Industrial weiight plastic 55gallon bins, save $$, save the planet!

[Bruce Seidner]

I saw an ad on Craig's list for plastic 55 gallon drums for $10 and just picked one up. It is as stout and thick a translucent barrel as I could contemplate.

I got it from a car wash and it contained the soap used in that industry. The drum is sealed and has two 3" plugs on opposite sides of the top.

It is hard to believe that something of this weight and substance would not be part of an exchange or recycling program with the soap manufacturer, or maybe this particular car wash does not participate in what I would think would be a good business practice. But there were 55, 30, and 15 gallon drums stacked up and ready for the picking.

This is truly industrial weight and better than any product I have seen for a dust bin. I also discovered that insulation companies purchase a solvent that comes in very stout 55 gallon steel drums and these can be had in town for $5 a piece.

Just incredible that this much high quality material is considered garbage. Well one man's garbage is another man's treasure. The sustainability of the planet aside, get em while there is a habitable planet to live on.

[Matt Meiser]

I use a pair of those with the tops cut out for scrap bins. The ones I bought for $10 each had Castrol Superclean in them before--there was about a gallon left between the two of them which is worth about $13 itself!

Shipping trucks of that are mostly full of air around is expensive. I was once involved in a project to make plastic gas tanks for cars and trucks near the assembly plants that consumed them. Sheets of plastic were shipped to the sites that formed them into tanks instead of blowmolding tanks and shipping them hundreds of miles.

[John Coloccia]

Please be careful if you use any drums that once had solvents, gasoline or anything else explosive/flammable in them. They can still be full of explosive vapors for some time to come. It wouldn't be my first choice for a drum.

[Matt Meiser]

Yeah, food products or soaps are the best. Ironically it can be hard to get ones that had soap in them clean!

[Jeff Monson]

It is hard to believe that something of this weight and substance would not be part of an exchange or recycling program with the soap manufacturer, or maybe this particular car wash does not participate in what I would think would be a good business practice. But there were 55, 30, and 15 gallon drums stacked up and ready for the picking.



That is very odd, we use plastic 55's for coolant and washer fluid. Both vendors charge a $25 dollar core per barrel. You would think the soap vendors would have the same policy.

[Ted Calver]

Around here (near the Chesapeake Bay) these barrels are often made into environmentally friendly rain barrels used to catch and hold rain water to use for gardening and irrigation. Not a lot of them go to waste.

[Thomas Canfield]

My 55 gal blue barrel had Worchestershire Sauce in it, and it took about a year for the smell to finally go away. Interesting odor for a workshop.

[Lornie McCullough]

I used two of them ($20 for both) as the airtight body of a dust cyclone. I might figure out how to attach a picture later.

[Lornie McCullough]

215352215353The cone/funnel is sitting inside the bottom barrel. The straight sides of the top barrel nestle over the still tapered top of the bottom barrel, and are sealed with caulking. Very cheap, and very effective.

[Andrew Joiner]

215352215353 Very cheap, and very effective.

Cool! You had me at cheap, but then you added effective.

[Cyrus Brewster 7]

215352215353The cone/funnel is sitting inside the bottom barrel. The straight sides of the top barrel nestle over the still tapered top of the bottom barrel, and are sealed with caulking. Very cheap, and very effective.

Lornie,

So as not to hijack this thread, would you be able to post a little more info about your set up in a new thread? Very interesting.

[David Thompson 27577]

.....You said some stuff, then you said..........

It is hard to believe that something of this weight and substance would not be part of an exchange or recycling program with the soap manufacturer...........

Then you said some more stuff.


Those barrels are probably part of an established recycle loop. But I'll bet that the carwash's penalty for non-participation is somewhat less than $10.

[Ryan Mooney]

The recycling center just down the street from me will give them to you for free if you ask. I wanted a 30g for my dust collector bin, asked him how much and he said "take two". The second one will eventually be a compost bin once I get around to it....

Later I picked up a 50g white barrel (almost translucent so you can see how full it is) for dust collector round 2 once I find a deal on a bigger impeller/motor setup (currently using it as a scrap bin). These contained (respectively) strong bleach and caustic cleaner, so both were pretty easy to clean. I neutralized the caustic with some white vinegar (outside in case of fumes).

Lornie, please do post some more details on that dust collector, looks like a pretty innovative build.

[Chris Damm]

I picked up 3 free of them last year from a guy that was moving. They had been used for fruit juice concentrate from Brazil. I also picked up 9 ply plywood that is .85 thick. It is 39"x45" and was used for packing the barrels. He had 100s of them for $5 each. They come in real handy for shelves and other shop projects.

[David Hostetler]

There is a company around here that recycles food and soap grade drums. I paid more than $10.00 for mine. I got the 55 gallon blue barrel that I use for a side inlet Thien separator. I never thought of it as recycling, just using materials that are available to me to solve a problem....

When I was in college, some friends and I built a "party barge" type boat using closed head 55 gallon drums. (one of the guys dads did some kind of plastic welding...). It was basically an 8' x 30' deck with a console mounted on an angle steel frame, in turn mounted up to the drums in a catamaran fashion... Truly a Redneck Yacht if ever there was one!

The point being, these drums can be used for a ton of different applications... Laying your hands on a few could net you some interesting projects...