Email from Uline (fast responce!)

Thank you for contacting Uline Customer Service.

Neither the S-11861, 30 Gallon Closed Top Plastic Drum, nor the S-10757, 55 Gallon Closed
Top Plastic Drum are recommended for storing drinking water.

Looks like someone retrofit restaurant oil jugs with a simple cardboard container. Depending on what the price is I can't see a reason to get one of those instead of a water container made for stacking.

Nicodemus,

I didn't say I have a lot of them (yet), just that as I empty them I recycle them to store water. If I did the same with every 2 liter soda bottle that came into the house I'd probably have enough water stored to fill a swimming pool.

Since you asked, my wife is a Registered Nurse. She may use more than the average amount of bleach in doing laundry. That said, we might go through a 3-4 bottles of bleach each year. It will take time to accumulate as many as I'd like, but once I have them I think they'll last a long time.

Dennis

thought I would drop in & give y'all the solution I found.
There are 15-liter (almost 4 US gallons)single-use water bottles available locally for about $5 with only a 25-cent deposit.
http://www.arrowheadwater.ca/company.htm
Don't know if there is a US equivalent, but likely there is.

We purchased an 8' length of white food quality hose to tap our water heater if we ever needed to, as the spigot is only two inches from the floor. The shut-off valve to the outside water supply is nearby, so in an emergency we can shut it off, open the sink valve in the second floor bathroom, and gravity feed all of the water in the pipes through the water heater valve. We also use four 7 gallon 'jerry can' food quality plastic totes to store water. We rotate that water yearly in the fall when we freeze-proof the outside sillcocks. We store a gallon of emergency clorine bleach in our cache, and rotate it out when the one in the laundry area is empty, replacing the bottle in the cache.

Its interesting that they try to hide just what vitamin O is. It appears to be sodium or potassium sulfite, depending on the version you get.

Aerobic stabilized oxygen = scam.

Asked a PhD. he laughed. "it might help, but it is not going to make water safe or any more healthy..." his PhD is in entomology, masters in education, bachelors in Microbiology.

> Anyone have suggestions on best practices for long term water storage
> (i.e. how to treat the water for storage, when to rotate it, etc.)?

Here's the word from the Alameda County Water District. It's in the San Francisco Bay Area and is geared toward storing water for the inevitable earthquake>

http://www.acwd.org/faq.php5?category_id=57

I think it answers your questions that I've repeated above.