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Stored 12 gallons of water in old milk jugs, then switched to 55 gallon drums after one leaked on my garage floor
Back in March I filled a dozen rinsed milk jugs with tap water and stacked them in the garage like everyone online says to do. Three months later one had a pinhole leak and I found a soggy box of old tax papers sitting in a puddle. I swapped to two 55 gallon food grade drums with a hand pump and the water still tastes fine after 6 months. The plastic on those jugs just gets brittle and nobody warns you about it. Has anyone here had a drum crack on them, or know a better way to test water that old without opening the whole barrel?
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nathana4810d ago
UV light is the thing nobody talks about with stored water, and its why your drums might be fine even when the jugs were not. Sunlight through the thin milk jug plastic feeds algae and breaks down the plastic over time, but those opaque blue drums block light completely so nothing can grow in there. A cheap way to test without opening the barrel is to pull a small sample from the pump spout into a clear glass and hold it up to a light, looking for cloudiness or anything floating. You can also drop a pool test strip in that sample to check pH and chlorine, since water sitting for months can go flat and pick up a weird taste even when its safe. The real trick is to pump a little out every couple months and top the drum back up, because moving water stays fresher than water that just sits there. That small habit would have saved your tax papers too, since you would have caught the jug leak way earlier.
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