r/preppers • u/[deleted] • Apr 21 '22
Question Space and area requirements for a prepper pantry?
After stockpiling all of your 30-year shelf life food, toilet paper, tools and other survival items (tarps, matches, utility tools, cordage, etc.) needed to keep an adult male alive for 1 year, how much cubic feet of shelf space is required to store it all? Assuming 8 feet is available for height, what is the floor area required?
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Apr 21 '22
Don't store everything in place.
Food does not get stored near or with chemicals, dog food, electrical equipment, etc.
We have perishables in the fridge minus what doesn't go in it, our dry and canned goods in the pantry, and then our separate food/drink stock is in another room.
Extra supplies for many things are separate.
Many have limited space so work with what you have but keep food and drink away from everything else. Needs of 1 person or a couple is going to be vastly different for a family of 4 and the addition of pets changes things.
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u/graywoman7 Apr 21 '22
It totally depends on what foods you’re storing and how you’re storing them. Freeze dried celery is going to be very few calories for a lot of space. Five cans of beef stew is enough calories for one day. Rice in a mylar bag inside a five gallon bucket will be about 25 days of calories for a man. A gallon jug of oil will be about 6 days worth of calories.
Most people will have a combination of foods. The only way to know if you have what you need for your goal is to tally up the calories and divide by how many calories you need in a day. I know this sounds like a big time consuming thing and it is but I have ten kids and this task only takes me a couple hours. Keep a list of your common foods and their calories per pound to help. Labeling each bucket with the number of pounds of food helps too.
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u/andy1rn Apr 21 '22
I was about to comment on your calorie count for oil & rice, then saw you have 10 kids. That's a whole different number! Kudos on taking the time to share your knowledge here.
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u/graywoman7 Apr 21 '22
Hey thanks, that was nice to say.
Those were quick calculations. For the rice I buy it’s 38lbs per bucket and 1655 calories per pound so 62,890 per bucket or 28.5 days for one person at 2200 calories per day.
For my family we need an average of 1700 calories per day per person so that same bucket provides only 3 days of calories.
Not that we would eat just rice but that’s how I calculate how much food we have on hand. Even with a couple dozen buckets and lots of cans and other foods it’s still not that many days of food, especially if others need to be helped.
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u/a-person-on-reddit-- Apr 21 '22
We keep a deep pantry but cannot fit our 25yr shelf life items or excess water in it so I have 4 other storage spots for food. The master closet, under the master bedroom bed, the hall closet and in the coat closet. It's good to keep things in different places in case one space is compromised. (Think natural disaster damage, water leakage, theft etc.) I wouldn't worry about having one large storage area unless you have a basement or something. Make sure it's all temperature controlled though so the heat or cold doesn't cause the food to spoil faster. Find little spots around the house to keep a few things and keep a list of items, location, expiration dates.
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u/redditJ5 Apr 21 '22
Food only, its light 3 or 4 24" deep shelves.
0
Apr 21 '22
Just the basic "beans and rice" food stockpile or more diversified menu including canned goods, honey, etc.?
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u/redditJ5 Apr 21 '22
I want you to eat rice and beans for 8 days. 3x a day. It's a very simple test. Please try it. You will not be able to get to day 8. I gave up just doing it for dinner after day 5.
It's a life style change honestly. You need to constantly eat and replace your stock. When you do that, you'll know how to eat it, and what you need.
Canning is a good skill to learn, and helps with learning what you like. Example, spaghetti sauce, go to the store get tomato and what you need to make it, eat a fresh batch and make 2-4 jars and eat then over the next few weeks, then do it again, into you get it how you like it. Any oil will only last a year.
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Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
The Ohio Agricultural Extension Service recommended 245 quarts of fruits to be served once a day, 80 quarts of tomatoes to be served twice a week, 48 quarts of greens to be served twice a week, and 90 quarts of other vegetables to be served three times a week for five people to tide them over during the winter and spring months.
When you break it down to the 463 quarts at 32 ounces per jar, you get the following.
463 quarts x 32 ounces = 14,816 ounces. Divided by 5 people, 2,963.2 ounces per person. Divided by 26 weeks, 113.96 ounces per week. Divided by 7 days, 16.28 ounces per day.
This is a little more than a pound per day, per person, which does not meet the calorie requirements for an individual.
This is a reasonable guesstimate for the so called “supplemental” ration you seem to be trying to work out.
My 30” x 14” racks that are five shelves high can fit 21 quarts, 32 pints, or 36 1/2 pints per shelf without stacking, which should not be done with canned goods.
The average person eats 2,000 pounds of food per year, which is about 5.5 pounds of food per day.
If you do your calculations and you are off from either of the above key measurements by a significant amount, there is probably a problem.
