Rodent proof box for water cache ideas needed

[Terry Sparks]

As dry as it is here in So. California, I'm looking at caching water for my summer hikes and other than using a metal surplus ammo box, I'm wanting for ideas that will keep the critters and larger animals from chewing holes in the bottles. To give you an idea on how dry it is here, the ground squirrels are now eating the Agave plants along our road to get water from them.

If I need to, I'll pack in the ammo boxes and empty water bottles, fill the bottles at a source and stow the cache before it completely dries up. I'll then pick up the boxes in late fall.

Anyone have a better idea?

[Valerie E]

Those big aluminum decorative tin buckets (with lid) that fancy popcorn comes in at Christmas. You're a bit late in the season, but you might find some at a thrift store, or on line. Very light weight.

[Terry Sparks]

Sorry for the mix up, as usual, I'm lost somewhere on the trail.

[Ken Thompson]

Can you bury them?

[Ralph Burgess]

Plastic bucket with sealed lid – Home Depot have orange ones called "Homer" buckets – the kind you'd put resupply food in.
Put your soft water bottles inside.
Lighter than ammo cans, at least, and they usually have a handle.

[Anton Solovyev]

I have cached water a few times in desert and never seen critters show any interest to plastic water jugs.

Other than that, we use a plastic ice chest to cache food and other items.

[David Thomas]

I've cached aluminum cans many times, and even ones with something tasty inside (Kern's fruit nectars) are never bothered by rodents, black bears or grizzlies. I'm moderately careful to avoid getting food smells on them. I'll hide them under a rock, log, or tuck them into a foot bridge beam. In the desert, I'd bury them in a standard location (e.g. two trekking pole lengths east of a trail mileage sign) or some such and leave a little, discrete marker like a river-run pebble at the surface.

I think you can get drinking water in aluminum cans. I know you can get seltzer, juice, soda, nectar, concentrated fruit juice and, of course beer, in 12-ounce aluminum cans that weigh very little and crush down a lot when empty.

But for bigger stashes, as said above, use the tins that cookies and "gourmet" popcorn comes in (look in the steel-can bin at the recycling center). Also, holiday, Currier&Ives, and kitten-themed ones are $1 at thrift stores. I'd buy a flat of 24 disposable water bottles for $4 at Home Depot to fill those bigger tins. They would pack in tighter than a 1-gallon water jug.

There are also HDPE containers that are sturdier than 1-gallon milk jugs and water jugs. The 1-gallon washer-fluid containers can be run through your dishwasher just fine. Dumpster-diving in the HDPE bin at the recycling center can find thicker-walled containers of one to 3 gallons that originally held ground coffee, clothes detergent, kitty litter, etc. I wash them in the dishwasher, with dish-washing detergent once for food products and twice for non-food containers. Hot water and caustic detergent is very effective.

[Dean F.]

For the more commercially minded:

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_2?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=5+gallon+collapsible+water+jug&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3A5+gallon+collapsible+water+jug

http://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=1+gallon+collapsible+water+jug&rh=i%3Aaps%2Ck%3A1+gallon+collapsible+water+jug

You would still want to either bury them or find a metal container, though, if you are having problems with rodents chewing them. Burying them is light.

The bags that bagged wine or bulk coffee come in comes to mind, too.

[Valerie E]

I remember reading about some folks who buried water caches, but found them empty when they went to retrieve them… So be careful about what types of containers you use!

http://hikearizona.com/dex2/viewtopic.php?t=8712

[Dean F.]

That… seems specious. I mean, if they hold milk without leaking they'll hold water without leaking. They are, however, relatively fragile and thus you can easily pinhole one without noticing. And I would accept that some are more fragile than others. But some just leak? Doubtful.

Frankly, the tone of that post sounds a lot like all of those odd, fearmongering chain emails about "Don't Buy Brand X DOgfood!!!! If U love your dog DONT DO IT!!!!! It is made with antifreeze!!!!!!!"

[David Thomas]

I'll concur with the fear-mongering about one-gallon milk jugs. About 1 in 8 of them, just from store handling and me getting it home, leaks a tiny bit out the bottom. It is really slow and a paper towel under it sops up the milk just fine. Maybe it has a micro crack from flexing. Maybe a high spot rubbed off from sliding through the dairy's equipment. And it traveling 1,448 miles to get here probably doesn't help. Anyway, without stuffing it in a pack, schlepping it 10 miles and then caching it, sometimes they leak. Add temperature swings (=pressure swings) in the desert and I can imagine one draining completely in a few days. For an extra ounce (compared to 8.3 pounds of water), I'd go for one of the thicker HDPE containers that can be had for free. Or, go with MULTIPLE thin-walled containers, like disposable water bottles.

[Ralph Burgess]

Just to reiterate what David said – take care to purge any food smell. I've had a desert rodent chew a hole through the hard plastic screwtop of a soft flexible Platypus. It would have taken it one quick bite with a sharp tooth to get through the soft part if it wanted the water – but presumably the hard screwtop smelled of food from my hands.

