Storing Gas | GTAMotorcycle.com

Storing Gas

-Maverick-

-Maverick-

Well-known member
Today's 5 gallon gas containers seem to come with "blow off" type vent caps...they don't seal like the old school ones. Garage smells like fuel on hot days due to this. A quick search of YouTube shows just how F'd up today's Jerry cans have gotten due to government regulations . Seeing the hacks people are doing is very interesting. Adjoined to house garages are not vented and as such, some of the fumes could leach into your house.

Having some gas on hand for a generator is probably a good idea these days.

Where are you all storing your backup fuel?

The guy formerly known as Mladin.
 
I store them in a 5 gallon container with a blow off-type vent cap.

In all seriousness, the vent cap in my jerry can has a pretty good seal. A couple of weeks ago, we drove from essentially sea-level up to 11,000 feet and whatever air was in the jerry can made the whole thing swell up like a balloon at high altitude. No leak, whatsoever. Opened the vent cap and the container returned back to normal size.

I suspect vent cap quality is dependent on a manufacturer-by-manufacturer basis.
 
For convenience, I have up to 5 gallons in the garage plus 2 gallons of premix. If I happen to have more on hand (doesn't often happen but has happened when I bring home 10 or so gallons of boat gas before the winter) it lives outside. No need for that much potential fuel load in the garage.
 
I have 2 5 gal containers in the garage. One for normal gas, and one for 2 stroke lawn equipment.

Don’t have the blow off valve type so they balloon lots in the hot weather but then I just take them outside and release the pressure manually.
 
I have an empty 1 gallon jerry can in the shed. All the garden stuff is electric and the gennies haven't been used in years. If I need them I'll have to figure out a way to siphon out of the cage, past the various baffles.

BTW I no longer keep my large stash of spray cans in the house as they are full of propane.
 
I used to keep 60l in the garage for winter fill up on the vehicles, never had any issues with the storage containers.
The issue came when I left that job and had to hand back the gas card...
 
Just leave an expansion gap in the container and only use one approved for volatile flammable substances. In the lab these things are contained in sealed small metal drums or 4L brown glass large glass bottles inside an explosion cabinet but they are usually under temperature control so there’s not much chance of the things expanding. Most garages don’t have that luxury though.

Anything I have in my garage that may go bang is inside a fireproof container. There’s bags of different sizes for LiPo batteries being stored and any reloading supplies etc. I keep the gas in the shed. It can vent away there without issues.
 
jc100 said:
Just leave an expansion gap in the container and only use one approved for volatile flammable substances. In the lab these things are contained in sealed small metal drums or 4L brown glass large glass bottles inside an explosion cabinet but they are usually under temperature control so there’s not much chance of the things expanding. Most garages don’t have that luxury though.

Anything I have in my garage that may go bang is inside a fireproof container. There’s bags of different sizes for LiPo batteries being stored and any reloading supplies etc. I keep the gas in the shed. It can vent away there without issues.
Click to expand...
I have the smaller containers of burny things in a metal cabinet with expanded mesh doors. Cabinet is in a corner of the garage about 6' off the ground. Far from any activities like grinding, low enough that if there was a fire, it should pop garage windows and dump the layer of hot air before cooking cabinet. There is some flammable metal in there. If it ever starts to burn it will be very hard to put out.
 
GreyGhost said:
I have the smaller containers of burny things in a metal cabinet with expanded mesh doors. Cabinet is in a corner of the garage about 6' off the ground. Far from any activities like grinding, low enough that if there was a fire, it should pop garage windows and dump the layer of hot air before cooking cabinet. There is some flammable metal in there. If it ever starts to burn it will be very hard to put out.
Click to expand...

At least lithium batteries give you a little bit of warning by swelling first usually. They do worry me a bit if they aren’t well known brands with decent QC, they are self contained pyrotechnic devices. Metal fires are the worst to put out and I’ve had my fair share of lab fires.
 
Why do they have a vent cap?
Will the quality of petrol deteriorate once that vapour is let out?
 
POWERMAN said:
Why do they have a vent cap?
Will the quality of petrol deteriorate once that vapour is let out?
Click to expand...

