I just got a 55-gallon drum set from Shelf Reliance and it came with Water Preserver Concentrate that says it's "guaranteed 100% effective for 5-year storage". Is this stuff just smoke and mirrors or is it for real? Should I stick with the old favorite of 1/4 cup unscented bleach or use this stuff? The website for the stuff is:

http://waterpreserver.com/

Ingredients: Sodium Hypochlorite
Concentration: 5.25%

It's just expensive bleach.

That's kinda what I figured. It came with the barrel, so I'll probably go ahead and use it.

While I wouldn't discourage anyone from using bleach to purify water for storage, make sure you have some on hand for when you need to use it.

In general, clean water kept in a sealed container in the dark will stay clean and not grow illness-causing pathogens, but if you've stored it for a while and want to be sure before you use it, that's when I'd add the sodium hypochlorite.

The Water Preservative Concentrate stuff that came with the barrel only has a one-year shelf life listed on the bottle before you have to use it. I will be keeping regular unscented bleach on-hand also but went ahead and dumped the WPC stuff in the barrel as I was filling it.

From what I've read so far, it's basically unscented bleach but with some kind of stabilizer to make it release slowly over time so it works for 5 years. I went ahead and dated the barrel for fill date and can decide as I go along how often I was to refill the barrel.

Sounds good.

I have Potable Aqua tabs in my small kits. My big kit has a sack of pool shock (pure sodium hypochlorite) along with measuring device so that I can disinfect water in quantity. I also have printed directions for making a disinfection solution, and from there using that to disinfect the water.

Also, let me correct two things I said in my previous post. I used the word "purify" when I really should have used "disinfect". Bleach will do a bang-up job of killing pathogens but does nothing to remove chemical contamination. Also, I should have specified that clean water kept in a clean, sealed container will keep indefinitely in the dark.

A bit tangential, but also make sure not to store your new barrel directly on concrete. Various salts from the concrete will eventually leach through the plastic. A wooden shipping pallet would be perfect, but a single sheet of plywood or even some thick plastic sheeting should do the trick.

Similarly, if the barrel is someplace exposed to a lot of car exhaust or various chemical fumes like in a garage, those gases can slowly leach through the plastic and could impart an off taste to the water. For emergency use, I'd certainly drink the water, but just so you know.

Actually, you should test if your barrel imparts a plastic taste to stored water after a while. If it does, I would try to change the water out fairly frequently until it stops doing that. I'd hate for you to have your emergency water sitting for several years, slowly getting less palatable. The water from one of my emergency plastic containers made me gag from the plastic taste the first time I tasted the water from that particular container during the first refill.

Edit: On second thought, plastic sheeting probably won't do the trick. I was thinking of another situation. Anyway, if salts can leach through that thick barrel plastic, I'm quite certain it can leach through plastic sheeting eventually, too.

I set it on a piece of 1/4" thick luan plywood I had laying around from our remodel, then covered it with a blue Walmart tarp, then flipped the cardboard box it came in upside down over it, then put a piece of 1/2" plywood on top of it. Should be good to go.

I will check the water after a while and see how it looks/smells/tastes. So far I'm impressed with the quality of the barrel.