Every reconditioned tote on our yard passes a leak test. Pressurized to 3 PSI internally. Held for 5 minutes. Any visible pressure drop on the gauge is a fail. There are no exceptions and there are no discounts for skipping it.
Why 3 PSI
3 PSI is well below the rated pressure of an HDPE IBC. The test is not a destructive test or a working-pressure test. It is a leak-detection test, calibrated to find weeps that would not show under atmospheric service but would show under a full water column or a partially-vented fill cap. A 5-foot column of water is roughly 2.2 PSI at the discharge. 3 PSI is a small safety margin on top of that.
Why 5 minutes
A pinhole leak in a tote that is otherwise sound will sometimes hold pressure for a minute or two while air finds its way to the failure point. Five minutes catches the slow ones.
What we have caught
Our leak-test fail rate runs about 0.7% across reconditioned inventory. Most fails are at the discharge valve seat — a gasket that did not seat right on re-installation. Those get re-gasketed and re-tested. A few percent of fails are at the bottle wall itself — small punctures from incoming damage that survived visual inspection. Those bottles go to material recovery.
Why we will not discount the test out
A skipped leak test saves us 7 minutes per tote. A failed tote in the field costs us a customer relationship and a return-freight bill. The math is not close.