How To Clean Used 55 Gallon Plastic Water Barrels
Storing water is an absolutely essential part of preparing for any emergency. One effective way to store a lot of water is by buying a used 55-gallon water drum and properly cleaning it out.
How To Clean Chemicals Out of Plastic Water Barrels
You can use the same recommendations I list below to do the cleaning, but I would recommend against using any of these barrels that have had harmful chemicals to store your drinking water. There is just too much risk of those chemicals being stored in the plastics and then, later on, leaking into your drinking water.
If you are planning to use yours for long-term drinking water, you want to steer clear of any that might have been used to store chemicals. If you just got one that had another food-grade product in it, like syrup, it will need to be cleaned sufficiently before storing drinking water.
Only store your drinking water in barrels that have had food-grade products in them beforehand.
How To Clean a 55 Gallon Drum
To begin, let’s talk about how to first clean out one of these massive plastic water barrels. It shouldn’t take too long, and there are multiple ways to go about it. Often, these barrels have been used to store syrups or other food-grade products pryer to your purchase, but as mentioned above, sometimes they are used to store harmful chemicals.
Here are a few cleaning options, depending on what you have on hand.
- One way to clean a plastic barrel is with chlorine bleach, which acts as a disinfectant for the germs and bacteria accumulated in the barrel. Mix 1 tablespoon of bleach per one gallon of water. If the lid is not removable, fill the bucket half full, mix with one cup of bleach, secure the lid, and roll the bucket around. Whichever method you use, rinse the barrel multiple times to dispel any residue.
- Another way to clean a plastic barrel is with soap, which will be most effective if the barrel was previously storing something oily. Add dish soap to the barrel and use a hose to rinse it out many times to get rid of any residue. Using dish soap is effective, but it is also more difficult to rinse out of the barrel. Be careful with this one because if you dump this out on your grass after cleaning, it can kill your grass.
- Baking soda can remove foul smells that exist in a plastic barrel. Mix 1 box of baking soda with water to make a thick paste and scrub the inside of the barrel. Rinse completely. Follow this method with the bleach method to ensure that all bacteria have been killed.
- No matter which method you use, you will probably need to scrub any left-over residue or debris within the plastic barrel. If you can’t get something in there to scrub, you can also use a pressure washer to clean excess residue.
How To Disinfect A Water Storage Tank Before Use
If you’ve bought your barrels from a place that has had syrup in them, you might not need to worry about this section.
If you’ve had your barrels for a while and use them for composting or gardening, you’ll want to verify that they don’t have algae or any bacteria growing in them.
You will want to disinfect your water storage tank if it tests positive for E.coli or any other bacteria. Luckily, this process is pretty straightforward.
If you’d don’t feel comfortable adding water to your barrels without testing first, you should buy this E.coli testing kit on Amazon just to make sure.
Use Bleach To Disinfect Your Water Barrel
- Get some unscented household laundry bleach. Most of them contain about 5.25% chlorine.
- Determine how much bleach to add to your water tank based on the results given from this chlorine dilution calculator.
- Funnel in the proper amount of bleach, and recirculate the water in the drum through a clean, food-grade hose for approximately 15 minutes. You should be able to smell the bleach.
- Distribute the bleach by opening all of the water taps in the barrel and allowing the water to run until you can smell the chlorine running through each tap.
- At this point, you’ll want to close the taps and let the drum fill up all the way, and then turn off the water. Allow the water to sit for 24 hours.
- After letting it sit overnight, open up all of the taps and holes and flush the bleach from the barrel the best that you can. Let the water run through the barrel until the bleach smell is very minimal. You will still be able to smell it a little bit, but a small amount of bleach in your water won’t hurt you.
Flush all water into a driveway or onto the gravel. Again, do not drain this water on your grass, or you could kill it.
Long Term Water Storage Tips
Ok, so now you’re done cleaning your 55-gallon drum that you’re going to use for water storage. Now what? There are still a few important things you need to know in order to make your water last and stay clean. Let’s take a deeper look into how we should store our water long-term.
How To Store Water Long-Term
As long as the water barrels are stored in a cool, dark area, and not stored directly on cement or near chemicals, you should be able to keep the water for many years.
The plastic that the barrel is made out of is very absorbent. If you store these barrels directly on cement or near any harmful chemicals, there is a good chance the plastic will absorb the chemicals or other products, ultimately ending up in your drinking water.
You also don’t want to store them directly in the sunlight because there is a higher likelihood that you will end up growing algae on the inside of the barrel.
The best place to store your water is in your cool basement or any other cold and dark area.
Some people prefer to rotate their water every 6 to 12 months. There is nothing wrong with this. The only thing this is doing is re-oxygenating the water. If you store your water long-term and then use it, it can taste a bit stale. You can also overcome this by pouring water back and forth from one water picture to another very aggressively. How often you replace your water is up to you.
How Much Bleach Do I Add To A 55-Gallon Water Barrel?
If you get your water from the tap or filtered city water this is not needed. You’ll want to verify where the water is coming from. In most cases, water spouts that come directly from the house should be clean water that has already been treated from the water treatment plant.
If you get your water from irrigation water you will for sure want to treat it before use. Or, if you open your water to use and it has a funny smell, you’ll also want to take some extra precautions to make sure the water is safe to drink before drinking it.
If you do end up using bleach to clean your water, use normal unscented, household bleach.
Add ¼ teaspoon per gallon of water if the water is cloudy and ⅛ teaspoon per gallon of water if the water is clear. This means that for a 55-Gallon drum you’ll want to add 13 ¾ teaspoons if the water is cloudy and 6 ¾ teaspoons if the water is clear.
Or you can determine how much bleach to add to your water tank based on the results given from this chlorine dilution calculator.