For Well Owners
My Well Pump Died in an Ice Storm. The Little Filter Straw I'd Been Saving Clogged in 20 Minutes.
That was the day I quit trusting gear I'd never tried. Here's what earned a spot in my truck after I bought a pile of them and ran them on creek water.
Walt Kohler · On a well for 10 years, Missouri
Updated November 2026 · 11 min read
I want to tell you about the worst three days I've ever had in my own house.
It was a few winters back. I still think about it every time the forecast turns.
Nobody died. Nobody got hurt. But I found out something about myself on a frozen creek bank that I didn't care to learn, and it's why I'm writing this down for anybody else who lives out where I do.
It started like any other cold snap
I live past the county line, on a well. I always figured that was the smart way to be.
City water goes down, mine keeps running. I'd said that out loud to more than one person, usually with a little smile.
I had a case of water in the pantry. I had a generator in the shed that I'd never once run the pump on. And I had a cheap hiking straw somebody gave me for Christmas, in the go-bag, still in the wrapper.
I figured I was in better shape than most.
I wasn't.
Then the ice came down, and my water went with it
The ice took the lines down about two in the morning.
I woke up to no lights, which I expected. I went to the kitchen and turned on the tap.
A little sputter. Then nothing.
Here's what nobody out here likes to say out loud. A well needs a pump, and a pump is an electric motor. Take the power away and everything between that water and your kitchen quits. Same as the folks in town. I'd spent ten years thinking I was different.
The water was still down there. Plenty of it. I just couldn't get to it.
I stood there at the sink with my hand on a dead faucet, feeling like an idiot.
You can check this today, by the way. Shut off the breaker for your well pump and run the kitchen tap into a pot. When it stops, that's all the water you've got. Then flip the breaker back on, and go count your bottles.
I thought a case of water was plenty
Twenty-four bottles sounds like a lot. It's about 3 gallons.
With my wife and me in the house, it was gone in a day and a half.
Drinking is the part everybody plans for, and it's the smallest part. You need water to cook. To make coffee. To wash a plate. To brush your teeth. To fill the dog's bowl. To wash your face so you don't feel like an animal by the third day.
The CDC says at least a gallon a person a day, and two weeks' worth if you can. A family of four would need 56 gallons for two weeks. That's about 19 cases, about 470 pounds of it, stacked in your garage. Then it's gone.
I went out to the shed and pulled the generator. Well pumps are hard on a small generator. I found that out in the dark, on the ice, with gas I couldn't easily replace.
The store wasn't going to save me either
I drove into town on the second day. Ice the whole way. It took me most of an hour to go eleven miles.
You already know what the water aisle looked like. Bare metal.
The fellow ahead of me had the last two cases in his cart, and he wasn't sorry about it.
I drove home with nothing, and my wife looked up when I came in, and neither of us said anything.
Twenty minutes on the creek bank
So I got out that hiking straw.
There's a creek about 400 yards behind my place. After a storm it runs high and brown.
I walked down, got on my knees on the frozen bank, and put my face down by the water like an animal. It pulled all right for a little while. Then it pulled harder. Then it quit.
That straw clogged in about twenty minutes.
I sat on that bank sucking on a plastic tube that wouldn't pull anymore, with my wife up at the house waiting on me. And it landed on me all at once.
Even if it had run fine, what was I going to do? Carry my wife down here on the ice? It was one mouth at a time, on your knees, 400 yards from the people who need it.
I wasn't the prepared guy. I was the guy who'd bought some things.
There's a difference. I found out what it was the hard way.
See What's in My Truck Now★★★★★ 4.8 stars, 864 reviews
That night, I made myself a promise
The power came back on day four. The well kicked on. We were fine.
I didn't sleep much that week anyway.
So I made a rule. Nothing goes in my kit until I've run it myself, on bad water.
That's how this started. It's the reason people on my road ask me about gear now.
