What would you do with an IBC?..

[Speed Gardener]

' Morning All,
I've been given an IBC by the bloke who lives at the back of the allotments (he does house clearances, so drops all sorts of old tools and assorted junk, some of it useful, over the fence!). It doesn't have the cage around it so it's just a huge plastic container with a tap at one end and a big lid at the other. I'm not familiar with these things, do they keep their shape in any way when filled with water, or do they need the cage for that?
I don't want a pond made out of half of it, so I'm not sure of it's worth keeping, but it might be a bit of work to chop up and take to the tip..

Any of you good folk got any bright ideas?

Thanks in anticipation!

[Jay-ell]

1000 litre water butt - do you know what it was used to store ?

[veggiechicken]

Cut it in half and make 2 raised beds?

[Alison]

I collect water off my shed in one

[Baldy]

pretty sure that you could use it to collect water without the metal cage. (subject to it not having previously been used to hold sarin or whatnot)

[Bigmallly]

I think the metal cage is there for transporting purposes.

[Snadger]

I had one on my old plot (with cage) I remember I paid 30 squid for it. My next door neighbour had a one which was leaking at the tap so he replaced the container, but not the cage. I took the old one off his hands but was worried that without cage it wouldn't work so i went and snaffled the cage the other container had come from! Hopefully I can rig something up that will solve the tap problem.

I don't know whether they can be used without the cage, but I wasn't prepared to take that chance.

Not much good I know, but my personal opinion is to store water they need to be used with the cage.

[Bigmallly]

You could play safe & build a 2"x 2" frame round it in case it does start to bulge.

[jasyk34]

I am looking into getting a few of these for my plot. They might work for water storage without a cage if you didn't fill it right up.

Is it the white coloured one ? The reason I ask is that if it is white then you would need to cover it in something possibly black plastic in order to keep out the light otherwise you will get green algae growth in the tank.

[Nicos]

The sides don't touch the metal cage do they?.....so as BM suggests, I think it's probably just there for transport and stacking purposes.I'd just go for it-there's only one way to find out!
As jasyk suggests though...paint it dark or cover it to keep down the algae growing inside.

What wouldconcern me more is finding out what it contained!