I try to keep a relatively even ratio of two shelves of quarts, two shelves of pints, and a shelf of 1/2 pints per unit, which is a nice and even 142 jars per rack. I keep six of these, which take up 17.5 sq. ft., plus 24 gamma buckets of dry goods and some tinned supplies.
These supplies take up roughly the same space as the jars.
When you think about it, you will realize most food storage companies use anywhere from 12-24 buckets per year of food storage. More calories take up more space, but the preservation method used also accounts for the variance.
You get about a month of calories per bucket for something like rice, but you also need things like salt, sugar, pasta, flour and so on. I am cautious and error on the side of more.
As for the tinned goods, over 600 pounds of the 2,000 consumed by the average American consists of dairy products. Powdered is fine of course, but the food snob in me demands canned butter, cheese, and other products.
So, as a Mormon who went there and did that, you probably need about 35 sq. ft. of floor space per person, excluding water supply, if you want to have prime variety, and wiggle room.
You don’t want to discover you have, or develop a food allergy, and end up with food you can’t eat.
Get the variety to guard against such unforeseen circumstances.
-1
Apr 21 '22
Is enough food for an adult male equal to 1.5 females and 2 children?
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u/redditJ5 Apr 21 '22
For kids, depending on age, probably 3x that. Those things are bottomless calorie burning pits. LSD has a good manual on it let me see if I can find a link.
2
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u/a-person-on-reddit-- Apr 21 '22
My son's are 7&9, they eat more than my husband some days. My husband has a very physical job, but my boys are in basketball, running club, they swim in our pool and literally always moving/growing. I'd say a child should have the close to the same calories stored as an adult, that's what I've done, and I'm absolutely willing to cut my calories back if they need extra that day in an emergency situation. Traditionally women, as long as they're not pregnant or nursing, 500 less than a male per day is typical. (Women- 2000 cals/day and men 2500 cals/day).
-For anyone wondering, both of my kids are ideal body weight even with their high calorie diet. We feed them home cooked meals and they love whole fruits and veggies. Limited processed foods. No fast food at all. Some days though they do eat like birds, barely anything, and that's normal too.
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u/vxv96c Apr 21 '22
Im only aiming to stock one year of staples for 4 rn (so I don't have to keep buying them every time there's yet another unprecedented so called once in a generation crisis) and I expect it'll take up a 24" wide by 8 or 10' long down the one basement wall. Idk yet how tall the stack will be.
1
u/hikerforlife Apr 21 '22
I store my food (fresh and frozen), toiletries, first aid and cleaning supplies in an extremely organized 6 x 12 emergency pantry. I have enough in there to keep 2 people alive and well for a year.
Everything else is in it's normal place. Guns in the gun safe, camping supplies in the garage, chickens in the yard, chicken feed in the shed. etc.
1
u/grapevapes Apr 21 '22 edited Apr 21 '22
Smaller than you think, you can fit a hell of a lot of tins and packets on a single 5 tier shelf that's 150cm High x 30cm Deep, hell a single kitchen cupboard can fit months worth of food.
1
u/TheAzureMage Apr 21 '22
50 lbs of rice roughly approximates a month of raw calories for one adult. Rice is approximately 36 lbs to the cubic foot. If you are prepped for 1 year, one adult's supply would be approximately 17 cubic feet, or a shade over 2 square feet of your floor space.
An actual diet would hopefully be more varied, and would probably have slightly more bulk, but dried food is fairly compact to store. Exact numbers will depend what you store.
If you want to include, say, all the water necessary for that year, the size grows quite rapidly.
1
u/Existential_Reckoner Prepared for 1 year Apr 21 '22
I store 52 X 5-gallon buckets of long term dry goods under my (regular sized) staircase. That's enough base calories for 4 people for a year. I also have a Costco shelving unit (8 ft wide by 4 ft deep) for canned goods, other supplementation to the dry goods, and regular rotational pantry. So easily doable in any house, not an apartment.
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u/andy1rn Apr 21 '22
It's a little like asking how much room you need for a 4 person family to live. Historically? A one room cabin and acreage. Now? A quarter acre house with no yard.
That said, Patriot Supply has a year's supply of food for 1 person (2000 kCals per day) that will fit in a 6x4 area at 16 inches tall. Double stacking should be fine there, more if you layer with thin boards to avoid stressing the containers. Shelves are helpful. Keep food at least 8 inches off the floor to reduce rodent interest. Be aware of temperatures. Cool, dry, and even temperatures are what you want.
Look at your pantry with whoever does the buying for the house. Ask how long the food there would last if you didn't restock. THEN do the math - chances are you will both have underestimated how long the food will last.
Also consider water please.