Water doesn't spoil.

The expiration dates on bottled water is artifical. It's not based on anything other than to get people to buy more water.

If you killed the bacteria and store the treated water properly, then it should be fine to drink YEARS after you stored it. No bacteria means there is nothing to multiply itself in the water, during storage. Proper storage containers will not leach anything harmful into the water. As pointed out above you may get a plastic flat taste if stored for a long time, but you can always pour the water back and forth between CLEAN containers to reoxyginate it.

That being said, I try to rotate my small supply every year. By rotate, I mean USE the water, not just dump it. Water may seem to be unlimted, but in many places FRESH water isn't.

Firefly, you seem quite concerned with bleach, so let me just address that. First, as far as health effects, people have been drinking chlorinated municipal water every day for the past 100 years, so I think it's safe to say that there's ample evidence that you can drink it long term. Chlorination can produce small quantities of carcinogenic compounds, but the risk from this is miniscule compared to the disease and deaths we can prevent by having clean drinking water. For emergency water, the bleach wouldn't even cross my mind.

Liquid bleach is very easy to measure, so I don't think there's much reason to fear incorrect dosing. Besides, if you're starting with clean tap water, adding bleach to the water is more of a back up measure and probably isn't necessary in 99.9% of the cases. If you add too little, then no harm done. Even if you add too much, the bleach breaks down over time so by the time you tried to use it, it would likely be down to harmless levels. Besides, if there is ever too much bleach in the water, your nose will tell you before you ever take the first sip. You'll smell it. In that case, just let the open container sit for a while and the excess will evaporate.

I have had year-old water that I stored. Tastes flat, no chlorine smell left. I wouldn't hesitate to drink year-old water straight from the container that I had stored myself. In a true emergency, where getting sick could be a big problem, I would probably boil or treat the stored water again before drinking it, just to be safe. I mean, the risk of getting sick is super low, but the consequences under emergency conditions could be quite high, so better to err on the side of caution in that case.

Thank you very much to everyone who replied.

Smitty,
If I stored water, I will be very inclined to do as you did, "easier to dump it & refill". Wow, 2003 till now, your water is almost 4 years old. Thank you, for taking a swig. Wonder if boiling will get rid of the faint bleach smell and plastic taste.

kharrel,
Mixing air into water before passing though an activated carbon filter is a good idea. Wonder if using an aquarium filter to pump air into the water will be a good way to aerate the water.

After all our efforts & money spend to treat and stored water for the long term, we dump it down the drain, on the lawn & flush toilet. At best, managed only a swig, then I think something is seriously wrong.

If we won't drink it ourselves, how are we going to convince our family members to drink it. If you cannot get use to the bleach smell & plastic taste now, what make you think you will drink it during an emergency situation.

Hence, I am wondering how to make it more palatable. Wonder if the following procedures would be better.
a) filter the water to get rid of any floating particles
b) pass the filtered water though a UV exposure to kill germs
c) store the water in a suitable container
d) use an aquarium filter to pump air to aerate the water
e) pass the water though an activated carbon filter
f) boil the water before drinking.

Just my 2 cents. All feedback are welcome.

Your comments about bottled water may well be correct, but the OP was asking about water stored in larger containers and treated with bleach. Self-stored water will be, for the most part, far more likely to become contaminated over time than commercially bottled water stored under the same conditions. For that reason I won't drink it unless I have to. The plants in my yard don't seem to mind it though.

I'm willing to bet that for most people, if they are thirsty enough, the bleach smell and plastic taste will simply be ignored. If not, I suppose it wouldn't hurt to pack some powdered drink mix as well.

Conservative Red Cross= 6 mo http://www.redcross.org/
Univ of Georgia = "5 years or more" http://www.fcs.uga.edu/pubs/current/FDNS-E-34-3.html
Water in clean containers will last a very long time

I'm about to put up 15 gals -- I'll let you know how it goes.

We rotate it so it never sits that long.
5 Gallon jugs for our in-home dispenser and 1 gallon jugs for camping. We rotate them since we use them and they never sit longer than a month or two.

-Todd

Thank you, everybody for your comments and advise.