I have a bunch of old ibc's as water butts, they are 5+ years old no signs of fatigue and they are the clear ones. You can buy tops to connect them the rain guttering with little nets to stop them filling with moss or turning into mosquitto breeding grounds and standard plugs and taps that screw right on. The ones on the veggie plot have a timer that opens the valve to a leaky hose that runs round the plot once a day.
You can get natty ibc covers in black with cord lower ties to keep them on for cheap to stop the algee growing in the clear ones, original black plastics is better, but ibc's cost more in black. The covers look really neat and are very wife acceptable and hide the ibc and cage so its just a neat square black cube, you can get acces to the top and tap area by opening little velcro covers and the ones I have are silver lined inside to help protect against freezing in winter too.
They are weaker with out the cages too, they will bellow out over time without them as people have said. Ive sawn a few up to use the cages and use the extracted plastic container for sawdust and compost too.
The cages are the really useful bit for me, fortunately I live close to a ibc dealer who imports them and cleans them, so I ask him to keep cages aside when he has some leakers, and he puts them to one side then drops them off at my house when he has a few. He dropped off 8 the other day and they're filled with natural stone now forming a wall I can move round with the forklift (poor man's gabons!). The next batch will be used for logs.
I have a log supplier that lets me drop off some ibc cages and fills them with logs and lifts them two at a time on the back of my master flatdeck with the tractor, I get home and fork it off and put one of the black covers on it to keep the weather out. Bliss, no manual handling and you know exactly the quantity of wood instead of a big mess poured in the back of the pickup that when you get round to stacking it, is 1/4 short.
I havent seen a ibc on a wooden pallet for a while now, thought they were all metal pressings or plastic legs. The ones I see the cages and bottoms are interchangeable, and I've used spare bottoms to fix ones that have had a unfortunate jcb or forklift accident...
You can get natty ibc covers in black with cord lower ties to keep them on for cheap to stop the algee growing in the clear ones, original black plastics is better, but ibc's cost more in black. The covers look really neat and are very wife acceptable and hide the ibc and cage so its just a neat square black cube, you can get acces to the top and tap area by opening little velcro covers and the ones I have are silver lined inside to help protect against freezing in winter too.
They are weaker with out the cages too, they will bellow out over time without them as people have said. Ive sawn a few up to use the cages and use the extracted plastic container for sawdust and compost too.
The cages are the really useful bit for me, fortunately I live close to a ibc dealer who imports them and cleans them, so I ask him to keep cages aside when he has some leakers, and he puts them to one side then drops them off at my house when he has a few. He dropped off 8 the other day and they're filled with natural stone now forming a wall I can move round with the forklift (poor man's gabons!). The next batch will be used for logs.
I have a log supplier that lets me drop off some ibc cages and fills them with logs and lifts them two at a time on the back of my master flatdeck with the tractor, I get home and fork it off and put one of the black covers on it to keep the weather out. Bliss, no manual handling and you know exactly the quantity of wood instead of a big mess poured in the back of the pickup that when you get round to stacking it, is 1/4 short.
I havent seen a ibc on a wooden pallet for a while now, thought they were all metal pressings or plastic legs. The ones I see the cages and bottoms are interchangeable, and I've used spare bottoms to fix ones that have had a unfortunate jcb or forklift accident...
