I do the 7 and 5 gallon containers along with several cases of 1 L bottles. I believe Doug mentioned the chance of large containers getting contaminated or container failure as one reason not to keep all your water in one or two 55 gallon drums. I like the idea of circulating it via hookups to culinary, though, since that should solve the contamination potential.

I stack by aquatainers on a palette in the unfinished basement. No real need for shelving.

I store Aquatainers along with my other emergency supplies in my travel trailer. I dump the water on the lawn every June and September and refill them. They are frozen a good portion of the year which aids storage time, but also would make it pretty hard to drink (imagine spending time chipping off chunks of ice from an Aquatainer-sized block. ) So I also store a couple of cases of bottled water. They freeze too but will thaw a lot faster.

In the summer there is an extra 40 gallons in the water tank, but I'd drink this only after boiling it. It's mostly for hygeine.

Water used for personal hygeine should be clean enough to drink...

It may well be clean enough but I won't trust it. Keeping the water tank disinfected enough to reliably drink from it is a problem since in the summer it is regularly above 90 F. here. I do put bleach in it but even so I'll use it mostly for flushing the toilet. I'm counting on the water heater killing most of the other nasties when using it for hand washing/sponge bathing.

Well I would think, not that I know, but if water is disinfected when it goes into the container and the container is disinfected, then the water should last a very long time. I know that it probably isn't ever 100% bacteria free, but it really shouldn't grow.

Dave