In a nice bit of irony, moving water storage barrels is …well…thirsty work.
The barrels, being new, needed some cleaning ‘justin case’. A bucket with a couple gallons of boiling water, a healthy dose of baking soda, slosh around well and -presto- clean smelling…..mmmmmm.. A rinse with some bleach to make sure and we’re good to go. Now the fun part.
Set the barrels on the deck, fill, wrestle onto a hand truck, strap ’em down, and haul them down a flight of stairs to the bunker. That was NOT fun but it didnt take long. I have the barrels sitting on top of milk crates to keep them off the floor so I can keep an eye on them. Over the next few days I’ll check them periodically to make sure they dont leak. These, by the way, were 15 gallon ‘blue barrels’. Thats 120# water in each one.
Discovered that its very easy to goober up the caps that go on these things if your wrench isnt sized perfectly…so, I’m going to head over to Nitro-Pak and order a few spare bung caps (make your own joke) and a better wrench than the one I have now.
On the bright side, in addition to the many 5-gallon containers and cases of bottled water, I now have a couple of nice 15-gallon drums of potable water sitting safely in storage.
Thus did Zero do his Deed For The Day.
I’ve got a couple 30-gallon drums for the same purpose. I believe I’ve come to the conclusion that they’re just too damned heavy. I should get a couple smaller ones for portable use. Just for use around the house, we have a 5000 gallon tank that should last a good while.
Yeah, 15 gallon is about as big as I’d go and still have it be ‘man portable’. howver, I am a bit tempted to get just one 55-gallon drum for a static emplacement…
5000, eh? Man, thatd be the way to go. Gravity feed?
a proper/good bung wrench is worth its weight in bronze.
Yeah, seriously. Bronze. no sparks (like thats relevant with water 😉 )
Your local tool shack should have one pretty cheap. Im sure they can be hand milsurp too. If you have a Harbour Freight or the like locally, they should be there for SUPER cheap.
I bought two of those 15-gal blue barrels last year and filled them up with filtered water from the machine at Albertsons. Now it is time to start using up that stash since we’re not about to haul 30 gallons of water across country when we move. It feels kind of weird. It’s amazing how just that small thing – having some water stored up in case of an emergency – made me feel more secure about things. As the levels go down in the barrels I will feel more and more anxious.
This might not be the question to ask after the job is already done, but is there a reason not to place them first then run a hose into the bunker and fill them in place?
We live in a mountain-top compound of sorts which gets water from a well. Water gets pumped from the well into the storage tank which in turn feeds a pressure pump/tank. There’s enough head, that it could be gravity-fed in an emergency.
At present, the storage tank is 1000 gallons. The 5000 gallon tank is there, but remains to be implemented. Essentially, I’m just braggin’.
The 30 gallon drums are nice, but I don’t have any place that I can really store them conveniently and I still need to figure out a way to make them portable for desert operations. Maybe I should weld up a drum truck to cart them around.
How long will the water keep without getting funky?
I’d like to put a 55 gal drum over at my friend’s apartment… If the SHTF his place would be a great place to ride it out. 3rd story apartment, brick building, heavy wooden door, long hallway killzone.
atek3
My experience is that water picks up tastes from plastic fairly quickly.
I’ve stored water in laminate “wine bags” that had been soaked in bleach and thoroughly rinsed, and the water always had a dead wine taste. Since the water was to be frozen to ballast a chest freezer, it didn’t really matter.
Recently I used a 2 1/2 gallon factory-sealed container of spring water that had been in storage for between 5 and 10 years, and it definitely tasted of plastic. We used it for washing.
I yielded to that temptation and have one 55-gallon drum in the basement. Definitely not portable. I run the hose into the basement to fill it. I haven’t had it long enough to rotate the water in it, but I predict it will not be fun.
Opps. Sorry for the anonymous post. Guess I forgot to log in.
Plastic taste aside, chlorinated water will last about six months according to “official” sources. In reality, it can last much longer if stored properly, though it won’t necessarilly taste good.
Correct.
Several sources recommend that when using water that has been stored for a long time, you should aerate it to make it taste better. This can be done with a blender or hand mixer but the easiest way is to fill a container halfway with it and shake vigorously.
If the situation were dire enough that Im drinking stored emergency water I probably wouldnt care about the slight plastic taste, but since my food stores include all sorts of drink mix it would be a problem that could easily be overcome. For rehydrating freeze-drieds I dont think it’ll make a difference at all.
Its a convoluted mess..lack of surplus hose length coupled with lack of closeby ingress points.