Water Jug Shelf Life???

Lowes, and others I'm sure, sell 3.5 gallon water jugs for water coolers. These are sealed, but does anyone know what the shelf life is for the water is these jugs?

Until it evaporates, if you have a method of purifying water.

The general wisdom here about stored water has been to rotate it every 6 months. Water in sterile sealed containers (e.g. Aquablox or those little foil packets) supposedly is good for 5 years, but those things are ridiculously expensive in my opinion. See the campfire forum thread about testing water quality, for some more info.

The Homeland Security web site says 6 months for home-bottled water (bottled with a bit of chlorine), 1 year for commercially bottled water, and 1 year for store self-filled bottles so long as they use "ozonation" to kill nasties in the water.

I'd probably home-bottle and rotate every 4-6 months. If home bottling, make sure you clean the containers first by washing in hot soapy water. Sanitize them with a 1 tablespoon chlorine bleach per gallon of water solution (~200 PPM), shake it and let it sit for a few minutes (at least two). Rinse out the container with clean water.

For storage add 5-7 drops of 5.25% chlorine bleach per gallon of water (~5 PPM) and store in a cool dark place.

These water jugs are clear, I think it would be better to block out light for long term storage.

I just dumped out 2-5 gallon jugs I filled last May. They both stunk of chlorine. I'm beginning to think I'm overpurifying. IIRC I put 5 tablespoons in each jug.

Time to get an eyedropper I guess.

Regards, Vince

Edit: I forgot to add that I also washed each jug out with chlorine before I filled it. Maybe that's what stunk things up?

Wow.

Just for fun, I did the math....

1 tbl == 295 drops (using linux's "units" conversion tool)

So, 5 tablespoons is 1475 drops. If we go with the upper end of the 5 to 7 drop recommendation, that's over 40 times the recommended amount of chlorine. <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

But let's say you were just finding out it was too much in a situation where you couldn't afford to throw the water away. Any pool people out there? How long would it take for the chlorine to dissipate if the water was left in an open bucket? If the bucket were in the sun? Can you reduce the chlorine content by boiling?

Thats a lot of bleach! <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

Pool chemisty. Sodium hypochlorite degrades the elemental chlorine to the atmosphere. The rest stay behind.

Thanks guys. These bottle were tinted blue and I would keep them in a dark, cool, dry area. I like the idea of their size, etc. so I might grab a couple. I can always rotate them out. Heck, every summer I can dump them into our 500 gallon pool.

Well... no.

Don't confuse the O in H2O with the dissolved gases in water. Fish breathe by extracting dissolved oxygen gas from water... they don't break apart individual water molecues to get at the oxygen. <img src="/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

The stale taste is mostly a result of the dissolved gases leaving the water. Which is why most water storage FAQs recommend aerating the water before drinking, usually by pouring it back and forth between two glasses several times.

Approx. 24 hrs, but it will depend upon the amount and concentration of bleach used and the presence of organic material and/or other chemicals present in the water.

Pete

I think maybe I confused the container sanitizing instructions with the water storage instructions. <img src="/images/graemlins/shocked.gif" alt="" />

I'll go with 1/2 tsp. per 5 gallons from now on. Even that might seem a little heavy on the chlorine side but this stuff is stored in an unheated/uncooled trailer in temps ranging from 0 to +100 degrees F. for 6 months at a time.

Regards, Vince

1/2 teaspoon chlorine bleach per 5 gallons of water gives you 6.8 PPM chlorine (assuming clean water). This matches the water storage concentration recommendations from Homeland Security.

Pool person here.

For container sanitation they usually recommend 100-200 PPM, which is 1/2 to 1 tablespoon chlorine bleach per gallon. This is supposed to "soak" for at least 2 minutes, and preferably longer (time is an important element of chlorine sanitation).

For drinking water most municipalities seem to target that same concentration as pool water - 1-3 PPM, which is 2-4 drops per gallon, but most seem to recommend higher concerntrations for sanitizing drinking water - 5-8 drops per gallon. This is probably because all the PPM calculations assume the water is pure to begin with - and it might not be. Unclean water will end up with lower PPM levels as the Chlorine does its work.

