Good afternoon, my reader. Barrels or water tanks are a must for a country house. Water for irrigation is settled in them, rain moisture is collected. But at the same time, being on the street, they may not survive the winter: the metal walls rust, and the water frozen to the bottom can break them. How to protect containers for the winter.
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Protective covering
First of all, you need to take care of protection from rust: ice happens only in winter, but barrels rust all year round. The measures taken here are as follows:
- The barrel is emptied and dried.
- Its walls are cleaned of existing rust. You can work either by hand (with a metal brush, scraper, coarse sandpaper) or with a tool (usually a drill with a grinding nozzle). It is necessary to clean it to bare metal, especially carefully working with the bottom: if it leaks out, it will take a long and dreary brew.
- After that, the barrel is treated with a primer based on phosphoric acid or zinc and allowed to dry. It is advisable to apply 2-3 layers of primer.
- When the primer is dry, paint the barrel. Use red lead or PF-115 enamel. It is necessary to paint carefully from the outside and inside of the container.
After the paint has dried, the barrel will be less vulnerable to corrosion, especially if you put it not on the ground, but on bricks, stones or trim boards.
Ice protection
Another problem is ice. When the water freezes, it expands - and the ice can literally break the barrel from the inside in winter. To prevent this from happening, it is enough to simply drain the water from it and close the container with a lid so that precipitation does not accumulate inside. But if this is not possible, there are several ways to protect yourself. All of them are based on the fact that you need a buffer that deforms, but does not allow ice to damage the walls.
Sand bottles
The easiest way is to take several plastic bottles with a volume of 1 to 2 liters. You need to deal with them like this:
- About three-quarters of the bottles are filled with fine gravel or coarse sand.
- Ropes are tied to the necks, and with their help the containers are lowered to the bottom of the barrel. The ropes should be fastened to the neck to reach the bottles in the spring.
Ice compresses the bottles in winter - but due to the air remaining in them, they deform, taking on most of the load.
Board
As a buffer, you can use a wooden board or a tree branch 7-10 cm thick. Its length should be such that one end touches the bottom, the other sticks out of the water. The resulting ice will compress the wood - but the sides of the barrel will also be intact.
In a barrel, the board can be fixed in two ways:
- Place it in the form of a spacer so that it rests against the walls.
- Tie the sand bottle mentioned above to the bottom end. You get double protection.
Plastic float
Another protection is by using a plastic drinking water canister. This is done like this:
- At an empty canister, the cap is twisted - not tightly, so that with strong pressure the air can be released.
- A rope is tied around this eggplant and a sinker is attached to the other end of it (yes, you can still use the same bottle of sand). The length of the rope should be such that the canister floats, half submerged in the water, and the bottle stands at the bottom.
- The resulting structure is lowered into a barrel of water.
- The resulting ice slowly squeezes the canister, it deforms and bleeds air, taking on the load.
Rubber hose.
Finally, you can protect the barrel with a piece of thick, resilient rubber hose. A plug is put on one end of it, a sinker is tied to the other. Then the structure is lowered into the barrel and fixed closer to the center. If the area of the barrel is large, it is better to use 3-4 hoses, evenly distributing them around the circumference.
Do you know how not to lose useful containers in winter?
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