by KnightoftheRoc » Sat Feb 04, 2012 2:52 am
I'm not familiar with EVERY garden hose out there, obviously, but from my own experience as a plumber, and a stint as an RV mechanic, I wouldn't worry about your garden hose for drinking water. Anything in it that MIGHT leach into your water is going to be in such minute amounts that you'll never see any health problems from it- EVER. As to lead content, you probably breathe more of it than the hose can ever deliver, just from car exhausts. Most lead content in municipal water comes from old lead piping bringing the water from the main, into the house, and is easy to check on. Another source is old solder joints, where the solder contained lead- which is why the 95/5 solder is now code (antimony and tin, instead of lead/tin) Sometimes, silver is used, which is also safe. when I worked at the RV dealership, we sold hoses- they came from the hardware store, and they just doubled the price.
The reason water hoses are labeled- IF labeled at all- as not for potable use, is to prevent the hillbilly engineering attempts of plumbing one's own home with nothing but garden hose- it would work, but the soft sides of the hoses wouldn't last long against a mouse chewing it. It's NOT because of chemical leaching.
Water, once sterile, if kept sealed, NEVER goes bad. Think about this for a moment- once sealed away from outside influence, what's going to go bad? Is your water being stored in such poor condition that it can spontaneously spawn new life? All on it's own? I doubt it, and it that IS the case, you shouldn't be drinking it NOW, let alone come the PAW. This is why we use bleach- specifically, the chlorine IN the bleach, to treat the water for storage. That stuff kills EVERYTHING. It is, to waterborne nasties, like Darth Maul on a bad day. Nothing escapes it's death-touch. Then, like Darth Maul, it eventually just goes away, as it breaks down into water and table salt- and in such a minute concentration that you can't taste it, unless you went nuts with the bleach to start with.
Food grade plastic is food grade because it has no chemicals in it that CAN leach into your water. Unless you store your barrels in some toxic chemical dump, simply putting the barrels on a couple of 2X4's set flat should be all you need to keep the barrels isolated from anything getting into the plastic, or the water getting out- just make sure they have no nails or screws in them poking up.
Water weighs 8.3 pounds per gallon, or 1 kilogram per liter. Simple multiplication can give you your water weight, and then just add in the weight of the container(s). 55 X 8.3 = 456.5 pounds, plus your barrel weight. That's about the weight, in about the same amount of floor space, as a fully stocked refrigerator- which means that most apartments can handle the weight on the floor of one or two barrels, spread around the place. I wouldn't concentrate them in one place on your typical wood framed floor.
Many steel barrels marked food grade have a second barrel inside them, of thin food grade plastic, which could never stand on it's own once filled- it's just too thin. Look carefully at the bungs on the top, to see if there's a curled lip of plastic near the threads- that's your tip-off. Steel barrels can be rust-proofed at hoome pretty effectively. turn them upside down, and wire brush any existing rust off, then paint with an oil based enamel, like Rustoleum spray paint. Let that dry, then brush a good heavy coat of rubber dip onto the entire bottom, bottom lip, and down the side past where the lip is. Let that dry, and then PLACE, do not roll or drag- the barrel where it's new home is to be, and start filling it. Rubber dip will hold up to more than a thin coat of paint will, and remains flexible, so thermal expansion doesn't hurt it. It also bonds nicely to fresh paint.
Water is arguably the most important thing in life, if life is to exist. However, it's also quite simple, and I feel that we place so much importance on it that we tend to over complicate it. Fill, treat, seal, and that stuff will outlive you and still be usable. The only thing that screws with that simple process is when something causes an outside influence to take over, like a leak, or improper treatment. It's water, not the primordial soup of a newly formed Earth.
Leakage happens. Even the best built products have the occasional screw up. For that reason, I prefer several smaller storage vessels over one huge megalith of a tank, because Mr. Murphy, being who he is, will invariably create the leak, if there is one, as low in the tank as possible. Gravity takes over from there, and next thing you know, your tank is on empty. There's a saying in plumbing- "there is no such thing as a SMALL leak". Think about it, and you'll see the wisdom in it.
With all the other stuff out there with the potential to kill us, water treatment shouldn't be such an overwhelming concern that we ignore the rest of it. It's important, not complicated.
silentpoet wrote:My first two warning shots are aimed center of mass. If that don't warn them I fire warning shots at their head until they are warned enough that I am no longer in fear for my life.
