Would this be any good ......for anything?

[Covey]

Just seen this on the Aldi site, and i'm always thinking could this have a Homebrew applications, any ideas

http://www.aldi.ie/ie/html/offers/special_buys3_26038.htm

[Shanna]

Hi there,

Use it as a water butt and save yourself money when water charges come in. Buy a small pump and use the water to cool an immersion chiller (I seem to remember Rossa mentioning he dies this). I have an existing water but that I intend to use in this fashion. Buy a 2nd one and you can even save the water again after it has comeout of the chiller.

Alternatively use it to store grain, imagine you would have to block up the overflow hole to keep the four legged furry friends out.

Shanna

[Ciderhead]

Do not use this for any kind of storing of liquid for any kind of human consumption.
They are produced from recycled HDPE and contain every conceivable nasty from my industry you could think of that will leach into your water
I wouldn't even harvest the rainwater from these for my vegetable patch, ok for my plants but nothing else. 

[Will_D]

Do not use this for any kind of storing of liquid for any kind of human consumption.
They are produced from recycled HDPE and contain every conceivable nasty from my industry you could think of that will leach into your water
I wouldn't even harvest the rainwater from these for my vegetable patch, ok for my plants but nothing else. 

"Sage advice doctor, I concurr"

(been watching "catch me if you can" dvd )

[Shanna]

Hi Ciderhead,

Nice to know this. Just to be clear my advice was to only use the water for cooling the chiller and not the beer.  How would one know whether the plastic contains any nastys? I have a old Blue drum I picked up that I converted into a water butt.  I think it was used for storing pharmaceuticals previously.  Your putting the wind up me now as I was planning to use it to water a veg patch.

Shanna

[Will_D]

Yes, a lot of the blue barells with the lids and a locking collar are food grade.

@ciderhead: John is there a Food Grade Stamp used on FG plastics as opposed to the "recycle symbols" or the plastic composition type symbols?

With regards to using these butts to water a veg. patch?

I wouldn't worry too much (especially if your "Feck it , Lets deck/pave/concrete the garden" Neighbors do as they say and then they don't have to care a feck where the feckin cats and dogs crap)

In my feckin garden

[/wrant off]

[Ciderhead]

I have a old Blue drum I picked up that I converted into a waste but t. I v think it was used for storing pharmaceuticals previously. 

Shanna

Unless you know its providence don't,  There are perfectly good redundant drums being used out there from foodstuffs industry and you may be ok with dry goods or tablets for example, but HDPE is a bitch for allowing chemicals get absorbed into its structure imagine what your cucumbers would look like if they came from a drum storing Sildenafil citrate (Active ingredient in Viagra)

[Ciderhead]

Yes, a lot of the blue barells with the lids and a locking collar are food grade.

@ciderhead: John is there a Food Grade Stamp used on FG plastics as opposed to the "recycle symbols" or the plastic composition type symbols?

There is no system for marking vessels food grade, the majority 90% of all virgin plastic resin has FDA and EU approval, and some even have pharma approval 20%.
The issues are post manufacturing, whats been stored and how aggressive is it.
HDPE is the material of choice because of its chemical resistance and commodity cost for storage of chemicals, the problem is that the stored product migrates into the resin over time, and leaches back out when drums empty, no different to wooden barrels, just not at the same level.

Let me frighten the shite out of Declan now, all of our milk bottle waste goes to the UK, Mrs Murphy and Mr Fitzpatrick are storing petrol, pathclear, and every conceivable household cleaner garden product you can think of in these bottles, sure enough they tip it out and put in in recycling.
Then my recycling friends receive them wash them in just a water solution, pulp them, feed them through an extruder, mix them with car bumper material and what ever else they can use as filler resin, put process aids and compatibilsers in them, a UV masterbatch ( none of which are food approved) to pigment them black or green.

Use the water from these barrels on the daisies

[Shanna]

Duly frightened  :-/ Think I was better off being ignorant.  I guess this is the dark side of recycling that is never mentioned. Thanks for the info.

Shanna

[LordEoin]

Recycling is a waste of time and money for just about everythng apart from aluminium.

[Will_D]

Recycling is a waste of time and money for just about everythng apart from aluminium.

And glass

[Saruman (Reuben Gray)]

Recycling is a waste of time and money for just about everythng apart from aluminium.

Not recycling is just waste though.

[JD]

Not recycling is just waste though.

No. Not recycling is still recycling. It just takes centuries or millennia before the material get reused. And by then it possibly will have passed though dozens of digestive systems. 

And seeing as how we're scaring the bejaysus out of everyone, it's worth remembering that every single bit of the beer you drink (as well as 99.99% of every other hydrocarbon on the planet) was once coughed up or farted out by a dinosaur. 
Just saying...

/J

[Will_D]

Not recycling is just waste though.

No. Not recycling is still recycling. It just takes centuries or millennia before the material get reused. And by then it possibly will have passed though dozens of digestive systems. 

And seeing as how we're scaring the bejaysus out of everyone, it's worth remembering that every single bit of the beer you drink (as well as 99.99% of every other hydrocarbon on the planet) was once coughed up or farted out by a dinosaur. 
Just saying...

/J

Dinosaurs - Bollix That was 5 seconds ago on our astronomical scale of human development!

All of our atoms heavier than hydrogen were formed in a star that then went super nova.

It may even have needed a second  star cycle to make the iron for our blood cells!

Our bits are very old ( like Billions of years )

[newToBrew]

I wouldn't even harvest the rainwater from these for my vegetable patch,

So what do you use to harvest water for your veggies?

HDPE is a bitch for allowing chemicals get absorbed into its structure.......

stored product migrates into the resin over time, and leaches back out when drums empty

I guess  you store your grain  in something ? what do you use ?

I know lots of guys use those blue barrels - I myself got one last November that was used to store metformin an antidiabetic drug

When I opened it at home ( shoulda done it in the shop !)
there was a chemical smell out of it - so I was reluctant to use it for storing the grain - I've just left it out the back with the lid off in the hope that the rain would wash it out

after readin this now my reluctance has become an outright refusal !!!!