Two liter bottles or not? Good news, bad news!

 

As to 2L soda bottles: Pre-Y2K I rinsed, filled with water and several drops of Clorox, capped and stored 30 ginger ale (green) 2L bottles. I was very surprised to find that after a year or so that most of the bottles were not full. I checked the caps to ensure they did not loosen or crack. All caps appeared OK. Some bottles were distorted inward due to an apparent vacuum. There was no evidence of moisture on or around the bottles.

As a test I kept several to watch their progress. Today, six+ years later, there are a several that are empty and the rest have less than half of the original volume.

They have been stored in a garage bathroom and subject to outside temp variations. I live on the central West Coast of Florida. Therefore the temps varied from lows of mid 30s to high 90s over a period of six years.

My guess is that expansion due to temperature increases caused water vapor to be expelled and then created a partial vacuum upon cooling.

GOOD NEWS:

 

At the same time I stored the above bottles, I also filled enough bottles with room for ice expansion to cover the bottom of my chest freezer. I placed them upright and cut a sheet of 1/8" panelling to fit on top of the bottles. This was to provide a heat sink in case of power outages. Works fantasticly!

We've had numerous outages up to a week long and by running my gen set for three hours three/four times a day we never lost any food to spoilage. Granted we did use some items that were on top of everything else to play it safe but never saw any spoilage. We did toss some items that started to thaw just to be safe.

 

A side benefit is that you can have ice/ice water on hand for a long time after the lights go out. After a week long outage the freezer bottles did show thawing but still was at least half ice. Remember to absolutely minimize how often you open the freezer. A chest freezer will not lose as much cold air as will an upright.

 

For any outage over a week all bets are off. If in doubt, throw it out! 

Sorry for the long post but hopefully you can now make a more informed decision.

 

This the basis of the colliodal silver industry. Do a Google on CS and make up your own mind.