Liquid bleach will dissipate in water VERY fast if stirred. Even in my pool the motion of the pump dissipates it quite fast.

Chlorine sanitation works best at room temperature 70-80 degrees. Sun spontaneously causes chlorine to convert to a gaseous form and "dechlorinates" water fairly quickly - a good sunny day with clear of pool of chlorine in just one day unless stabilizer is used.

Pool owners have use cyanuric acid to "stabilize" chlorine in a pool. The cyanuric acid essentially acts like a sunscreen for the chlorine. Without it, chlorine would disappear all to rapidly on a sunny day.

Heat also causes chlorine to escape from a solution. Boiling would certainly drive out the chlorine, but you wouldn't really need to get it that hot.

An easy way to check your water is to go to a local pool store and purchase some pool testing strips. They are a simple pieces of paper that you dip in the water and within 30 seconds tells you how much chlorine (free and total - "unfree" chlorine is that which has done its work and latched onto and sanitized organic matter - it is called chloramine) in the water with pretty decent precision.

I think drinking water up to 20 PPM or so is considered OK to drink, but I would't let my kids drink it. I'd rather it came down to 5 PPM or so.

Thanks.

So it sounds like all is not lost if you've overdone the bleach. Let the water sit, open to the air, for a day or so and it should be ok. Would a safe rule of thumb be to wait until you can't smell chlorine anymore?

The fastest way to reduce chlorine is to set the container in the sun (if a clear container).

Actually, it is best if you do smell a bit of chlorine - just a bit, like in a swimming pool. If all the chlorine is gone you run the risk of nasties starting to grow again.

Again, go get the test strips. They aren't too expensive and are your best bet.

So I have a partly used bottle of bleach that's several years old. Has its lost its strength? Should I buy some more? I don't use it for laundry very often.

Clean up your bathrooms & kitchen with it and buy new stuff -- c'mon, like its expensive?

Recapping:

Aerate to get rid of chlorine & stale taste, also recommended to improve taste of boiled water. Store in a cool dark space. Rotate stock. Shelf life from 1 to 3 years (varying opinions).

My work consists of installing municipal water pipes. When tested our water must show 0 bacteria. So, in theory, you could store city water indefinitely in sterile & airtight containers as it has no bacteria to reproduce and make you sick.

In effect stale water is useless. The biological makeup of the hydrogen and oxygen atoms have begun to break down.

Water is water is water. It doesn't become old and not-water, no longer wet, hydrating, or useful, suddenly incapable of being absorbed and utilized by your body, slipping untouched through your system like a silver snake.

It's not as tasty when stale, that's all.

I'll see about finding a pool supply place around here for test strips (might not be easy). Or, I know a guy with a pool, maybe I can get some strips from him.

It hadn't occurred to me to use bleach for general purpose cleaning. I'm still wondering whether it goes stale. Yeah I can obviously buy more if needed.

I just missed out on a good Walgreen's sale, 1/2 liter bottles in 15-packs, three packs (45 bottles) for $8. The 12- and 15-packs are a really nice size, more manageable than 24-packs but fewer packages scattered around than 6-packs. Oh well, no big deal.

I believe the shelf life is 1.5-3 years.

I recently bought the 2.5 gallon plastic boxes of water with a spout sold by many supermarkets. I bought the cheapest water I could find. The _jugs_ failed in a week or two. They weren't stiff enough, and they wrinkled and cracked at the wrinkle. Two jugs out of five broke and leaked in a month.

If you're storing water, check it occasionally for leaks. We've had the spouts leak before, so we store with the spouts up instead of in the down position you'd use them in. But this was the first time we had the actual container spring a leak.

Do you mean the big water jugs, installed bottom up on offices' "fountains" (with "room temp" and "cool" faucets/taps) ??

I checked at work today :
- the limit date is stamped "sept 2006", that's a good year from now
- the recommandation, once open, is to use it within 15 days.

Those dispenser jugs are intended to be reusable and they're very tough. I think Philip is describing the flimsy 2.5 gallon rectangular containers that you can get at grocery stores. Just the same, I don't see how they could fail that easily, unless Philip was stacking them.