Cleaning 55 Gallon Drums For Water Storage

One effective way to store a lot of water is by cleaning and filling a 55 gallon water bucket.

Cleaning 55 gallon drums for water storage.

The basic rule of thumb for storing water in 55 gallon drums or any other size container is to make sure they are clean first. Cleaning your water storage containers. The barrel must be made out of a food grade plastic. Rinse barrels with a dilute bleach water solution swish around in the barrel and then empty.

Oil barrels can be particularly well suited for storing other petroleum products such as diesel fuel as both types of fuel require the same precautions in terms of preventing spilling and leaking. Soap is an effective cleaning agent for 55 gallon plastic barrels but should only be used when necessary because it requires repeated rinsing to get rid of the soap residue. Rinse drum with clean water until no odor is present. Dish detergents cut through grease and oil making them a natural choice for cleaning barrels that were used to store vegetable oil for example.

Three barrels filled to the brim with water gives me 165 of clean water for drinking cooking sanitation or whatever else i need. The barrel weighs roughly 22 pounds and 55 gallons of water weighs 460 pounds for a grand total of 482 pounds. To begin let s talk about how to first clean out one of these massive plastic barrels. If you are storing water in containers 55 gallon drums or any bulk size tank as a reserve for just in case how much regular chlorine bleach if any should you add for purification.

For 1 person this would provide the bare minimum gallon per day for around five and a half months. How to clean a 55 gallon plastic water barrels. Oil drums or barrels can be a useful storage container for many materials particularly other liquids. High density polyethylene hdpe is the plastic commonly used to make the popular blue 55 gallon water storage drums.

This has been a common question and i ve written about it a number of times over the years.