A good bucket-compatible backpack is surprisingly hard to find. The “bucketpack” pictured above is from HuntGear.net, but does not seem to be available for purchase.
People look for bucket backpacks when they want to carry materials such as rocks, soil, sharp objects – or even liquids. The inner bucket layer can get scratched, dirty and nasty while the backpack itself remains in good condition.
Obviously the best way to store a bunch of 5 gallon buckets is to stack them neatly into bucket skyscrapers, like I’ve done here. I often build stacks of 10 or more buckets at a time.
Unfortunately when you stack more than a few buckets together, they combined weight of all those buckets compresses all the air out. This causes the vacuum that makes tugging them apart difficult.
One solution is to drill holes in the bottom of every bucket but then your buckets are become less useful.
Or you could just yank them apart every time using our unstick stuck buckets technique.
We found the Bucket Spacer idea on Pinterest. Slip a scrap piece of 2×4 between each bucket to prevent the vacuum in the first place with some scrap 2x4s. It’s and easy, cheap and elegant solution.
Want to know if your buckets are food grade? Checking is easy, just find the recycling symbol and cross reference with this article.
The best food grade buckets are HDPE, symbol #2. HDPE represents high-density polyethylene. The molecules of HDPE are more tightly packed and stable than other food grade plastics, meaning less plastic can leach into your precious food stores. HDPE also builds a better bucket since it’s a very sturdy type of plastic.
Let’s start off with a bit of action. This is James May from BBC’s Top Gear blasting a semi truck through a wall of 5 gallon water jugs.
Fact: To eat for a full year, you need 24 standard 5 gallon buckets of food.
That number is based on Costco’s $1,500 year of food in buckets. Their price works out to about 4 dollars a day. To invoke a very tired cliche, that’s one latte a day!
