,Rawles had a link about caching and added a caveat that storing water amongst gear is to invite disaster if the water container leaks, since much gear is not greatly enhanced by being soaked. He urged that water be stored separately from such gear.
This is true, but sometimes you really don’t want to increase the footprint of your storage any more than you have to, and adding separate containers for water might do just that.
When I leave packs laying around with water in them in environs where they might freeze, I always start off using bottled water. I’ve experimented a lot with plastic bottles of water and have found that they’ll handle freeze/thaw cycles with virtually no failures. (In fact, I’ve froze/thawed hundreds of bottles of water and have yet to have one fail because of the freeze/thaw cycle. The ones that did fail were because, while frozen, the bottle was dropped and that damaged the plastic. A drop that would damage a frozen bottle, however, will usually not damge a thawed bottle since the thawed bottle flexes with the impact.) I’m very comfortable with the survivability of regular plastic water bottles. However, I am also a suspenders and a belt kind of guy. If I have a pack stored somewhere, then it’s probably important that the gear in that pack be in great shape since that pack is sitting there for the day when theres an emergency and my safety and well-being depends on the gear inside it. Most folks would figure the answer is to put the bottle of water into some other container to act as a secondary container in case the first one fails. Makes sense. Many folks use something like a Ziploc bag…a mistake, in my opinion. Ziploc bags are great, and I use lots of them for other stuff, but they just are not really waterproof. If you dont believe me, put some frozen chicken in one, and sit it in the bottom of your fridge to thaw. Come back in about three days and see what mess is sitting under the bag.
I take each bottle of water and vacuum seal it in a bag. The vacuum seal bags are quite waterproof, and they let me know at a glance if there’s any failure in bag integrity. (Since even a pinhole will cause the vacuum to fail.) If you really, really wanna go nuts you can vacuum seal it twice. I usually just take one 20 oz. bottle of water, vacuum seal it, and move onto the next. One bottle per bag. As long as the sealed bottle of water is kept protected from sharp objects and such, it lasts forever. (The bottled water in my pack is in its own zippered compartments…so there’s nothing to puncture or abrade anything.)
Don’t have a vacuum sealer? Get one.
Contraversely, (yes, I’m making my own words) if all the other gear is waterproofed then it doesn’t matter if the water container leaks. So , if you vacuum sealed all your other stuff and didnt add an extra layer of protection to the water bottles, you’d probably be okay there as well. Of course, the best way to do it would be to do both: waterproof the gear and isolate the water bottles.
If your situation can reasonably accommodate storing water separate from gear, then by all means do just that. But, in those circumstances where the water bottles have to be mixed in with the gear for space/pack constraints, this method has worked great for me so far.
For storage in a small cache like a 5 gallon bucket, I always stack things vertically – for instance, liquid fuel on the bottom, water above it, and then other supplies above that.
Should the fuel leak into the bottom, not much of a problem. If the water leaks, not a big problem for the dry goods….
And I too have no problem with water bottles freezing, it’s just not a problem. Unless you want to drink the water while it’s frozen.
First thought that came to my mind:
Dehydrated water!
Reconstituting it may be a little tough, though…
Seriously…left a couple of bottles of water in the Tour-Pak of my motorcycle over the winter. Several freeze-thaw cycles and no leakage / breakage. YMMV.
You can definitely store water, but you can’t store it indefinitely. For some years I stored plastic bottles of distilled water. Yes – you can drink it without harm, as you get vitamins and minerals from food, not water. (Sorry ,Rawles.) And it’s useful in the shop, for batteries, blueing salts, etc.
But then I went to pick one up, after several years in a non-freezing garage, and the bottle split open. As did every other stored bottle of it’s vintage. I think the summer heat and age made the plastic brittle, much to my surprise and annoyance.
I love my vaccuum sealer, not just because I can do bulk buys, but because I can portion the food I’m sealing into usable portions during the process. (example- I buy the giant 25 pound bag of rice at Costco, and portion it out into 3 cup parcels for the rice cooker. If I fancy rice one night? No muss, no fuss, I grab a package, open it, dump it into the cooker, add water, and go.
Avoid the water jugs that look like gallon milk jugs. It appears some of the plastic water containers are being made of thinner material. In the gal size, it becomes very delicate, and rips and punctures happen easily. Bigger ones seem ok.
Most water bottles are designed to accommodate freezing. Those grooves, rings, and other depressions are expansion areas for ice.
Have you tested your vacuum packed bottles for freezing capability? The shrink fit might impede the bottles’ ability to expand properly. It’s possible this might cause both to fail together. Sometimes “simple” changes can create unusual failure modes. Personally, I would be inclined to just seal, with little or no vacuum used.
Is the V3835 Foodsaver the one you’re in love with? I was going to pull the trigger on one this weekend, and I’m lucky I hit all the posts I’ve missed on your site lately before I did. I’m willing to pay for quality, but I want to make sure I get what I’m paying for…
Hardly…mine is over ten years old. It’s nowhere near as cool and feature-filled as the current models.
A bit late to this but…for a long while I had the Fiji water delivered in cases to the house. Spoilment that is long gone, now. But their bottles are made of far better plastic, I think, and the cubed shape stacks/stores nicely. We actually freeze water in them to use in coolers for lunches, trips…they thaw slowly and you have cool water to drink at the end of the day.
I have a case of empties now that will likely be filled with stuff like rice, potato pearls, etc. as a way to say “here – it’s all I can spare” without revealing the goodness elsewhere.
I have carried a 6-pack of them (in the shrink wrap packaging from the store) in my go-bag for over a year with no breakage, denting, etc.
Funny you should mention cubes…I’ll be getting a bunch of these (
WaterBrick) to play with and evaluate later this month.