Volatile liquid (low boiling point) gives a gas that occupies more space than the liquid. So without a vent you’re building up pressure in the container. 1 mole of a gas occupies 22.4 L at atmospheric pressure, 1 mole of liquid water is 18g of water which is 18ml. Convert it to water vapour and that 18ml becomes 22400 ml.
 
POWERMAN said:
Why do they have a vent cap?
Will the quality of petrol deteriorate once that vapour is let out?
Click to expand...
If you don't vent, obviously you have less emissions, less degradation in fuel, less water vapor entering as container cools down, etc. Obviously a plastic tank is not a good pressure vessel so they need some mechanism to vent at a controlled pressure and location. I think the new ones crack the yellow cap insert at that point. I haven't had a tank get to that point to confirm.

Over time yes, petrol detiorates. The most volatile fractions evaporate first. Think of gasoline becoming more like diesel as time passes, burning instead of exploding.
 
GreyGhost said:
If you don't vent, obviously you have less emissions, less degradation in fuel, less water vapor entering as container cools down, etc. Obviously a plastic tank is not a good pressure vessel so they need some mechanism to vent at a controlled pressure and location. I think the new ones crack the yellow cap insert at that point. I haven't had a tank get to that point to confirm.

Over time yes, petrol detiorates. The most volatile fractions evaporate first. Think of gasoline becoming more like diesel as time passes, burning instead of exploding.
Click to expand...
So rupture disk instead of pressure relief valve.

images


Rupture disks don't leak. All or nothing.
 
jc100 said:
Volatile liquid (low boiling point) gives a gas that occupies more space than the liquid. So without a vent you’re building up pressure in the container. 1 mole of a gas occupies 22.4 L at atmospheric pressure, 1 mole of liquid water is 18g of water which is 18ml. Convert it to water vapour and that 18ml becomes 22400 ml.
Click to expand...
When I used to make spray cans 50+ years ago the propellant was Freon-12 and IIRC the pressure went up 1 psi for each F degree. A closed up car supposedly can hit 140° F. I don't know what the cans are certified for and whether one could end up with an upholstery colour change on a hot day.

Now the propellant is propane.

1173478.jpg


I did have a can of freeze spray let go one summer day. (They have rupture disks) I couldn't figure how it got on the front seat when I always put it in the back. Then I noticed the ruptured disk in the bottom. Fortunately no upholstery colour change.

EDIT: PSA
www.wawanesa.com

7 Items You Should Never Leave in a Hot Car

www.wawanesa.com www.wawanesa.com
 
I got a bunch, like 4 or 5 boxes, of Great Stuff spray insulation... that blew up. I went out to the garage to find a 6ft high mound of styrofoam STUCK TO EVERYTHING. Used a chainsaw to clean it up.
Did you know the landfill won't take that stuff. GREAT!
 
A pipe bomb is just a thicker walled, more highly pressurized (over a very short time period) version of a spray can.

Years ago I did an experiment in a large sealed very thick walled glass tube that was put into an oven and heated for a period. I cooled it down in a cooling bath (or thought I had) and took it off to the glass blower to open (glass was so thick I couldn’t do it myself). He scored the glass at the neck and the thing went off like a cannon. No one was hurt but the glass end of the tube ended up a fair distance away. I’ve always been wary of pressurized containers plus heat since.

One of my old instructors used to have a bunker at his university where these things could be more safely opened (for everyone else, not him). His experiments were in heavy gauge steel tubes though.
 
These Sceptor cans:

General PDP Template

www.canadiantire.ca www.canadiantire.ca

...not sure if they're defective, or just bad design. The review section under one stars under review "Vent cap does not seal" (which is replicated throughout the bad reviews) the company responds by saying "the vent caps are a child proof feature... blah, blah, blah" Soooo....outgas the fuel and poison the family...or a spark etc. I have some friends with the same cans and the vent cap tightens on theirs and one out of five of mine tightens. The others just spin. So the can is constantly venting vs a blow off system which I suspect they set out to design. I'm going to dremel the dimple off the underside of one of them and see if it seals at all.

Already did the nozzle replacement for all of the cans. The original is terrible.

Gas cans, Jerry cans used to be a maintenance free item...now there's a hundred Jerry can hacks on YouTube to make them work properly.

The guy formerly known as Mladin.
 
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