5 Gallon Bucket

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Bucket Carrier

If you’re an experienced bucket wrangler you’ve probably at some point become dissatisfied with the stock carrying mechanism that comes with most buckets – its handle.

Fortunately you’ve got options when considering bucket transport. In this bucket carrier guide, I’ll run through just a few of the ways I’ve found to carry 5 gallons of fun around.

Bucket Backpacks

Bucket backpack

Ever noticed that you can squat three times as much weight as you can bench? That’s the same principle behind the bucket backpacks, a rare breed of bucket accessory frequently used by gold prospectors. Continue reading

Home Excavation

One of our readers, John Carroll, sent in this amazing project that he’s been spending his evenings and weekends on for the past few years.

He is transforming his 5′ crawlspace into a full 8′ basement – removing the subsoil beneath his house one bucket at a time.

john-basement-buckets

Ordinarily an excavation process like this is an enormously expensive undertaking. You’ve probably heard of “popping the top” off a house. That’s when a homeowner, often at great expense, lifts the roof from his house and builds a second story into the space between the roof and the first story.

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Pail Liner

I used to wash 15 buckets a day back when I picked up compostable food scraps in 5 gallon buckets in Victoria. The buckets had to be clean enough to sit for the next week in an office environment without stinking. It would take me 1 hour to wash those 15 buckets.

Then I started lining those pails with paper before I dropped them off for people. All of a sudden, clean-up time for those 20 buckets shrunk from a full hour to less than 15 minutes! My workload was cut by a factor of 4, just because I took 10 seconds to line my pails.

compost-pail-emptying

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Bucket Seat

Need a chair? Easy. Just flip a 5 gallon bucket upside down and park yourself on top.

It’ll support your weight, but it won’t feel nice. Buckets in the raw weren’t designed to be sat on comfortably, they were designed to be practically indestructible. Buckets have a lot of plastic ridges and seams which like to dig into your butt. It’s fine if you’re just sitting down for a few minutes, but increasingly painful the longer you sit on one.

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Camping Ideas

The Hitchiker’s Guide to the Galaxy states that you should always know where your towel is. Well if there were a Camper’s Guide to the Galaxy, surely the #1 piece of advice it would give would be to always know where your bucket is!

5 gallon bucket camping ideas

A 5 gallon bucket – or three – is the most versatile of any camping gear, whether you’re a barebones backpack camper, a car camper, or prefer to bring a motorized RV to the campsite.

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