I keep about ten gallons of water out on my balcony. I agree that milk jugs are not the best, but mine don't get jounced around as in a truck. They do hold up for two or three hard freezes, but the successive expansions ultimately make them get slow leaks.
The leaks on my balcony are not important, since they will just drain off --a different story than if they're in a truck.
The best, cheap, reasonably durable jugs I've found are 2-liter club soda (or any soda) bottles. The plastic is much tougher because it has to contain the high pressure of carbonation. These hold up a lot better to the hard freezes and I would suppose they'd stand up a lot better to being bounced around in a truck, too.
Two 2-liter bottles come close to being a gallon.
They'll go quite a number of freezes, but I never counted. The first thing that happens is the bottoms get rounded out a little bit so they won't stand up,
Big deal.
Tell you the truth, I don't recall ever having to replace one because of freeze-thaw leaks, but I guess I must have. (As opposed to milk bottles, which I constantly have to replace with fair regularity.)
Incidentally, I read an article where they found that almost any water will be sterilized within three or four days if it is kept in the sunlight in transparent jugs for that time. But this was in India. I don't know what the sun is like there.
FWIW
Terry, 230RN
