Confusion on Food Grade Buckets

[WiseOwl]

Thanks, I just bought a couple of buckets from the local donut shop and have cleaned them using hot water and then soaking in fresh bleach and water. There are not any rubber seals on the lids of these buckets (they are fruit filling buckets). Is there a particular silicon sealant that is preferred? There are many on the market, and some are not waterproof, in spite of them being silicon (solar/photo cell manufacturing has issues here). Thanks.

You can get those purty orange lids at Home Depot. They have the gasket seals already in them. I believe they are less than $2. My storage looks like I am a UT or Clemson fan....in which I am not...haha

[Lowdown3]

Well, it's not that you should SET OUT to store your food in high heat. My point was that higher heats (80-100 degrees) are not the albatross to long term storage of food that some make them out to be.

I wouldn't store food in the attic unless the choice was store food in the attic or not store food at all.

[Lowdown3]

Well, it's not that you should SET OUT to store your food in high heat. My point was that higher heats (80-100 degrees) are not the albatross to long term storage of food that some make them out to be.

I wouldn't store food in the attic unless the choice was store food in the attic or not store food at all.

[georgia]

Found 5 gallon buckets and gasketed lids at Lowes last week. They now have a sticker on them which says Food Grade. Seems pretty clear to me that they want our storage business, and now are making sure that we don't have to keep asking "Is this a food grade bucket?"

[miked2345]

Found 5 gallon buckets and gasketed lids at Lowes last week. They now have a sticker on them which says Food Grade. Seems pretty clear to me that they want our storage business, and now are making sure that we don't have to keep asking "Is this a food grade bucket?"

What do they cost? More than Home Depot? Are they white?

[PerryJeff]

Seems from Rob's posts and I will qualify you as an expert packing food for 2 years commercially gets you the big star. The plastic pail is mostly just to protect the mylar bag, which is protecting the food...

[1Admin]

Found 5 gallon buckets and gasketed lids at Lowes last week. They now have a sticker on them which says Food Grade. Seems pretty clear to me that they want our storage business, and now are making sure that we don't have to keep asking "Is this a food grade bucket?"

And oddly enough they are still marked with the same HDPE 2 symbol that the thousands of buckets from Ropak and hundreds from Walton I've seen were marked with.

Maybe that crazy guy on that original bucket packing video on youtube that said that new HDPE 2 marked buckets were "generally considered food grade" was right after all? Who knew??? Maybe after packing for 2 and 1/2 decades and 2 years commercially he actually did know some stuff ;) ;) ;) :)

It's good to know the storage food we've been eating for more than 12 years out of buckets marked that same way won't kill us, cause I *really* thought we were going to die cause they weren't "according to Hoyle" quote food grade unquote.

Not being a jerk, but after ALL the stupidity I've dealt with over the years regarding people misquoting what I actually said on that video, I tend to be a little cynical :) And you can ask Protus how much guff we have and still get on youtube like that.

[rockriver]

lol.
i gotta tell this story... just pretend we are sitting around the campfire, cause i can get long winded. never posted this tale before.

i knew an old farmer once that had a can sealer. he offerred to show me how it worked. told me to buy up a few pounds of beans and bring them by. i did. he had a couple of extra cans and his machine worked well. i offerred to help push and pull on that handle. nope.
his machine. "you might not do it just right" he said.

i bought more beans than the few cans he had... i guess i thought they were gonna shrink when they went in the can!

he asked if i wanted to put the extra beans in a bucket. "yes sir, sure"
he went around behind the barn and got a couple of old buckets. i started to ask "what ya been using that for?"
(if you had seen the buckets, you'd have been curious too!)
i didn't cause he and his elderly spouse had been being mighty nice to us young folks.
anyhow, he rinsed out the buckets.
and slid one of those fancy plastic bags in there and proceeded to dump my beans in that bag... along with a few of those oxygen absorbing
packs. got his wife to go in and get her hair curling gadget.
he sealed up that heavy duty plastic (mylar) with that hair curling (or maybe it was hair straightening?) gadget.
then rinsed the lid and placed it on the bucket.

this old farmer feller and his bride looked healthy. it is amazing what you can learn from the folks that have been doing this for a long time. they had chickens, cows, crops, all kind of critters. i think they'd been using the buckets to feed the livestock. they had a youngun that was mighty well behaved. grandson i think. i told them thank you several times. i doubt they are on the internet. or i'd send them a note of thanks. i gave the grandson a pocket knife - after asking permission of the farmer of course.

bottom line, that experienced farmer was mighty confident that any old bucket would do just fine!
period.

my young bride just reminded me that she and the farmers wife did use soap when "they Washed" out the bucket. and they made sure the inside was very dry. my bride wanted to make sure y'all knew the bucket was "more than rinsed... it was WASHED" so i did.

[Daelith]

Now that I

[610Alpha]

[QUOTE=Daelith;41761]Now that I

[Daelith]

These bins I'm considering would be more for every day use instead of long term storage. I believe I'm going to get one for the dog food and see how I like it.
For the long term, I will definitely use the buckets, O2 absorbers and mylar.

I also found another potential source for buckets... Baskin Robins Ice Cream stores. I asked about them while in there a couple of weeks ago and they told me they just throw them away.

[Lowdown3]

Pretty much any bakery or ice cream type store should get some product in a bucket.

I still remember going into Dunkin Donuts at the ripe ole age of 13 and asking for my first couple buckets. I think we bought a donut and the buckets were free. Buckets I needed then, donut I probably didn't LOL

[miked2345]

Pretty much any bakery or ice cream type store should get some product in a bucket.

I still remember going into Dunkin Donuts at the ripe ole age of 13 and asking for my first couple buckets. I think we bought a donut and the buckets were free. Buckets I needed then, donut I probably didn't LOL

Were you prepping at 13??

[Lowdown3]

Were you prepping at 13??

Yep. Started storing food, growing a garden, etc. at 13. Was about all I could do at the time. Took my first shooting class that year too, an NRA "firearms familiarization" course. I remember thinking it was the coolest thing in the world. Brought a .22 revolver of my Dad's to the class. A year later I was lieing about my age to some guys from Jacksonville so they would let me come out on a training outing with their survival group :) By the time I was old enough to drive all of my buddies had already been driving for years and we had made some good connections with real deal folks. I was going cross country by myself for classes just after my 16th birthday. Luckily I had some very trusting and very busy parents who put a lot of faith in my ability to not become a statistic....LOL The Lord was looking out for a dumb kid with weird hobbies back then. He's still looking after me now.