Just picked up some large water storage containers for the kit and been reading up on the preparation of the water. Most suggest the addition of bleach to keep the water pure over a long period. It's just that I have some aversion to putting bleach in my drinking water. Do any of you have any comments/suggestions on alternatives to bleach? TIA

 Stepped-init

The ammount of bleach that you add wont hurt you or the taste of the water.  My parents had some water stored in this manner.  They tasted it a year or more later and it taste just fine.  

What he said.

Hmmm, I'd bet that the water that comes from the tap in the city in which you live already has chlorine in it, right?

What's the harm in adding the little bit more of chlorine bleach?

Just follow directions!

Eric The(Carefully!)Hun[>]:)]

most city water is clorinated, flourinated, and god knows what elseinated.

i personally distill the stuff, and "can" it still hot.

it will be too steril for spoilage, and with no nutrients to feed on algae wont grow. and you will have actually PURE water at yore disposal..

i should point out that this works much better in smaller quantities though..

i use mostly 2 litre bottles stored in a cool dark place deep in the woods..

raf said it best

"bleach" is 97% additives 3% chlorine. I suggest you visit a pool supply store and pick up some 99% chlorine tablets. Calculate the doseage so that you obtain a 10-20ppm in your stored water. God knows what the other 97% is in household bleach...

Anyone have the 1 gallon jugs actually implode on themselves? Don;t know how it happends but checked on my supply, less than 1 yr old, cool, dark enviroment. 1/3 of the bottles actually were imploded on themsevles, all the water drained out.

Need to get a better storage system.

If there is a pop bottling plant nearby you can probably get some used barrels (either 55 gallon or a smaller around 15 gallon size) that were used to store syrup for pretty cheap-- maybe even free in some cases. It's pretty much impossible to get out the pop taste so try to get one that stored a lemon lime flavor syrup since those are probably more tolerable than say doctor pepper tastes in your water. These are tough food grade barrels. I like the smaller ones because you can move them around if you need to.

Survivalist, you should know that drinking large amounts of distilled water is bad for you.  Since it is free of minerals, it strips them from your system.  This is not a worry if you are talking about stashing 2L bottles, but if SHTF and you are living off 55g drums of the stuff it can be hard on your system.

Regarding chlorine and bleach, these are excellent ways to keep things sterile.  I'd be leary many forms of pool chlorine, they are not designed to be consumed.  Bleach uses sodium hypochlorite as a chlorine source and it's by products are relatively innocuous.  Here is a link to the MSDS for household bleach, it shows the ingredients to be 3% sodium hypochlorite and 97% water.  Bleach should work great provide you can find the old school non-scented variety.

http://florawww.eeb.uconn.edu/msds/bleach_msds.pdf

Most cities probably use hypochlorite as their chlorine source for drinking water.  However if this is a concern to you, the chlorine can be removed by a simple charcoal filter before consumption.  Also, it is very important that your containers are clean.  Clean water, in a clean container, stored out of the sun provides little food for organisms to consume and thus microbial populations are limited.  If heavily chlorinated enough, syrup jugs may work, but would not be ideal.  I would suggest finding some cleaner containers.

I put this stuff called Oxy-Safe Stabilized Oxygen, mfg'd by All Things Good, 686 N. 9th St, Boise, ID 83702 in my 55gal water barrels. According to the sales brochure it over oxygenates the water and kills any bacteria. It is supposed to make the water good for 5 years and has no weird taste. Of course, storing water for 5 years, it will taste flat, but it is still good water. For me this is a good arrangement, because I don't have to think about water for at least 5 years, but it will be there when you need it. You can live for a month without food, but only about a week without water. I bought 2oz(1oz treats 1 55gal drum) for something like $10(?) ea bottle  from Major Surplus and Survival  [url]http://www.majorsurplusnsurvival.com/military_surplus.htm[/url] 800/441-8855.

I store about 80 gals of water OUTSIDE in my yard year round.  Have one 55 gal drum (bought new) and a buch of 5 gallon soft poly jugs tossed in a large clean garbage can.  It freezes here but not enough to bust the barrel yet (3 yrs OK).  Summers are very hot +100 often.  For two years now I've used NO bleach or any other oxidants.  Last year the water wa fine.  I'll be doing the yearly bleach clean and re-fill soon but I expect the water to be fine (no growth).  I'm a chemical Engineer worked in a Pulp Mill where we made all kinds of bleaching agents, sodium hypochlorite, chlorine dioxide, hydrogen peroxide.  I studied this problem and my research helped me decide that tap water already has sufficeint chlorine in it already.  I don't like drinking excess sodium hypocholite.  I did buy brand new contaners and I bleach the Sh!t out of them each year and replace the water.  Actually I'm sure that there's a residual sodium hypochlorite concentration left after cleaning the containers so I'm in effect adding some chlorine in that way.  As long as the water and container are clean to begin with (as they should be) it really takes very little chlorine.   In my opinion, tap water is greatly over chlorinated thanks to lawyers and medling ignorant sheeple.  

If your filling water containers from a chlorinated municiple water supply the CL2 residual should be just fine, adding more chlorates will just increase the residual and might not be necessary. An important note to those who wan't to store water for long periods is to RETREAT the water again before using, alot can happen and chlorine doesn't last forever. Over time the CL2 residual will decrease as it reacts with all the nasties found in water...As a note we maintain a residual of .20-.25 ppm in our system using gaseas chlorine, at those levels you can't taste the CL2 unlike some places " TX comes too mind ! " the water tastes like they pumped it right out of the city swimming pool !

Stepped,

Here's some info on storing water:

http://www.frugalsquirrels.com/cgi-bin/ubb/ultimatebb.cgi?ubb=get_topic&f=27&t=000262&p=

LE, I suspect you used the obquitous 1 gallon milk jug; bad decision.  Milk jugs and bleach jugs will break down via UV, as designed.  Go with containers designed specifically for storing water for long term use.  See the above URL for container ideas, advantages, disadvantages.

Regards,

Merlin