how's it going guys welcome back to the pilot patriot channel today we're going to be doing
another video on long-term water storage now i have done a video in the past on how to store
your water long term for emergencies but today we're going to be talking specifically about
how to store your water in 55 gallon barrels now if you want to check out the other video i will
put a link to that right here at the top of the screen now if you're going to store your water in
a 55 gallon drum there are some things to consider and some right and wrong ways to do that and we're
going to talk about that right now but before we do if you haven't done it yet guys make sure you
hit that subscribe button down below hit that notification bell and please give us a thumbs
up that really helps us out all right guys first things first now why would you want to store your
water in a huge drum like this well there are a couple things to think about so we all know that
we need water to survive and in emergencies it can be hard to get water or your water could
be contaminated so it's important that you have some stored away for those types of emergencies
now in my other video i talked about storing water bottles and storing in small portable containers
and you definitely should do that but in an emergency a good rule of thumb is to have one
gallon of water per person per day now if you live by yourself it may be easy to store that
much water but if you have a family so let's say you have four people in your family you your wife
and two children you're gonna need a minimum of four gallons of water per day so one of those
small portable containers is gone after a day but one way to store large amounts of water in
a relatively small area is a 55 gallon drum now let's talk about the drum first i know you can go
on craigslist or facebook marketplace and get used drums all day long the problem with that
is you need to know what was stored in that drum a lot of times those types of drums can be used
to store chemicals or pickle juice or cleaning supplies or things like that and it would be very
difficult to clean all that out and make sure your water barrel is safe to store drinking water in so
definitely the best way to do it is to get a brand new 55-gallon drum there are a lot of places
online you can order those you may have a store in your area that sells them i will put a link in the
description below to the barrel as well as all the other stuff we're going to be talking about
so hopefully that helps you guys out most of time they're going to be somewhere between 50 and 100
bucks and a lot of times you can have them shipped to a store so you can go pick them up and not have
to pay shipping costs so if you are going to do this i definitely recommend using a brand new
barrel and you also need to make sure that it's a food grade barrel and that means that it is
certified safe to store drinking water in that's important now there's just a few things you're
going to need if you're going to store water in a barrel like this these barrels typically have two
holes in the top and to open those you are going to need a bung wrench and i will link to that in
the description below and then those caps are just going to come right off and those caps do have a
rubber seal on the inside in addition to your bung wrench you're going to need a drinking water safe
hose now not all hoses are drinking water safe so but typically the ones made for rvs and stuff like
that are you can find that at any home improvement store and i will link to one in the description
below now a lot of people ask do you have to treat the water and the answer to that is it depends
a lot of times if you're on city water that water is already treated if you're on well water like
i am either way it's a good idea to use some type of preservative or water treatment in your barrel
especially since you're going to be storing this for a long period of time it's just a good idea
it's not going to hurt anything to go ahead and put some type of water treatment in the barrel
there are a lot of products that are made for treating water you can also
use unscented bleach but uh what i like to use is aquamira water treatment it comes in two separate
bottles just like this and you're going to mix those two parts together to activate it
and then pour it into your barrel and all that's going to do is help prevent bacteria
growth and things like that in your barrel now while we're thinking about that there's a few
other things to consider on how you're going to store your barrel you want to make sure you're
using a blue barrel like this or a black barrel something that's going to block out any light
white barrels just aren't good for water storage because they're letting light in
and things like light and heat are going to create an environment where bacteria can grow
inside the barrel and you definitely don't want that you're going to want to store it in a place
that's relatively cool and dark somewhere like your garage is a great place to store it
but something to consider is if you are going to be storing it on concrete it's a good idea to put
it up on some two by fours or some type of wood so that it's not sitting directly on the concrete
concrete changes temperature a lot it can also leach chemicals out of the concrete into the
barrel and you definitely don't want that so the best way to do that is just to prop your barrel
up on two two by fours keep it up off the ground that's also going to allow air to circulate around
it which is a good thing so that's just a good idea to do that all right now once you got your
barrel and all your stuff set up first thing you need to do is clean your barrel out the way i like
to do that is you take those bung nuts off you put a few inches of water in the bottom and then just
put a couple drops of dishwashing soap in there and then close it back up then you can shake that
barrel up roll it around make sure that soapy water touches all the surfaces inside the barrel
you just want to do that a couple times then dump that soapy water out and just repeat the
process with clean water and keep pouring it out until your water comes out clean
once you do that you can turn your barrel upside down let it dry out if you want to
but then you are ready to store your water before you fill your barrel up it's a good idea to have
it in the place that you're going to want to store it because once you fill this bad boy up it's
going to weigh about 400 pounds and it's going to be very difficult to move now what i'm going
to do is i'm going to fill the barrel up about halfway before i put my treatment in there and
then i'll fill it up the rest of the way all right once you get your barrel filled up about halfway
you're ready to go ahead and mix up your aquamira now what they recommend
that you do is you're going to pre-mix it before you pour it into the barrel
now 55-gallon drum is going to require four ounces so that's the full contents of these two bottles
now once you mix it together stir it up a little bit and then just let it sit for a few minutes
you will notice that it's going to start to get a little bit of a yellow color to it
and that's just these two chemicals reacting to each other that's exactly what it's supposed to do
it's not going to turn your water yellow so you don't have to worry about that
and you may notice a little bit of a chlorine smell but that's not a problem
that will go away your water is not going to smell or taste like chlorine once you mix it
in there once you've given that a second to mix up good you can go ahead and pour it into your barrel
make sure you get it all in there and then you're ready to fill your barrel up the rest of the way
once you're done you can go ahead and put your bung nuts back on make sure you don't cross
thread it and then you really want to crank those bad boys down nice and tight to seal it up good
that water is preserved and treated and ready to store for long term you can store this for years
you should be able to store this just fine for five to ten years without having to worry about
any kind of contamination or anything like that all right guys now that you have your barrel all
filled up you are ready to go it is a good idea to label your barrel with the date that you stored it
aquamira actually provides a little label that you can use or just use masking tape or something
like that but it is a good idea to label that so you know what date you stored it on and you're
ready to go so when that emergency comes up and you can't get any clean water at your house you
can't find any water in the stores you're prepared i know what some of you guys are thinking once i
get that big barrel filled up how am i going to get the water out the best way to do that
is one of these drum siphon pumps um the way that's going to work is you just take one of those
caps off and you're going to put this down in there and it's going to screw right into that same
location on the barrel and then it just has a hand pump so you're going to hand pump it out and it's
going to siphon that water out and you can siphon it right into any kind of smaller container or
cup or bottle or whatever you want to put it in all right guys well that's it for how to store
your water in a 55-gallon drum if you have any other questions or anything like that please leave
them in the comments below if you like these kind of videos guys make sure you hit that subscribe
button down below hit that notification bell and give us a thumbs up we really appreciate that
don't forget to use our links down below for the barrel and all the other stuff we
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