pressure in 5 gallon bucket

i am currently starting a brewbuddy cider kit. Put all ingredients in my 5g bucket and have left it for a few days. Checked it yesterday and looked like ti was fermenting nicely. My question tho is the bucket has started to swell a bit and the lid has risen quite a lot. I dont know whether to open the lid to let some pressure out or leave it closed.

anyone got any suggestions on what i should do.

You do have a drilled lid with an airlock don't you? If there is nowhere for the CO2 to escape it will eventually pop that lid off, leaving a bit of a mess.

Is this similar to your predicament: https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f39/no-airlock-my-starter-kit-59571/

no airlock, just a fermenting bucket, with a lid. So would you suggest opening up to let some presssure out. Will this affect the fermentation process

Opening it to relieve the pressure would probably be advisable, otherwise to lid might come off on its own. As per the link I posted, I would also say you might want to throw a sanitized towel or cloth over any opening you leave. I think I've heard of/seen pictures of fermentation buckets covered entirely with a sanitized cloth rather than a lid during fermentation, but I've never tried that and have no plans to do so.

For this batch you may want to go with the cloth covering method, but you will probably want to drill a hole in the lid, fix it with a rubber grommet and get an airlock for future batches.

i dont suppose there are any step by step instructions for converting my bucket

If you have a drill and some tubing you could probably rig a blow off tube. That would be a tube running from the top of the bucket into a container filled with sanitizing solution. Its basically a large airlock. If you do this just make sure you cover the bucket while preparing the blow off and be sure to sanitize the tube and the lid after drilling.

During active fermentation, you can even just leave the lid resting on top, and not snapped down. The positive pressure of the CO2 will keep anything from coming in. Everyone is right though, you need to drill a hole in the lid, install a rubber grommet, and a piece of tubing for a blow off.

Okay, so after some searching for a step by step process and coming up empty, I'd say you would want to drill a 3/8 inch hole in the lid and install a grommet like the one for sale here. You'll also see airlocks for sale on the same page. If you have a homebrew shop anywhere near you they may have everything you need.

If you want to install a blowoff tube just drill a hole either the same size or slightly smaller than the outer diameter of any tubing you have (assuming your kit came with tubing) and jam the tubing down into the bucket just above the level of the cider with the other end resting in a decent sized jar about half filled with clean water or sanitizing solution.

ok will give that a try, thanks for the response.

I cut a hole in my lid using a utility knife, then inserted a carboy bung with a carboy airlock into the hole. Simple, cheap.

i dont suppose you got any pictures of it, make it a bit easier to do if i could to see someone's bucket