is a cir-klenz ii barrel OK for water?

There's a bunch of barrels on craigslist cheap and they had cir-klenz ii, what appears to be a lye-bases cleaner from a dairy.
If I scrub the hell out of them, are they OK to use for rainwater?

Don't know that US Brand ( I presume you are US based?) of cleaner, but for Alkali detergents for dairy farms here, soak them with a bottle of white vinegar then filled to the brim with water to neutralize the alkali. Rainwater storage, not the most ideal, but better than not having any storage.

As a dairy milk line cleaner alkali cleaners here in NZ are food grade. The caustic nature means they aren't good to eat, but they aren't actually toxic, just corrosive as hell.

Use a litmus strip to check the container is denatured back to neutral before putting stuff in it, but once clean it should be fine.


Digging around for more data on that specific one, the MSDS is here: http://www.mws-d.com/images/PDF/53612.pdf


SODIUM HYDROXIDE 6%
sodium hypochlorite 3%




It is bleach, you use it to sterilise drinking water in any case...

Do you think after the vinegar to neutralize the sodium hydrochloride the remnant bleach would have any adverse effect on plants?
Or I could just use it on the "lawn.". Grass is stupid.

Well I got three of them, rinsed them, put some vinegar in and let it sit overnight, repeated the process, and put some spigots on them. We're supposed to get a heavy rain tomorrow so we'll see how it works.

Thomas warren wrote:Well I got three of them, rinsed them, put some vinegar in and let it sit overnight, repeated the process, and put some spigots on them. We're supposed to get a heavy rain tomorrow so we'll see how it works.

If you get any more of those containers, Sodium hydroxide and sodium hypochlorite are both quite soluble in water, so simply rinsing down the containers, draining, and repeating two more times should do a good job of cleaning them out. You can also just fill up the containers with water, throw in a couple handfuls of grass clippings, wait a few days with the containers open to the air, drain, and do a quick rinse.