Pickle barrel

[conch]

Hello everyone, I just joined so I hope this is the right place for this post. I have decided to start making my own water, so I have set up an ro/di system and I also bought two pickle barrels which I will use to store and mix water. I guess after the pickles were removed, they simply replaced the lids without rinsint the barrels. I washed them out using my garden hose and let them sit open for about three weeks. I collected product waster in a 5 gallon water bottle. I used an HM TDS-3 to test the product water and got a reading of 0 tds, but after pouring it into the pickle barrel i get a reading of 5 tds. Is this safe to use or should I clean the barrels again ?

[ajmckay]

Wow that's a great question... I suppose it's possible the barrels could be leaching something? At least it's food grade whatever it is - but still strange. I'm honestly not really sure.

 

Did you do this test only once? Maybe try it again and see what comes up? Maybe there was just a layer of dust or something that had accumulated while the barrels were sitting?

[ndrobey]

I've got a Sunkist barrel that had orange juice concentrate in it. Boy, you really have to scrub those things to get them clean. So, back to the garden hose, and do some scrubbing.

[conch]

Thanks for the response guys. Yesterday I used my gas powered power washer to wash the barrels with nothing but water. The pickle smell went away but returned overnight. I currently have about 30 gallons of ro/di water in one now and the tds reading is 0.

[Boggers]

As long as you scrub and get 0Tds after a few hours you should be fine. The vinegar can hold in those buckets so I normally only use for waste water and hold Depot buckets for holding water.