There has to be a design flaw. The containers I had were the ones shaped roughly like a jerry can. I purchased them locally and stored them in my insulated, heated garage. The containers were in a row sitting on the concrete slab with nothing on top of them. I should add that they were only subjected to sunlight while I was pulling cars or mowers in and out of the garage and even then it would have been indirect light. The containers had a large molded X pattern on the side and IIRC each container failed toward the bottom edge of the X. The containers were all new when I purchased them at Academy Sports & none of them lasted a year.

The sad thing is that I have a lot of the 3L size Ozarka stackable water bottles stacked several layers deep in the same garage and none of them has leaked.

I bought some of the large round Reliance containers to replace the jerry can style Reliance containers but I haven't had them very long. Time will tell.

ETA: I went to several web sites trying to find a picture of the containers that failed. So far I haven't been able to locate a picture of them. Hmmmm, either I'm mistaken about them being Reliance containers or that model has been discontinued. I don't think I'm mistaken.

Just another FYI, but plastic water containers should not be stored directly on the concrete floor because chemicals from the concrete can leach into the water. Actually, these chemicals could also weaken the plastic over time.

Hey Arney,

Interesting, since worldwide many water storage caches are made of concrete. I would have thought if this were a major source of chemical contamination, concrete would not be so readily used as a building material for water storage units.

Well, there are all kinds of concrete and I'm sure that any concrete enclosure specifically designed to hold water would take that into account.

I'm surprised that you haven't heard this bit of preparedness advice before. I have heard/read it numerous times over the years. I just heard it again when I recently went through my city's 8-week Community Emergency Preparedness Academy program and it was the guest speakers from the local water utility who repeated this advice to us.

No, I never heard of this before now. I can imagine newly poured concrete may continue for some time to leach chemicals to the surface, but I would think that after some time/curing the leaching would not be an issue. Do you know what chemicals are leaching to the surface? Any published references?

Thanks-
Pete

No, I have never heard/read any detailed explanation about this phenomenon and I have tried searching the web in the past because I, too, have been curious about it. Typically you'll just see the preparedness advice to keep the plastic containers up off the bare concrete floor, like putting your 50-gallon water drum on a wooden pallet or keeping your smaller containers on a shelf.

Any civil engineers or construction types out there? Maybe they'd know.

Edit: I was just Googling a bit and ran across this webpage. Obviously, this webpage is a sales pitch for a particular product (which I'm not endorsing in any way), but it does provide some interesting insight into why keep your water off the concrete floor. Apparently, even if you never spill any water on your dry concrete floor, there could still be water present as water vapor, which can leach chemicals out of the concrete onto the surface. Again, not intended as a concrete explanation (excuse the pun) but does shed some possible light on the subject.

Oh, and I did read that concrete used for water storage/transport purposes needs to be certified concrete, so I assume that a concrete water reservoir is not necessarily using the same concrete as what is used in my garage floor.

We found this out the hard way - had six 2.5 gallon containers stacked on a basement shelf and they all developed leaks around the funnels around the same time (less than a year).

The water I'd stored in milk gallon-type plastic also mysteriously leaked when stored directly on concrete in the basement for only a few months. It was as if the seams on the bottom just came apart! Jugs of the same age/make that were stored off the concrete remained in perfectly good shape, however.

I've since heard about keeping certain plastics off of concrete, especially new concrete(?) but still can't find any hard scientific studies to back this up.

Just to be safe, I now keep water in several blue "Aquatainers" (singly stacked) far away from any concrete flooring, and make sure to check/rotate on a regular basis.

Two years running, and no problems.





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Just a thought, could be that it not chemicals leaching from the concrete that damages the plastic, but that the concrete is acting as an absorbent, leaching chemicals/stabilizers from the plastic and thus weakening the plastic until it leaks.

Pete

It's possible, but I don't think that is the main method of action here. Again, this is just my educated guess based on less-than-scientific reading, but based on that link I posted earlier, I think that alkaline compounds are leaching to the surface of the concrete, and plastics are generally susceptible to attack from alkaline compounds, so that is probably what is degrading the plastic slowly.