I bought a pile of them. The $12 ones off the big marketplaces. The popular blue one everybody's heard of. The name brands. The no-names. I lined them up on the bench in the garage with jars of silty creek water, because clean tap water tells you nothing.
Here's what I learned, and it's about all you need to know.
One: how fine is the membrane? A lot of straws made for hiking are rated 0.1 or 0.2 micron. That's a fine thing on a clear mountain stream on a Saturday. Fewer go down to 0.01. That's what I want between me and water I can't vouch for.
Two: what's in front of the membrane? This is what got me on the creek bank. Mud is what wears out a filter. Push silty water straight at a fine membrane, and it packs up and quits. Doesn't matter how good the numbers are.
Three: how do you get water back to the house? Nobody talks about this one. A straw makes you the only one drinking. I had a wife in the kitchen.
When I'd gone through the whole pile, I knew what I wanted in the truck.
Why the MINIMLS System is what stays in my truck
It's the MINIMLS Emergency Water Filter System. It's a filter with a squeeze pouch, a hose, and a syringe for pushing clean water back through when the flow slows down.
Start with the part that fixes my creek-bank problem. Water goes through four stages. A coarse screen catches the sand and the junk you can see. Medical-grade PP cotton takes out the fine silt. A flow layer evens out the draw. Then a 0.01 micron hollow-fiber membrane does the fine work.
The first three are there to protect the fourth. That's the whole trick.
Now, high brown creek water will test any filter, this one included. So I give it a hand. I let a bucket sit until the dirt settles, then I fill the pouch from the top. And when the flow slowed down on me, I pushed clean water back through with that syringe, and the flow came back.
At that membrane, it removes 99.99% of bacteria and protozoa. E. coli, Salmonella, Cholera, Giardia, Cryptosporidium, Legionella. It blocks microplastics too. The maker says the materials are BPA-free and FDA food-contact-compliant. It says the filter is third-party lab tested for bacteria and protozoa removal, and pressure-tested for membrane integrity, seal strength and leak resistance. Tested to the rated figures.
It's rated up to 1,800 gallons. That's more than 500 cases of bottled water I don't have to haul.
And here's how a day goes with it, which is the part I wish somebody had shown me that winter.
- Fill the pouch at the creek. You don't drink there, so you aren't on your knees for long.
- Carry it back to the house. It weighs next to nothing on the walk down, and you'll be making that walk more than once. Keep the dirty pouch away from your clean containers.
- Squeeze it through the filter into a pot or a bottle. Or hang it from a cabinet knob with the hose in the pot, and go see to the rest of the house.
Now everybody in the house can drink, and you're cooking with it too. That's what a well household actually needs. Water back at the house, in a pot.
No power. No batteries. No pump. A filter that sits in a drawer has no expiration date as long as it's stored dry. The maker says you can store it 5, 10, even 20 years.
The cold rule, which matters more for us than most
A wet filter must not freeze. The hollow fiber can get damaged, and you might not be able to see it.
The maker says it tested the filter in freezing, humid and arid conditions. That doesn't change my rule. Once it's been wet, it stays out of the cold.
In an ice storm that's easy to handle if you know it. Once I've used one, it doesn't sit in the truck or the shed. It rides in an inside coat pocket, and at night it sleeps in the house. If you think it froze, replace it.
The ones that have never been wet can sit dry in the truck all winter, waiting.
I'll be straight with you, the way the label was straight with me
It's a filter. It does not remove viruses, chemicals, heavy metals or salt.
Out here, that means a few specific things:
- Runoff. If a ditch or pond could be carrying fuel, farm chemicals or anything from a spill, don't drink it. The CDC says water contaminated with chemicals can't be made safe by boiling or disinfecting.
- Road salt. Melt coming off a treated road carries salt, and this won't take it out.
- Viruses. When they're a concern, boil the water or add tablets. If you heat with wood, a pot on the stove costs you nothing. The CDC calls boiling the best way to deal with germs in water.