[Bob Gross]

Get one of the heavy plastic three-gallon kerosene jugs. Empty out the kerosene and wash the inside out several times. Then it makes an excellent water jug.

–B.G.–

[Valerie E]

Over the past few years, I have read LOTS of trail journals, and I remember one (Hayduke? Something similar? NOT the PCT) where a twosome thru-hiked with caches via buried gallon jugs of water. They would get to a cache, dig up the jugs, and find that some were empty.

It was driving them crazy. I remember seeing the photos, but I can't figure out whose trail journal it was! (Maybe Anna will find it — she's pretty much a miracle-worker with this stuff.)

Having seen those photos, I feel 100% confident that this problem is not an urban legend. I won't speculate on the causes for the containers' failures (David offered several plausible reasons), but given the consequences, I wouldn't "play dice with the universe" on this! You may choose to do so, but (living in the desert) I would not.

[David Thomas]

If there's a 50% chance of the milk jug leaking, and lack of water will lead to your death, the good news it's only a probability that you're dead.

Until someone finds your body.

[Bob Gross]

Out in the desert, they have Schrodinger's Cat Claw. That must be what punctured the jugs.

–B.G.–

[Ken Thompson]

I used the Arizona ice tea gallon jugs. Never a problem. Would usually bury a couple of beers in cans in a plastic shopping bag and suffered no accidents.

[Larry De La Briandais]

If Schrodinger's Cat punctured the jugs then there is also the possibility that they won't be punctured when you find them. ;^)

[Bob Gross]

Part of the problem with a buried water cache is that some water thief will find it before you do. They can see your boot tracks leading right to it, and they may feel that they are thirstier than you are.

The solution is to bury the water jug under a bush, and then obliterate your tracks around there. Then walk a precise short distance like 25 paces to the south, and obliterate those tracks. There, you hang a marker on another bush or rock, and you take a time-averaged GPS position mark there.

The water thief may find the marker, but he won't know exactly where the water is. Instead, your GPS receiver will lead you to the GPS position, and then only you know that the water is 25 pages north under a bush.

–B.G.–

[Nico .]

You could use some 6" dia (or larger) ABS pipe (or similar) with end caps to protect smaller plastic water jugs stored inside. You could rig up a simple "lock" with a threaded bolt and wingnut to keep the cap secured on one side, the cap at the other end of the pipe segment could be glued on. A length of cord could be used to secure it to a tree or whatever.

A similar method on a larger volume, longer-term scale has been used to cache water at spike camps along dry segments of trail projects.

[Rex Sanders]

Last summer I looked into several ways to cache water in a forest:

http://www.backpackinglight.com/cgi-bin/backpackinglight/forums/thread_display.html?forum_thread_id=94294

I bought pipe and caps at a local sprinkler supply store, made a cache with a 1.5 liter water bottle, and placed it in the woods in my backyard. Similar to what Nico describes.

Based on this thread, I decided to see how it went after 7 months.

Water cache on the forest floor, between two small logs. Brooks Cascadia size 11.5 for scale.

Dirty, but intact so far. You can barely see white duct tape on each cap.

About 1/2 ounce of water came out when I removed the cap. Probably condensation or rain, about 20 inches fell since placement.

The water bottle was intact. A small taste revealed – tasteless water.

The pipe is some kind of lightweight, ribbed drain or irrigation pipe, approximately 3 7/8 inches inside diameter. Much cheaper than PVC or ABS, but I don't recall costs right now.

My backyard is in a mixed forest of redwood, douglas fir, oak, and madrone, on the Central California coast. We have seen a wide variety of small wild mammals in our yard, including raccoons, squirrels, rats, mice, voles, deer, bobcats, and mountain lions.

YMMV.

— Rex

[David Thomas]

Oh Rex! When you do a good experiment like that, it eliminates the opportunity for the rest of us to endlessly theorize and pontificate.

In 4" pipe, Home Depot shows the drainage pipe you used as $10-11 per ten-foot length. Versus heavier(!!) 4" PVC at least $20 (but uncommon in large sizes at HD) or 4" ABS at $28.33

In any of those materials, the end caps will cost more (2x to 5x) than the length of pipe.

[Nico .]

Rex's pipe choice seems perfect for a small cache using one or two of those tall, skinny 1.5L bottles. Good find! And thanks for sharing!

On the trail project where I've seen the pipe cache used, we were caching multiple 1 gallon containers in 5' lengths of large diameter heavy duty pipe. Way overbuilt for an UL hiker's use, but they were meant to be a semi-permanent fixture at various spike camps along what will eventually be a ~20+ mile dry stretch of trail.

[Bob Gross]

Rex, you better be careful for the next time you try to do a seven-month test with pipe that way. You will return to it and find that somebody has installed a water meter on the pipe.

–B.G.–

[Valerie E]

Great experiment, Rex. Thank you for sharing that with us — you have definitely reminded me of why and how this website can be so valuable.

Edited b/c I left out a word (grrrrrrr). Added "and". Sigh.

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