Datrex Emergency Water Pouches

Every car has one water bottle rolling around under a seat, and nobody in the family will admit to knowing how old it is. Nobody drinks it either.

Datrex emergency water pouches are the grown-up version of that bottle, with the date printed on. Each foil pouch holds 125 ml, a little over 4 fl oz, and is the size of a 4 by 6 index card, half an inch thick. The button on this page opens the case of 64, model DX1000W. Datrex packs the same pouch in a case of 96 and in smaller packs, so check the count before you buy.

What 64 pouches add up to

Datrex puts the case at 8 liters, about 2.1 gallons. The CDC asks for 1 gallon per person per day, and a gallon is about 30 pouches. So one case covers one person for about two days at the CDC’s rate.

One case of 64 pouches is about half a day of water for a family of four. That makes it a ration for the places a gallon jug does not fit: the glovebox, the go bag, the desk at work, the sports bag. The house’s three days belong in bottled water or containers you fill yourself, and our guide to emergency drinking water works out how much. None of the sources on this page says how many pouches to keep in each car or bag, so the gallon math above is the only count we can give.

TruePrepper’s pouch review says mobile kits are what these pouches are designed for, and Datrex also states a US Coast Guard approval for the pouch. The certificate’s dates are in the questions below.

Five years, printed on every pouch

Datrex gives each pouch a 5-year shelf life from the date of manufacture and prints the date on every one. That is the point of this water. Nobody has to remember a swap every three months, the way one r/VEDC commenter replaces ordinary bottles in the car.

The printed date only helps if somebody reads it. One buyer found 24 of the 64 pouches already expired when the case arrived. Check the dates the day the box comes, not the day you need one. Five years from manufacture is only five years for you if the pouches were made recently.

Past the date, the evidence is thin. In a 2022 video, an owner opened a Datrex pouch about 10 years past its date and called it a little metallic but drinkable. One of the two old packs in that video had lost its water. Go by the date on the pouch.

The trunk in July and the trunk in January

A car is a terrible pantry: an oven in summer, a freezer in winter. The case for leaving these pouches in one rests on thin ground. TruePrepper’s water storage roundup, one review site, says Datrex pouches “don’t leach a plastic taste in the heat of a car trunk, and won’t burst if they freeze.” That line gives no temperatures and no time span. The one temperature test among our sources is a 2013 owner video, which reports no leak after 24 hours in a freezer, 30 minutes at 140°F and being stood on. That is a day and half an hour, not a summer. For years, there is only owners’ word: the r/preppers commenter below, in a thread about water in a hot car, says the pouches stayed palatable and intact for many years, but does not say where they were kept.

Datrex gives no storage temperature range on its spec sheet or product page. TruePrepper’s pouch review lists 0 to 210°F for Datrex pouches. That range is TruePrepper’s, not the maker’s.

Straight from the threads

The catches

Each pouch tears open at a notch, is meant for one serving and does not reseal. Whatever a kid does not finish ends up on the kid.

Small portions cut both ways. As a reply in an r/VEDC thread put it, a leak “will spill one pouch’s worth of water, not a gallon of water.”

Taste reports are old and few. In a 2012 owner video the water tasted plain, with no smell. In a 2014 video comparison with Mayday pouches, Datrex had a slight chlorine note, and both tasters preferred Mayday while saying both taste good.

The Prepared’s bug-out bag list says not to store go-bag water in flimsy pouches and prefers sturdy bottles. Carry a sturdy bottle next to them. The pouches are the backup, not the plan.

Who should pick something else

If you are planning the house’s three days, skip these. At about 30 pouches to the gallon, the house needs bottled water or water storage containers you fill yourself. For the day the stored water runs out, see the emergency water filter page.

If taste matters most, the Mayday pouches on our water guide won that 2014 video, but TruePrepper calls their weld thinner and less durable in freezing.

Everyone else is who this case is for: a car that sits outside all winter, a go bag on the hook by the door, a desk drawer at work, a sports bag that leaves the house without a water bottle twice a week.

The bottle under the seat will probably stay there anyway. The pouch next to it at least has a date.