10 years later, the patio water barrel

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Bushman5

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Oct 31, 2007
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Ten years ago, i scored a free food grade poly barrel, 70 gallons, from a DIY beer brewing place. After flushing out the sweet sweet malty syrup very well with hot water and bleach, I filled it with municipal tap water (we have the best water in the world here). I also dropped in a pure chlorine pool shock puck. Tarped it with a dark tarp and it has sat ever since on my patio.

Inside the house i have many water containers as well. I also have a big bucket with a spigot and its filled with a sealed bag (its opened when needed) of activated charcoal. When needed, one would draw off the heavily chlorinated water and filter thru the charcoal before use.

The years passed, i kept meaning to drain the barrel and refill every 6 months but that just never happened.

Today i happened to be cleaning the junk off my patio, and i uncovered the barrel. I opened the bung and was greeted by that lovely chlorine smell. I drew off a one liter sample. It was crystal clear, STILL heavily chlorinated and under the microscope there was ZERO bacterial growth.

filtered it thru my charcoal filter, canted it into a glass and sniffed it, zero chlorine after seeping thru the 40lbs of charcoal. Drank it, sweet clean water.

so....despite the fact that 70 gallons of water has sat for ten years, with ONE pool shock pure chlorine puck in it, nothing grew in it, and after filtering thru activated charcoal to remove the choline, the water was as fresh as it was going in.

I definitely OVERTREATED the water from the get go, but i am pleased with the results.

:thumbup:
 
That's pretty cool man. We have pretty good water here too. Actually we even fought federal mandate for water treatment because the treatment would cost a lot and do basically nothing.
 
Cool! Better to overtreat than undertreat. That could have been one funky barrel after 10 years. I'm glad to know this works long-term. Thanks for the info.
 
BE CAREFUL when using pool shock pucks........SOME of them have other additives/chemicals......read the labels and the MSDS (Material Safety Data Sheets) carefully....

the ones i used were pure chlorine.....the same ones today now have other crap added to them

also, if you lack activated charcoal to filter the chlorinated water, pour it into 2 liter pope bottles and leave in direct sunlight. The chemical reaction neutralizes the chlorine and turns it into simple salt (not enough to be concerned about)
 
Interesting...it is my understanding from a Master Degree level Microbiologist who just happens to live in your fair city told me recently the chlorine breaks down into salts and ions quite quickly. It is the oxygen ion that makes it a disinfectant. It breaks down to bits with time. Sealed containers do not stop the chlorine from breaking down. So maybe the chlorine is effective for maybe 48 hours, and the water is pretty clean then, and it is just sitting there.

Six months later the chlorine has broken down completely or at least almost non-existant and now several bacteria, hidden in small unseen little cracks of the barrel, where the chlorine didn't get to, start multiplying and there is nothing to stop them and they have lots of time to multiply. We can't see the cracks inside the barrels, we can't see the bacteria, we don't know for sure how much bacteria didn't get killed, it's all a set of unknowns. This microbiologist strongly recommends we store our water for no longer than 6 months but insists we filter it irregardless.

So, ten years is a mighty long time...but you did filter it so any non-pathogenic bacteria would be filter then. Interesting study!

Say if anyone has a line on some "safe" chlorine pool pucks let me know. I'd like to pick some up.
 
Quirt, thanks for chiming in! my theory is that each puck was rated for 1000 gallons of water.......(pool treatment.....) and that by super saturating the water (70 gallons) with a chlorine puck rated for 1000 gallons is why it still reeked of chlorine when i opened the barrel.
 
also good to note that the barrel you used had sugar in it before. The sugar will always be in these little cracks, no matter how well you clean it. Some even absorbed into the plastic. Bacteria loves sugar, and this will speed up their growth rate.
 
Naw, I live in the lower 48 but travel to your find land periodically. Next time I'm up I thought I'd give you a shout and see if you couldn't take me on one of your fabulous treks. I like going up north and picking up gear with US bucks...I typically come out ahead of the deal!
 
Chlorine does degrade quickly, but the more it degrades the more stable it becomes. For example, sodium hypochlorite solution (basically household bleach) is often used for municipal water treatment, and is commonly found at 12.5% strength. Depending on the conditions it's stored in, the % strength will begin dropping in 20 to 30 days. From this point on the lower the solution strength the slower the degradation. Household bleach is around 5% strength and that lasts for a very long time. That must have started out as one seriously toxic barrel of chlorine to have lasted that long.
 
There is a product out there that bypasses the chlorine to oxygen ion process and allows you to add the oxygen ion liquid staight to your water container. The name of the product is Aerobic O(7) Stabilized Oxygen, and it comes in a small bottle that allows you to squirt the liquid right into your container. I have 3 55 gallon barrels at home full of water all stabilized with this stuff and in 2 years have never had any growth, you also don't have to deal with the chlorine smell at all. I believe the timeline the company recommends keeping your water without replacing it is 5 years. This is the product that some of the military and public works use for emergency water storage also. It's very reasonably priced also, not expensive at all. I purchased my bottles from Nitro-Pak, and they carry 2 different size bottles. I hope this helps some of you.
 
Wow! A ten year experiment, now that's dedication ;)

I live in Maine and we have pretty good water here (Poland Springs Springwater comes from here) I guess I always took it for granted and I've never understood why people "buy" water in bottles.

Then two years ago I went to Buffalo NY for a Bills game. I could not believe how disgusting the water was. It smelled and tasted like water from a poorly maintained YMCA pool! It was awful! I bought a lot of bottled water that weekend! One of my friends while drunk didn't realized how chlorinated it tasted and was chugging down glasses of it from the hotel room tap. The whole next day he was violently ill, not from being drunk but from the water. Nasty stuff. We went Made me appreciate what we have here.

We went back this year to see the Bills vs the Pats and NO ONE drank tapwater the whole weekend.
 
Munky88 said:
also good to note that the barrel you used had sugar in it before. The sugar will always be in these little cracks, no matter how well you clean it. Some even absorbed into the plastic. Bacteria loves sugar, and this will speed up their growth rate.
Click to expand...

so.... yes and no. Oddly enough, sugar is a huge preservative that prevents spoilage bacteria from growing in a lot of foods. Sugar is energy, but not nutrients. - basically this is the secret to the nearly infinite shelf life of honey, maple syrup, molasses, and sugar.

The sugar in solution would tend to accelerate growth in an otherwise healthful medium (for the buglets, that is), but in the cracks, if it's on some manner where it will tend to not dissolve, it's going to be an inhibiting agent.
 
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