The 5 Best Treatment Methods for 55-Gallon Water Barrels

hi I'm Jonathan the Provident prepper storing water is an important part of your preparedness plan do you know how to store water in a 55-gallon barrel so often we have people confess to us that they purchased their water barrels but they're sitting somewhere unused because they are not quite sure how to go about this so we are going to discuss in this video five treatment methods so that you can disinfect your water for long-term storage in 55-gallon barrels as we all know water storage is an important part of our preparedness efforts we hope that you will google the Provident prepper tips for storing water in a 55-gallon plastic barrel and this video is based off of that post first let's talk about what it is that everybody is so afraid of in the water let's give it a face so you understand what we are trying to do first there's viruses which are very very small then there's bacteria which are medium-sized and protozoa which are actually very large each of these can give you waterborne pathogens and can be very dangerous we also have to address chemical contaminants these may be present in our water now most of the water that we drink is very clean and you don't have to worry about these things but if there are chemicals in your water that you've gotten out somewhere after or some kind of an event you need to be aware that there may be chemicals in there that could be dangerous in addition to the other pathogens we've just talked about that's why it's so important to store water when you feel your water barrels usually that water is coming from a municipal water supply where the chemicals are monitored and taken care of and you shouldn't really have to worry about that so water that you're stored will be safer than anything you could find during a disaster check out our posts making water safe to drink seven disinfection techniques to learn how to disinfect water obviously we need to start with a clean sanitized barrel and new food grade barrel is probably your best solution if that fits in your finances if you have access to use barrels those are fine as long as they have not contained anything that you wouldn't drink or eat so let's do a little bit of true confession here we don't have a lot of financial resources sometimes and so what we'd like a lot of water storage so we have used some very unique barrels we have used dr. pepper barrels and some that have held some lemon limes and even some that have held essential oils lemon essential oil now let me tell you what happens when you have these used barrels with these flavors plastic is permeable and whatever the contents of that barrel contained is going to leech into the plastic once you fill it up with water it's gonna leech back out into your water now with a taste of lemon lime it's not a big deal so every time we rotate the water and the used barrels that taste gets fainter and fainter and so what we do is we just plan to be able to filter any water that we've stored in used barrels to make sure that it's good to drink it's more important that you store water then that you purchase new barrels that's our point optimally new barrels aren't the best that you can do however it's more important that you store water this method of treatment is actually a non method of treatment and there are many that subscribe to this philosophy that you just put the water in there and especially if you live in a city where you have a treated water supply you're probably just fine putting it in there now from my perspective I will always filter that on the back end before we use it we will filter that water most water is clean and if you put clean water in a clean barrel there is really not a lot that can go wrong there are disadvantages of treating it with chlorine upfront yes that that is right if you have water that may have some organics in it the chlorine residual does interact with the organics and creates what they call disinfection by-products and this is a big deal in the municipal water industry those are highly regulated because they are carcinogens and do cause other problems so this is maybe one advantage of doing the no treatment method and then treating on the back end calcium hypochlorite is actually my favorite way to treat because I think that calcium hypochlorite is a fantastic tool for emergency preparedness you only need an eighth of a teaspoon to disinfect an entire 55-gallon drum if you if your water is cloudy or questionable you might want to use a quarter of a teaspoon but it takes very very little calcium hypochlorite to disinfect the barrel so you fill the barrel up first and then you just put that in tighten the lid let it sit and 24 hours later you should be able to unscrew that lid and you should smell a little bit of chlorine if you do put the lid back on and you're good to go if not that means that the chlorine or the calcium hypochlorite when it's been killing all the bad bugs it used up all those little chlorine soldiers and you need to treat it one more time but even a faint smell is just fine so this is a bag of calcium hypochlorite that one-pound bag will treat ten thousand gallons of water one of the reasons why we really like it is because it has about a ten year