How Long Can Water Stand Still?
I have a water barrel that has collected rain about 10 days ago, but I haven't had a chance to use it to water my garden due to lots of rain for the past week. Does anyone know how long water can stand in a barrel without moving before it becomes bad? I'm using it only to water the garden. Thanks!
Assuming you don't have a new asphalt roof, its fine for your garden.
Around here in TN it usually first will take on mosquitoes then turn yellow from all the pollen and stuff in the air, and eventually start stinking from microbial growth but a lot of that depends on whether it rains again and if you have fresh rain water going into it when it does as far as timing goes.
We have a tube we use for watering plants.
Why not throw an air pump and stone in it and set that to a timer to run every few hours. As long as it's bubbled it'll last forever, well until it evaps.
Water generally never goes"bad" It may contain certain things that will cause you problems but you can generally get around them with various forms of treatment. (aeration, etc) just my .02
Originally Posted By mittffoo:
Water generally never goes"bad" It may contain certain things that will cause you problems but you can generally get around them with various forms of treatment. (aeration, etc) just my .02
Correct. Water is water.
Filtration, chemical treatment, dilution... All solve the issue of 'bad' water.
TRG
I have a regular tiled roof. The water barrel hooks to the gutter and I have to replace the flex spout with the regular spout when the barrel fills up, then use the water to feed my plants when it doesn't rain for a day or two. I just don't want it to become stagnant and a mosquito magnet. I've got mesh on both the fill opening and the overfill opening, just worried about any kind of microbes growing there. An air pump to keep it moving might be a solution, or could I just rock it back and forth every day or so to get the water moving around?
You could physically stir it every so often, but anything short might just be wasted energy. The surface needs to break repeatedly to ensure satisfactory aeration, at least IMO.
Air pump, stone, and timer can be picked up for cheap, like under $15 cheap. In fact, lemme look, I bet I have everything (minus tubing) that I could probably send you if getting out to find these things is difficult.
Thanks! There's no need, though. It shouldn't be a problem for me to find what I need here at the house.
Stupid Question: When you say "stone" you mean "stone?"
Originally Posted By Durka-Durka:
Thanks! There's no need, though. It shouldn't be a problem for me to find what I need here at the house.
Stupid Question: When you say "stone" you mean "stone?"
He means an airstone like you'd find in an aquarium.
You could always slosh a bit of bleach in there to kill off anything getting started (it'll dissipate in a day or two and won't hurt the garden, as long as you don't get carried away). But really, nothing growing in there is going to do any damage to the garden as-is. You don't want to be breeding mosquitoes, of course, but that doesn't have anything to do with the garden. Any algae, etc. is really just fertilizer.
We regularly water the garden with water pumped out of the pool while vacuuming, and though I wouldn't do it right after we shock it, we've never had any problems with residual chlorine affecting the garden.
