32 Pounds of Rice later
November 9, 2008
Friday I received six 5 gallon bucket lids, six mylar bucket liners, and a bucket opener tool. When everything arrived it went to my old address instead of my new address and I had to go ask the guy if he got a package for me. He was helpful and ran and got it but told me he had opened it by mistake. He assured me everything was there and so I left for home. I didn’t even bother with asking him how it was he made the mistake of opening a large box that he didn’t order from a company he had probably never heard of.
I got home and realized that while everything was there he had ripped one of the bucket lid tear strips off. I was mad at the guy for messing with my stuff but then I realized I wanted the tear strips of anyway so I just cooled off and set the stuff aside until I could get to it.
So today I pulled out my books that talk about food storage (including the recently received Rawles gets you ready course) and started rereading sections on dry ice food storage. Well the Rawles gets you ready course didn’t have any info on dry ice packing that I could find (by the way I haven’t done a full review on the course yet because I haven’t read the entire thing yet). I have 3 other books that I rely on for my food storage info and 2 of them came to the rescue and another failed.
I took the info that I needed from both books that had info and set off for the store. I bought 30 pounds of rice for the first bucket and storing it in the bucket couldn’t have been much simpler. Here are the steps I used to store my rice:
- Put the mylar bag in the bucket
- Fill the bucket with 5 pounds of rice
- Put a block of dry ice on top of the rice
- Add 20 pounds of rice
- Put another block of dry ice on the rice
- Cover with an additional 7 pounds of rice.
- Place the lid on the bucket without sealing it. (more info on why below)
- After 30 minutes to an hour seal the bucket.
I had room for more rice so I think the scale of one of my books was somewhat low but I would rather end up with a little extra room than not enough room.
Step 7 is done so that the dry ice can evaporate and fill the bucket with CO2 which will force the Oxygen out of the bucket. If you seal the bucket immediately you will blow up your bucket. If after you have sealed the bucket you notice any bulging remove (or unseal) the lid and let the excess gases escape or again you could blow up the bucket. Since CO2 is heavier than oxygen it should linger in the bucket and not just start mixing with the oxygen again. Lay the lid back on the bucket and wait a little longer then reseal and hopefully by then the dry ice will have completely evaporated and you will have removed all the oxygen.
I’m no expert on the subject and I can only learn from anyone who has done this at home in the past so send in your comments if I neglected to mention anything.
Here are the resources I used while doing this today:
- Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Complete Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival
- Emergency Food Storage & Survival Handbook: Everything You Need to Know to Keep Your Family Safe in a Crisis
And here is a resource I didn’t use but found later today:
- The Food Storage FAQ and here is the chapter that has info about Dry Ice
By far the most helpful book today was probably Crisis Preparedness Handbook: A Complete Guide to Home Storage and Physical Survival. It has about 1.5 pages on dry ice packing which start on page 39 and end on page 41. Page 40 is a separator page that contains some info on how much of what will fit into a 5 gallon bucket. It’s a very useful chart actually.
In the next few days you can look forward to reviews of all three of my food storage books. By the way, in case you are wondering food storage has become a top priority around my house for at least the next little bit as we start to increase the size of our pantry. Food is something that can not be neglected when starting out with your preparedness journey so I suggest get busy buying food for storage now and also learning how to grow food for later.
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November 9, 2008 at 8:27 pm
[...] 32 Pounds of Rice later « Everyday Prepper Friday I received six 5 gallon bucket lids, six mylar bucket liners, and a bucket opener tool. When everything arrived it went to my old address instead of my new address and I had to go ask the guy if he got a package for me. He was helpful and ran and got it but told me he had opened it by mistake. He assured me everything was there and so I left for home. I didn’t even bother with asking him how it was he made the mistake of opening a large box that he didn’t order from a company he had probably never heard of. [...]
November 10, 2008 at 11:25 am
Excellent post. I decided to search for like-minded individuals recently, and yours is really the first post I have seen with very specific type info i am interested in. I have been stockpiling for about 2 years, mainly hardware, water & general equipment by myself (storage unit West Houston. I like the de-oxyegenating ofr dry-stuffs. I am looking into solar powered freezers as well.
November 11, 2008 at 6:58 am
What’s your no kidding analysis of Rawles’s preparedness package (the one for purchase)?
November 11, 2008 at 9:45 pm
MLutz: Thanks for the encouragement and why to go on prepping for 2 years. I’m still looking into solar power myself but haven’t made any decisions yet. If you have any links to share please shoot them over to me.
Chris: Honestly I haven’t actually read it yet. I have skimmed some parts but haven’t sat down and devoted any time to it. I just have been to busy.
I can tell you this though. The book is something like 300 pages long and it’s printed on 8.5×11 computer paper. It’s not printed double sided so you have 300 pieces of paper to deal with. The publisher ships a 2 or 3 inch binder with it so you have something to keep all of this paper in. Personally I think shipping a book like this is cheap and I would never pay $149 bucks for something like that unless I truly believed the info was worth it. I’m not sure the info is worth it yet but I’m hopeful. I can’t believe the publisher (what I assume is a guy with a printer in his office) doesn’t use lulu to publish this book. I just checked and it would only cost $13.00 a copy to get it printed.
So to summarize I’m still hopeful that the info is good but I think with the way it’s “published” it should be much cheaper. I’m glad I got it on sale.
November 30, 2008 at 12:31 pm
Hey, Lilthump and Everyone Else:
I think it was Bruce Clayton that first suggested using dry ice (frozen CO2) to preserve food. He did it the same way you did, except for step 8. Dr. Clayton would seal the lid only after the lid quit moving up and down on the bucket.
And I have a question. How much dry ice, exactly, is in each block that you used, or what is the block’s exact size?
Just so you know, I usually get 35 pounds in a 5 gallon plastic bucket, but your right. Better to have a little room than no room.
For solar electric, check out Homepower magazine. They’re on the web at http://www.homepower.come/home. “The Basis” in the bar just under the p is a good place to start.
Because of you other reviews, I am looking forward to your review about “Rawles Gets You Ready.” You already know my opinion.
November 30, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Hey SYK: the block I used where bigger than what I have read are recommended so I ended up leaving the lid on but unsealed for much longer than 30 minutes when I did this. The dry ice blocks are suppose to be about 1.5×1.5×0.5 inches and placed at the bottom and middle of the buckets as you fill them up with whatever.
Remember dry ice should not be placed directly on the bottom of plastic buckets though because the extreme cold could crack the bucket.
December 2, 2008 at 6:50 pm
Thanks for documenting this — great info.
Just one question — you never mention the Mylar bag again after step 1.
What did you do with it after that? During steps 7 and 8, did you seal the bag? Tie it up loosely? Roll it up?
Just wondering since logic would seem to indicate that it should be sealed somehow but you don’t mention that…
Thanks!
December 2, 2008 at 8:16 pm
Hey Frank in general you should seal the mylar bags after you have removed the oxygen. Since I was using the dry ice method of removing the oxygen from the bucket and since I will be rotating that particular bucket of rice throughout the coming year I decided against sealing the bag. In general you would seal the bag after step 8 and after you are sure the dry ice was done evaporating.
If I was worried about moister in the air then I would have added an inch or so of salt to the bottom of the mylar bag before putting the lid on to absorb the moister from the air. The salt would have been fine since it stores longer than the rice and the rice wouldn’t have been hurt for having the salt in there as far as I know. However since I will be rotating through this bucket in the coming year I choose not to do that step either.
I hope that helps you out Frank, if not send in another comment and I’ll try to explain anything else. If you think I did this incorrectly then also leave me a comment. I’m always looking to grow in my prepper knowledge.