Many people on this forum actually treated water with bleach to prepare the water for long term storage.

For example, after 6 months or 1 year in storage, what do you do with the water ?

Do you dispose of the water and repeat the cycle again.

Does anyone actually drink water that is 6 months / 1 years old ?

Any things we should do before drinking such aged water ?

We all drink bottled water, don't we? And who knows how old that is...

Or are you specifically worried about the bleach?

Technically speaking every drop of water we have ever drank or will ever drink has been around since the beginning of life on this planet or shortly there after it's just been through the cycle of rain and evaperation thru out the time. wich means your drinking water thats thousands of years old so why worry about a few months

Like the rest of people, I would not consume anything that is past the expiry date. Normally, I will just dispose off the expired items.

Is it safe to consume food/water that has expired ?
Why people hesitate to consume expired stuff ?
Does the water in storage expire after sometime ?

From browsing survival preparedness websites, I am getting the impression that if people stored water for a pre defined period, then they will dispose the stored water at the end of the period and replaced it with fresh treated water.

I do have a mental block about the bleach. Is there any health risk drinking bleach treated water on a prolong basis, example after an incident such as Katrina.

raydarkhorse,
You are right, water has been around since beinning of time on this planet. Nature has the resources to store, filter & purify water.

My concern is the water stored by people like us within our home may be subjected to incorrect dosage of bleach, too little or too much, water container not properly sealed, etc. Besides, the water in storage is dead, it is not flowing anywhere. Unlike in nature, where it may flow past layers of filtering materials or go through the evaporation / rain cycle.

So, I am asking do you actually drink the water that you stored.

What do you think ?

So long as you can stand the smell, unscented bleach is no more hazardous to you than chlorinated tap water if you didn't go overboard. If you just can't swallow with the stink, let it air out over night or add something with some vitamin C or some make tea/coffee out of it.

I store my water is OJ cartons in the freezer, or three jerry cans, one of which gets refilled every other week (6 weeks max storage time) so I'm not so worried about expiration dates.

Yes.

Normally don't drink it, I just dump it down the bathtub drain. It's not that I'm fearful of drinking it, it's just easier to dump it and refill.
If I where going to drink it I would probably transfer the water to a clear container, and check the storage container for any growing "stuff". If you can still smell the bleach and the water is clear then it's "probably" OK.

This thread reminded me that I had some water in the basement that I needed to rotate. I found a couple of Reliance Aqua-Tainer 7 gallon jugs that I had filled in March of 2003. I drug them upstairs and proceeded to check them out. This water had been treated with 8-10 drops of bleach per gallon. As I mentioned earlier they had been stored in the basement, out of sunlight and at a pretty constant temperature of about 74 to 76 degrees.
I removed the lid and sniffed the container, a slight bleach smell could still be detected. I took a powerful flashlight and shined the water. Looked crystal clear. Nothing growing on the sides of the container. Good so far.
Poured a glass full and took a little swig. Couldn't taste the bleach but it did have just a very slight plastic taste. I was kinda surprised at how good it tasted.
Now, I'm not going to drink this water, but in an emergency I wouldn't be too concerned about drinking it.
By the way, these containers were the older Aqua-Tainers that had the threaded vent cap. I don't know if it makes a difference or not. I wish Reliance hadn't changed the vent on the new ones. The new style Aqua-Tainers have a tapered push-in plug that's about the size of a pencil eraser.
Some of my Aqua-Tainers are close to 10 years old and I've had zero problems with them.



smitty

I filled (2) 48 gallon plastic drums with water today.

I purchased these from Coke $10 each.

I treated each with 1/4 cup bleach (6%).

IF NEEDED, I will siphon water out into a bucket, pour back and forth into second bucket to "mix air into water", then send though a activated carbon filter and drink.

If the tap water still works when I move out, I will empty without drinking.

This will supply my family of 5 drinking water for 3 weeks without the Tap.

I buy 5 liter bottles of mineral water.
I have about 12 such bottles in my cellar.
When I have drunk 2 ou 3 bottles, I replace them.
I recently (last month) started to stock bleached tap water, using the 5 liter empties, to have an extra stock on hand, if need arises. Clutter considerations will limit this stock to another 12 bottles.
I intend to rotate this bleached water every 6 months/1 year (not sure which, yet).I won't drink it except to test if it's still OK, but will use it to flush the toilet (I don't want to waste water)

I dump it out on the lawn. I live in a desert though.

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.