers for you based off your usage habits, trip length, and group size. From there it subtracts what you’re bringing and divides by what you can carry on each run. It handles all the conversions and reserve margins. You don’t need to do any guessing.

The key here is weight. A liter of water weigh a kilogram. This doesn’t sound like much until you consider that two five-gallon jugs weighs forty kilograms with the plastic. You can’t take the jug off and go for largest container possible because then your back won’t handle it. This little gadget lets you know how much you want to carry comfortabley. This makes you take into account number of trips. And if you don’t pay attention to how heavy jugs are when they’re empty, well, you’re carrying dead weight on every trip and that adds up.

Another reason why distance can be an issue. Carrying a lightweight load for a short distance isn’t too bad. Carrying a heavy load for a long distance stinks. The table on this page show that four 500m round trips add up to two kilometers of hiking with weight.

And, if you have a large camp set-up or are camping some distance away from the water source, you’ll want to modify your jug plan. Larger jugs reduces your number of trips, but increase your chance of spillage and/or injury; smaller jugs increases your number of trips, but decrease your burden per trip. Frequency vs load is something you’ll have to weigh.

For veteran campers, reserve water is non-negotiable. It is a period. Always plan on having spilled some out. Plan on another day when the weather change. Plan on forgetting to top off one night. Real world failure has a fifteen to twenty five percent buffer. That’s cheap insurance. So the calculator allows you to establish a percentage and adds that buffer to your overall need amount. Otherwise you have a brittle plan that shatters with a single mistake.

Consider run times. You want to top off when you have a third left. Running low will give you a buffer so you aren’t panicked at midnight. And it will space out work so you aren’t trying to do all this while hungry and exhausted. You’ll be able to see how varying run times affects things, a five-day basecamp trip is much more different than a solo overnight. The inputs has dramatic impacts on the output, so you can realy see what happens.

Planning water also isn’t simply a matter of getting hydrated. It’s a way to stay safe, comfortable and in a good mood. Planning out your gear and refills means you have a plan. You will know exactly how much weight you’re carrying and how often you’ll need to go back. No more guessing; knowing what to expect allows you to relax while at camp.

Know the next refill run is covered so you can sleep soundly, wash your dish, and enjoy your coffee. You should of do all the heavy lifting before leaving the house.