Useful drums/containers......

Last week, I was looking around ebay as I needed something for water storage. The intention is to recycle rain water. I have a reverse osmosis filter, to be self sufficient in the "softest" water I can manage. I say soft water, in the sense that it will be low in calcium/magnesium salts as I can manage (our local water is medium/high in calcium as the area sits on a thick strata of chalk). The RO filter isn't strictly necessary but should keep other elements picked up in the rain i.e. the stuff that is atmospheric and makes "acid" rain, out of the supply - will not entirely but to low enough levels not to be an issue. We have a water meter on the mains supply into the house, so presuming that with the RO filter, only about 20 to 25% of water in, makes it through the membrane in the filter, it would be prohibitively expensive to use mains water, hence recycling rain. I don't need huge amounts, so the 30 gallons a day capacity of the filter should be fine. I want it for home brewing and "erindoors" will benefit as it's good for her orchids too - no residual chlorine build up in the plants, which is known to be an issue with utility water.

These drums are what I found. A very good price at £9 each, though the chap who was selling only does them as "collect in person". So yesterday was a 2 hour round trip to get them. They still work out cheaper than other options like that. They are food grade and were used for Olives in brine originally. The labels list olives, water, salt and tartaric acid as an acidifier, so should be easily washed out. about 220 to 225 litre capacity. Very good quality. All I've to do now is to get one of them set up to a down pipe from the shed guttering. I've bought a few pumps so that I can run the RO filter and then move the water round without the hassle of trying to move them when they're full (they'd be about a quarter tonne full). Ha! I could even likely use them as fermenters if I wanted too, but I don't routinely make batches that size as they'd be costly, and given that I don't have a commercial license, I'll give that a miss for now........