What kind of buckets should I use?
Is there a food grade and non food grade?
Are the orange Home Depot buckets ok?
Is a gasketed lid necessary?

Thanks.

food grade is a must.

check this out - hope it helps:
click here and start with the articles about a third of the way down...  

When you get your food grade buckets (I got mine from the local bakery) get some Gamma Seal lids, They screw off and are airtight. I just opened a bucket of rice yesterday that was stored more than a year ago and it was as fresh as could be.

freckleface.com/shopsite_sc/store/html/gammaseals.html

Go to the local grocery bakery and get the icing buckets with lids. That is what I use with no issues (the lids already have the sealing rings in them. I have been useing them since before Y2K and you can't beat the price.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vW7_cTn6YpE


any local bakery,,wash em,,, pack em,,,,,,forget about them...( as long as they seal good and your sueing mylars)

I have been sealing rice in a gallon ziplock and putting it in a ice cream bucket. I don't know if this has a down side, but it makes carrying it easy. I squeeze all the air I can out of it when I zip it up.

Just rice?

What about beans (several kinds), peas, corn and wheat?

Minimum, add some beans.  Rice and beans eaten together make a more complete protein.

Plus, rice and beans with some spice is a HELL of a lot nicer than just rice.

Lowes, H-D, Ace and the others are not food grade.  If you want to use them.  You will need Mylar liners.

The difference between FG and non-Food grade, is the release agent in the mold and the recycled plastic content.  Neither can be cleaned out of the pail.

I just put 50lbs. of rice up tonight. Sealed in Mylar bags with an O2 absorber in each bag. I used 5gal pickle buckets from a local restaurant and Gamma seals.

Look on the bottom of the bucket, there will be a triangle with little arrows going around it, Food grade will have a "2" inside the triangle.

Quoted: Look on the bottom of the bucket, there will be a triangle with little arrows going around it, Food grade will have a "2" inside the triangle.

No, this is not true.  The two just means what type of plastic, it could still have non food grade dyes used in the plastic or in the release molds

Quoted: Quoted: Look on the bottom of the bucket, there will be a triangle with little arrows going around it, Food grade will have a "2" inside the triangle. No, this is not true.  The two just means what type of plastic, it could still have non food grade dyes used in the plastic or in the release molds

Ok, so, since you seem to know, what is the answere to the op's question?

Having stored rice without mylars in the very evil, conspiratorial and cancer causing COLORED buckets for almost 20 years now, I can tell you no one in our family has grown a third arm, started speaking in tongues or went sterile.

I'm afraid that whole "dye" thing is BS. Never found anything truly substantial on it. I would use white IF you can find it however, just because of the fact that it REFLECTS rather than ABSORBS light and therefore heat.

Call up Ropakco or one of the huge bucket manufacturers, tell them you are planning on packing food for long term storage in there buckets, which type of bucket would they recommend. They will recommend an HDPE 2 bucket to you.

What does Walton and the other big packers use? Buckets with HDPE 2 on the bottom of them. Look it up in James Stevens (a recognized expert in the food storage industry) book.

Simple and easy test- look at some of the thinner plastic food containers in your fridge, they are usually HDPE 2 or 3. 3 being the thinner plastic like used in your ketchup container. Would big corporations that have teams of lawyers working around the clock chance a huge lawsuit just because of colored plastic? Come on.

I've seen this come up before, it's internet conjecture. If your concerned about "dyes" go with white buckets only. There's benefits to both if you really think about it-

White buckets are going to REFLECT (versus absorb) light. A good thing.

However, the camo buckets or the green buckets you see at the sporting goods stores may BLEND IN better in the woods or a rural area if bugging out with a bunch of buckets is an issue.

Gasketed lids are important. You don't have to have gamma seal lids though. Folks this has come up time and time again but your product will NOT simply disintegrate or vanish into thin air 5 minutes after you open the bucket and mylar!!! We made some bread on Saturday (we don't do it nearly as often as we should) and I looked at the bucket and asked the wife- "when did we open this?" Best we could figure early last year or so. The wheat had not: 1. Got weevils. 2. Disintegrated into a powder and then vanished when I opened the lid.

The wheat was and is still in the same form it was when we packed it in 98-99.

THAT'S why you want to use mylars and o2 absorbers, so your food WILL be ready to go when you need it.

Watch the video Protus linked to, it will answer a lot of questions.

I am just getting into the whole bucket storage thing and i appreciate all the knowledge here in these forums. I went to my local sams club and they have been burying me in good heavy plastic icing buckets. The lids seal very well so I have not been purchasing gamma seal lids. I clean these out thoroughly by running them through my dishwasher as well as some good rinsing and scrubbing the old fashioned way, with elbow grease. I purchased 250 14" x 14" mylar bags and oxygen absorbers from the LDS church, I plan to get some 6 gallon bags down the road, just figured it would be easier to start on a smaller scale. I am going to use an ordinary iron, just like one of the tutorials mentions, therefore I will not have to buy a expensive sealer.

All the procedures I utilize have come from these forums and I am very appreciative. I have not gone overboard spending large amounts of cash on my proect, as I am a very conservative individual. I believe in keeping some provisions stored, I guess you cannot take the boy scout out of the man. Relax folks, enjoy the peace of mind this kind of project provides and have some fun wih it, get the whole family involved.

I know it's been said a thousand times, but I love to go to Costco and get their free buckets back in the bakery.  They have several different types and sizes, and they are all food grade coming from the bakery.  

When going to the bakery, make sure to ask for the buckets with the lids that have seals.  From what I have found, these are all new buckets, with the exception of the food that came out of them.

We actually have pinto beans from the Y2K stash that we hadn't tapped into yet.  We opened the bucket in November '07, prepped the beans, crocked them for a few hours, fried them up and they were GREAT!  Over 8 years with no preservent and just in a bucket, I was impressed!