Water barrel issues

[quote=tictac1]

HDPE is vapor-permeable, the containers “breathe”, so to speak.  That’s probably  the source of the warnings.  We don’t use them for aging beer for this very reason, oxygen permeates the material and causes the beer to go stale.

Water stored in plastic subject to heat can leach chemicals into the water, regardless of plastic formulation-

http://www.darienct.gov/filestorage/104/114/163/Plastics_Primer0714.pdf

 [/quote]

Tictac — This looks like the answer to item 2.  Even though water molecules cannot penetrate the plastic, gasses can, so you could get a concrete taste.  Wood under the barrel would be needed.  It would also prevent moisture collecting underneath.  Your link was also very helpful to clarify warnings I’ve read about storing ingestibles in various types of plastic.  Thank you.

I will store these in my basement filled with tap water for emergency use.  The temperature ranges from 60 to 75 degrees F.  I would rotate the water periodically and I expect that after a couple of cycles the chemical leeching would be minimal.  I think boiling it before drinking would mostly evaporate the plastic chemicals, if need be.  In any event, it would still beat ditch water

Thanks everyone for your replies. 

Travlin 

Yikes!  If it made the dog sick, i would not water root veggies/tubers with it. 

I have 2 800 gallon tanks, and 2 5000 gallon tanks.  All 4 tanks are crystal clear, as of yesterday, and our last rain event was about 3 weeks ago.  It’s probably the result of adding a tiny amount of bleach, BUT it’s also possible that my heavy-duty tanks do not transmit as much light as do blue barrels.  Those blue barrels will readily grow algae, in my experience.  But then again, it never made my animals sick, so something is certainly different.

I think it depends a lot on the area too, ours is high desert, not much grows here except what we cultivate, so perhaps our roofs are less contaminated by various bacterial/viral agents/whatnot.

Another issue to consider is roof materials.  Some will dump large amounts of hydrocarbons and other crap into your water, so it pays to do some research in this area.

One thing I’ve found through testing and experimentation is that rain water is superior to well water for plants.  Keep in mind our well water is high pH (8.5) with about 350 ppm dissolved solids.  Over time, this causes high pH in the soil, and crusting due to salt build-up from evaporation.  Rainwater is about pH 6, 30 ppm TDS, which means it can be used to leach the soil and reverse the process.  Salinization causes the loss of irrigated farmland, so it’s something to ponder if you want to create a truly sustainable garden/small farm.

I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this water device.  I have never heard of this before, and it probably works much better in my high humidity climate, but I am hesitant to buy something that might end up being more trouble (who will service this in my area?)  Sounds like a great idea, but who knows?  http://www.ecoloblue.com/

what are you going to do with 55 gallons?  Way too small…..  here we have 10,000 gallons of storage.  Anything less and you cannot possibly runa house and garden.

Don’t worry about concrete…  we build water tanks made OF concrete all the time in Australia.  No probs.

As far as plastic is concerned, I don’t know anything about HDPE, but here we also make and use plastic tanks like this http://www.ptq.com.au/tanks.htm?gclid=CMq1qLvF66kCFUNMpgoddzqCXg though I’d rather have steel ones like this http://www.wetearth.com.au/Aquaplate-Water-Tanks but I think if I ever need more I’d get these http://www.kingstonsheetmetal.com/

Mike

[quote=Starr10]I was wondering if anyone has any experience with this water device.  I have never heard of this before, and it probably works much better in my high humidity climate, but I am hesitant to buy something that might end up being more trouble (who will service this in my area?)  Sounds like a great idea, but who knows?  http://www.ecoloblue.com/%5B/quote%5D

The 280W power requirement immediately takes it off my list!  That’s a lot of power, especially if it’s continuous…  over 6.5 kWh/day, or TRIPLE the total energy consumption in this household….

Mike

[quote=tictac1]One thing I’ve found through testing and experimentation is that rain water is superior to well water for plants.  Keep in mind our well water is high pH (8.5) with about 350 ppm dissolved solids.  Over time, this causes high pH in the soil, and crusting due to salt build-up from evaporation.  Rainwater is about pH 6, 30 ppm TDS, which means it can be used to leach the soil and reverse the process.  Salinization causes the loss of irrigated farmland, so it’s something to ponder if you want to create a truly sustainable garden/small farm.

[/quote]

Surely pure rainwater should be pH 7?

Also, rainwater often has disolved N in it, simply from falling out of the sky through the 80% N atmosphere.  This is even more noticeable during storms when lightning must cause some ionisation of the air causing even more N to be disloved…  or so I’ve heard.

Mike

I have a 30 000 litre / 7500 Gallon concrete water tank. I also have a 2500 litre secondary tank. The concrete is over 20 years old, the plastic tank is 5 years old. Both are fine. I filter the water with a simple inline filter before it reaches the washing machine (white shirts that turn into brown shirts are not fun). I filter the water i drink that will not be boiled. I don’t filter toilet or shower water. I wash the tanks out once a year. Generally off a 27 foot x 9 foot roof i catch enough water for myself to live like i would in town. When i had a girl last year I didn’t catch enough by a long way. I am in an area that has moderate amounts of rainfall. Not wet but not dry either. My water storage is minimal. The local government requires a new dwelling to have 120 000 litres as a minimum.

Don’t expose the water to direct sun, it will develop nasty bugs within months. Guardia and crypto sporidium both can be present in tank water. These are nasty bugs from a survival point of view. I lost a tank of water when a tree that was over the catchment dropped lots of flowers. The water turned bad and needed to be pumped out. Watch the pipes you use to catch rain water. PVC is easy but the WHO say that pvc pipes on water catchment is the leading cause of lead poisoning in the western world.

44 gallon drums of water are not enough for anything really. From a survival point of view you are limiting yourself to a single person surviving for 14 days.

That's realy a lot of helpful tips on water storage guys. I honestly thought that a lot of this stuff was pretty common sense, but I guess it's not really all that simple to get everything settled.. That could possibly be why plumbers cost so damn much then! Haha!

HDPE is a viable alternative but I'd still go for polyethylene if I had the chance.

It is my great opportunity in joining you all. Hope for long and happy association with you all.