They say so right on their own page. I trust the rest of what they say more because of it.
Anybody who tells you one little filter handles every water there is, is selling you something. What this one does is take out the bacteria and protozoa and get creek water into a pot on your kitchen table, with no power.
So I didn't buy just one
Two is one and one is none. You've heard it. It's simpler than that, though. The one in my truck does nothing for whoever's in my kitchen.
So I got the five-pack.
- One in the house, for the kitchen table.
- One in my truck, one in my wife's car, unused and dry.
- One in the shop.
- One to the neighbor who plows me out every winter.
Nobody needed it explained to them. A man on a well understands it about as fast as you can say the words.
What actually changed
I quit running the what-ifs at two in the morning.
I made one decision, and water's handled. Not for a week. For years.
The next ice storm is coming. You know it and I know it. And I'm not going to be the guy on the creek bank with a clogged straw again.
I'm going to be the guy who already took care of it.
Emergency Preparedness Sale ends in
- Filters 99.99% of bacteria and protozoa
- Pouch and hose fill bottles for the table
- No batteries, no pump
Up to 67% off. Try it for 30 days. If you're not happy, email us and we'll refund you. Not sold on Amazon.
A word from MINIMLS: what people on wells tell themselves
We have 100,000+ customers, and we hear these a lot.
"I've got a generator." Good. Keep it. It needs fuel, and it has to be big enough to start your pump. If you've never run the well on it, you don't know yet. Go try it this weekend.
"I'll melt snow." You can, if you've got heat. It takes a lot of fuel and a lot of snow to get very little water, and it isn't clean just because it came down white.
"I've got a hand pump." Then you're ahead of nearly everyone on your road, and you can skip the creek. Most people don't have one.
"The neighbor will have water." The neighbor is on a well too, and his pump stopped when yours did.
"I've already got a straw." Go find it. Is it unwrapped? Have you ever run creek water through it? Can it get water to someone who isn't standing at the creek?
"Will I manage it?" Yes. Fill the pouch, carry it back, squeeze it into a pot. You do the hard part at the kitchen table.
"Does it really work?" The numbers are above. Try it at your own sink inside your 30 days. Buyers give it 4.8 stars across 864 reviews.
"What if I don't like it?" Try it for 30 days. If you're not happy, email us and we'll refund you. Unused or used.
What it costs to not be on that creek bank
Five bought singly cost $199.95. The Family Pack is 5 Systems for $106.99, about $21 each. That's $92.96 less. Two are $66.99, about $34 each, if your place is smaller than that.
A package takes days, and an ice storm doesn't give you that long. Nobody buys this stuff when it's calm. They buy it in a hurry, with the forecast on the TV, and by then the shelves in town are bare metal.
Do the easy thing now, so you don't have to do the hard thing later.
And keep filling the tub when the forecast turns. Stored water is what you drink while you're getting everything else going. A filter is what you've got when it runs out.
Same ice. Same dead faucet at 2 a.m. This time there's a pot of filtered water on the kitchen table, and nobody is on their knees at the creek.
Emergency Preparedness Sale: up to 67% off.
Try it for 30 days. If you're not happy, email us and we'll refund you.
Everything on the list was in the box.
Gene F.He's got three little ones. I told him one's not enough, so I got him the Family Pack.
Lois W.Rinse it, dry it, put it away.
Stan H.
Try it for 30 days. If you're not happy, email us and we'll refund you.
Get the Family Pack: 5 Systems for $106.9930-day money back.
P.S. from Walt: My son-in-law told me he didn't need one. I put it in his glovebox anyway and didn't say a thing about it. Three months later he sent me a picture of it sitting on a truck seat somewhere in Tennessee, with three words: "you were right." That's about the most I'll ever get out of him, and it was worth it.
Sources, checked November 1, 2026: CDC, emergency water supply and water treatment guidance. Product figures from our product page.