Blue plastic barrels..

[Jrlobo]

santahog, I'd stick with food grade barrels as used by restaurants that cook with lots of oil (e.g. Five Guys, Chinese) or with automotive places (e.g. JiffyLube). Most are probably recycled, however. Unfortunately, those that aren't could have been used for chemicals, toxic or non-, and may add bad stuff for your fuel uses in small engines no matter how careful you are at cleaning them out. $25 seems like a bargain, though.

[TAB]

Automotive shops often get steal 15 gallon barrels for tranny fuild and other less common lubes.   they would work great to store fuel.  Big enough to hold a lot, not to heavy to lift.

[1Buckshot]

For water storage in the food grade blue barrels this my be an option rather than trying to clean them out. I Have been using a used 55 gal. barrel for water at my hunting camp for years. It took about a week of washing to get the syrup flavoring out but its worked fine.


http://www.interplas.com/drum-liners

[tombogan03884]

Better off getting new for drinking water.
Never used the blue plastic barrels , but did use some 5 gallon jugs that had held cooking oil.
Washed them out repeatedly with hot soapy water and used them for 5 years refilling twice a week, never did get all the oil residue out of them.

[RTFM]

Understood and I figured as much RTFM!  I agree that there is absolutely no way to clean them for any other use.  Does your state allow them used for gas or diesel?  We can't fill anything at the pumps that isn't an approved container, technically!

We too were stuck in the peoples republic of spend it all duval.
Sorry to hear your in meca.

But made the great trek west and have been blissfully happy in Idaho form 12 years now.
I still feel your pain Tim.  I still get horror stories from back there as that is where my work HQ is and my best friend is in Franklin.


Here it does not matter. We live in a free state (at least for now  )

[Sponsor]

[les snyder]

if you can't find the blue barrels, many use the 275gallon "totes" used for transporting syrups to the soft drink canners...integral metal cage, and fittings... aren't very portable when filled

[santahog]

This is what I've found. Contacted via email. He says $20, food grade. Had vanilla in the blue ones..
http://bham.craigslist.org/grd/3417499541.html
(Here's another one with everything I need, except a way to move em.. Just a little ways away, and of course the money..  http://huntsville.craigslist.org/grd/3372225888.html )
My deal will be how to move them.. I'm going to approach the guy on a better price.
I want to catch the rain water off the roof for toilet/bath water and separately for drinking water. I'm wondering if it would be more practical to get a used above ground pool somewhere cheap..
I'm going to ask around the neighborhood tomorrow with some "selected" houses that are normal folks..
I've been trying to get around to talking to folks on the street about mutual aid/security kind of thing if it all flies apart.. I've got an old biker & retired contractor down one direction and a (Pentecostal/non-snake handling) Pastor down the other way. I'm not so thrilled with most of the rest of them..
(I'm still not sure whose dog I shot a couple of months ago.. There's not enough left now to notice there was ever one there.. Maybe it won't come up. I'd hate to have to tell somebody the truth on that. It might be a little counterproductive to the common goal at this point..)
The whole thing nowadays is that I'm broke, and broken.. I can rig something up to fill three dozen at a time if I need to. How do I move em to higher ground for a gravity feed? I thought about pressurization with weights I could just rock back and forth on a lever of some sort, but that would take something a little more pliable than a plastic barrel, I suspect..
I know I'm kinda getting in the weeds in my thinking, but that's kinda how my mind sorts things out.. If I've got a few minutes to think about something, I'm always asking "Then what?".

[Rastus]

Better off getting new for drinking water.
Never used the blue plastic barrels , but did use some 5 gallon jugs that had held cooking oil.
Washed them out repeatedly with hot soapy water and used them for 5 years refilling twice a week, never did get all the oil residue out of them.

Ever try a little bleach in them?  Caustic and oil makes surfactant....soap.  Should get rid of the most of it.

[RTFM]

Ratio of Clorox Bleach to Water for Purification
2 drops of Regular Clorox Bleach per quart of water
8 drops of Regular Clorox Bleach per gallon of water
1/2 teaspoon Regular Clorox Bleach per five gallons of water
If water is cloudy, double the recommended dosages of Clorox Bleach.

How long does saved water stay good in a clean capped new blue barrel?
Say I fill 60 gal in 4 new barrels today - good until
Do you put bleach in never as it was clean when you filled? Just once at fill time? Every 6 mo....

Just wondering

[santahog]

You need a test kit. They're cheap. As I recall, 5 ppm is max for human consumption, (without cooking/boiling first). Chlorine degrades on it's own in water, and much more quickly in sunshine. The old "country way" of doing it is to put two drops in a gallon. keep it in the shade and cool, and turn each one upside down and back upright every month or so.
The problem with this approach as I can see it is that barrels will be in the sun and hard to agitate. Drinking water can be kept in smaller containers but still, my wife couldn't get a 5 gal container into a rack that was over her head. Transferring from storage to places you'd want it without electricity presents a problem.
Gravity seems to be a friend in this, but getting barrels stored "up", with the ability to agitate and/or test/treat, and still be able to "turn valve to use" is gonna be a challenge..
I'm sure there's an obvious answer. Always is.. I just don't see it yet..
One of the things I didn't like about this place was the absence of a well on the property.. On the other hand, there's a chicken farm about a mile from here too. A well might not be worth having..
Something else is potential use in watering a garden plot, (rainwater catchment stuff).

I want a swimming pool.. (And a hot tub!!)