Advice needed on these water storage barrels

[Jerett83]

My father in law works for General Mills and he uses these barrels as rain barrels. Ive been asking him for months if he could grab me two for my mixing station. Well he finally remembered and I grabbed them last week. I figured since they were being used by GM that they would have some sort of food product in them but as we were loading them into my truck he tells me give them a rinse they had a mild detergent in them used for cleaning the dough lines.

Should and what should I use to clean them?
Should I just give them to my wife for more rain barrels and look for something else?

 

[Shawn O]

I'd try to find out what the ingredients of the detergent were. Some of them may be pretty harmless if rinsed out well enough, some may not. Probably best to pass on them but you may be lucky enough. Sorry if this is no help but figured I'd mention the ingredients bit.

 

[scooter31707]

I would probably do a 10:1, water to bleach ratio, then rinse really well and let air dry. Then I would do another cleaning with vinegar and do a good rinsing and let air dry again, I think you should be ok.

 

[ReefsandGeeks]

Of course the safest thing to do is say pass on them and get new, unused barrels. however, if it were me and I wanted to try, I'd clean as stated above, then once you are happy with the cleanliness, fill them with RODI, and take some water out of there to top of your tank with before using as a salt mixing station. If there are no ill effects after adding in a small amount of the water from that tank as top off water, I'd be a lot more confident that they are clean enough to use for a mixing station. That's the general rule of thumb I use for anything I think is remotely questionable to my tank.

 

[lifeoffaith]

If you clean well enough, I wouldn't worry at all.

 

[Capiross1]

Advice needed on these water storage barrels

Bleach them and let them dry you'll be fine kinda like a big plastic drinking cup imo if you washed it with soap you wouldn't throw it away and I'm sure what they were using isn't much stronger than dish soap, very nice barrels by the way


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[re76]

Bleach them and let them dry you'll be fine kinda like a big plastic drinking cup imo if you washed it with soap you wouldn't throw it away and I'm sure what they were using isn't much stronger than dish soap, very nice barrels by the way


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Nowhere else would I expect to hear someone complementing another man on the quality of his barrels.

 

[ScienceRulez]

Nowhere else would I expect to hear someone complementing another man on the quality of his barrels.

If you really want to have some juicy reading visit some of the photo forums. With all the talk about shooting things, blowing things up, and the like. :fish1:

 

[billdogg]

My mixing barrel is a 55g drum that was used for either photographic developer or fixer. I washed it well and put it in use without issue. almost 30 years ago.

wash 'em and use 'em

 

[Jerett83]

Thanks for all the input everyone. Ill give them a good cleaning like stated above and good idea on using it just for top off for now and see what happens. Thats actually the reason I wanted these larger tanks over my brute cans. With the amount of water my tanks evaporate it feels like Im making water every other day