shelf-life if you google our post the Provident prepper disinfecting water using calcium hypochlorite you'll get all the details on it one of the things that I do is I make a stock solution for disinfecting the 55-gallon drum I do not do that because it only takes that eighth of a teaspoon and I can measure that but if you're going to disinfect smaller amounts of water you make a stock solution which you would use similar to household bleach you do need to be careful when using household bleach for a couple of reasons first of all there's all kinds of different bleaches on the shelf if you're going to use household bleach you need to make sure it is just the straight regular bleach without any additives since colors thickeners any of that kind of stuff it has to be just the pure regular bleach bleach has a downside over time it degrades in its strength and so after six months that bleach is degrading enough that you're not truly going to be able to get the disinfection power you need because once that bleach is manufactured it weakens everyday gets a little bit weaker and a little bit weaker and a little bit weaker and about six months it no longer has the strength to kill all of the bugs that are in your water the household bleach contains the chemical sodium hypochlorite and that is the active ingredient that kills the bugs in the water it takes two tablespoons to disinfect a 55-gallon drum make sure you're only using that fresh recently purchased unscented household bleach this water preserver concentrate is another product that is on the market it does kill the bacterias viruses molds and funguses again it is sodium hypochlorite similar to the bleach but it doesn't have all the other stuff that bleach has in it it is stabilized and pH balanced it is a little bit pricey at twenty-five dollars to treat 55-gallon barrels so it is kind of a pricey thing but it's certainly an option and another product that we've looked at is chlorine dioxide kills protozoa and bacterias and viruses so you can see normally chlorine will not take care of the protozoa but this product does it is a stronger oxidizer and it uses oxygen to disinfect again it's a little bit pricier than most treatment methods at 17 dollars for a 55-gallon barrel but certainly an option that's available to you one of the things that this does is it actually improves the taste of the water all you have left in the water is some salts that's what you have residual once the job is done all of these methods will disinfect the water some of them are less expensive some of them are more expensive but all of them will do the job we believe that water rotation is optional but not required again if you put clean water into a clean barrel there's really not a lot that can go wrong and as I mentioned I will be filtering that water on the backend any way for me to rotate my water I don't think it's really necessary you also need to make sure you can access your water with ease sometimes people put water in their barrels and then they say I don't even know how to get it out of here and of course there are pumps that you can use but you want to have the tools to be able to access that water which includes a bun wrench and you can use other things like channel lock pliers but the bung wrench just makes it so much easier and then you need some kind of a pump or siphon device that is easy to use and will allow you to get to your water as Kylie mentioned the critical thing is that you have some water stored if you've got water stored then you have options you have the ability to clean it up you have the ability to use it for whatever purpose but if you have no water stored you are at the mercy of nature and whatever else is happening these are used barrels that we obtain free that held syrups so dr. pepper lemon lime all those because the barrels are transparent algae will grow in them one of the things that we've done to compensate for that is to cover it with a really thick black plastic tarp and then we just weighed it down with pellets on the top and we tuck it in in the bottom is it optimal are these barrels new no but guess what we have a whole lot of water stored there that we were able to do for free so do whatever you need to do to make sure that you have water stored here are some really good resources that we hope that you will look at look at tips for storing water in a 55-gallon barrel and that is the posted this video was created from all so we hope that you will google the Provident prepper emergency waters 17 potential sources for a lot more good information so no more excuses you have the information now and it's very simple to get that water into storage so let's get it done and now for the questions of the day do you have water barrels that are sitting empty yes so what are you going to do about it and what have you learned that might benefit others thanks for being part of this lucien [Music]

Channel: The Provident Prepper

Views: 33,142

Rating: 4.9676113 out of 5

Keywords: emergency preparedness, 55 gallon water barrels, water storage, water disinfection, calcium hypochlorite, chlorine disinfection, chlorine dioxide, water preserver concentrate, shtf, prepper

Id: ESkpWviLvQ0

Length: 11min 18sec (678 seconds)

Published: Fri Feb 01 2019