My own personal "gas station"

I'm opening my own "personal gas station", for personal use only, for our 2 cars and lawnmowers and snow-blower.

Two reasons:

(1) - I can save a few bucks by driving to the best price station in my Ottawa, Ontario area on the days when prices are lower. I might also be able to ride out any short term price peaks (Summer?), but that might take away from (2).

(2) - So I will have an emergency 1-2 month supply to last through whatever temporary emergencies we might face, such as bad weather, truckers strikes, peak oil pandemonium, etc.

The "Priups" will be both primary emergency transportation, as well as primary backup power source for house.

So far, all I have is 25 US gallons of new plastic gas cans, and an old "Flo-N-Go" hand pump that doesn't work so well anymore. (Cheap crud.)

My main Prius specific question is:

What's the best way to fill the Prius from a "personal gas station" ?? I'm realizing now that filling cars from gas cans does not provide auto-shutoff like commercial gas pumps. I don't want to over-fill, but to calculate mileage it might be best if I avoided under-filling also.

Is there a relatively inexpensive electric fuel pump I could use that meters the fuel and also has reliable, consistent auto-shutoff that works with Prius and other cars ?

I'll post some issues/ideas I have for the next phase of my "personal gas station" in the next post.

 

BTW, this is for regular cheap unleaded gasoline only, Stored in Ottawa, Canada area where temps usually range from -30 to 95 F.

I've done some reading and I understand I can store gas at least for a few months and up to 2 years perhaps. Some say you don't need Stabil, most recommend it. I've heard it mostly protects your octane, and I don't think I need much octane, in fact Prius works better on low octane.

Regardless, storage time won't be much of an issue if I am using and rotating the gas as I expect.

For safety, I'm planning to store outside, away from the house, above ground and in the shade. Perhaps best place is just behind my shed. No, I haven't checked local regs yet, but will. Regardless, best practices should be similar no matter the locale.

Once you go beyond 25 gallons of jugs/cans, most people seem to recommend one or more 55 gallon steel drums, raised on a platform for gravity feed, and with a good grounding wire for some lightning and static protection. I guess this is what farms do.

With myself and MANY other locals switching from oil heat to electric heat this winter, big home heating oil tanks should become cheap used. I don't know if a home heating oil/diesel tank can be safely used with gasoline (after cleaning of course).

I'm not sure what the above will cost, nor a manual or electric/electronic pump that may assist in MPG calcs etc.

Getting the gas. Today I simply unloaded the cans from Prius trunk, filled them up one by one and reloaded the trunk. Perhaps there is a 50-100 gallon tank I could fit in the hatchback/trunk (with back seats down) and secure. It would be necessary that this would be easily removable. It is also necessary that such a tank could be pumped out directly, rather than lifting it out with 100 gallons of weight in it.

Yes, I want to do all this as safely as possible. And thoughts/ideas ? Thanks !

 

Geee.... Such negativity ?

All I did was buy a few 100% legal plastic gas containers, MEANT for storing gas. I have them in a safe place, away from the house.

I'm just exploring what I could do to expand this, legally and safely, and whether it's worth it or not.

I have 3 acres of property in a semi-rural location. There's a pretty big open area in the middle I could use, away from trees and such. In summer there is a decent sized pond also. There are farms around here where people have been doing stuff like this legally and safely for MANY decades. And YES, I'd do everything feasible to protect the air and water and soil and ALL the lovely animals who make my backyard their home. Bears, deer, beavers, geese, frogs, birds, mosquitoes and the whole lot. (Umm, scratch the mosquitoes, they've overbred this year.)

I'm not some crazyman downtown with 200 gallons in his furnace room in open buckets, and another 300 on the balcony...

Anyway, perhaps I can get more "rural" feedback on a 4x4 or survivalist forum...

 

Thanks. Yes, getting right down to it, my primary purpose is to have a convenient, and emergency-ready fuel supply.

Some rural areas here were without power for 3+ weeks in the great NE Ice Storm some 10 years ago. Although for that, gas was not an issue, as long as you could drive a bit farther.

I AM concerned about possibilities of shortages, more-so if and when we get trucker strikes.

Yes, insurance companies do whatever they can to try and invalidate claims etc. Gee, you can grow pot legally here, with a prescription, but the insurance companies refuse to cover you if you do.

In any case, I'll just stick with a few 4-5 gallon gas approved containers behind my shed, and add to that, if I get nervous about potential shortages.


My biggest concern at present, is preventing overfilling the Prius fuel tank if using a can. I filled up my wifes car yesterday from a can, and overfilled it. There must be some home usable electric pumps out there with auto-shutoff... ?


...

 

Well, I appreciate your interest in responding, but...

Yes, but not IN my home. OUTSIDE, well away from the house, an an approved "household" fuel container.

Yes, times ARE that bad. They are so bad I need gasoline lawnmowers to cut my grass and some fuel for a backup generator in case the power goes out. Believe it or not, my 100% legal and common lawnmower is DESIGNED to be able to fill with a gas can. I think that's much safer than driving the lawnmower to the gas station. How would you fill a gas lawnmower ?

Sure. Not trying to be TOO sarcastic , but it's called fire and/or explosion and there is ALWAYS a risk of that when dealing with gasoline. Same thing could happen through no fault of my own if a car has electrical defect while sitting in the garage. Yes, even people who mitigate EVERY risk can have bad things happen.

OK, but underground has it's own set of problems.

I'm not sure either, but at the Home Depot today I saw a FloNGo that seemed to have some sort of auto-shutoff and it was a manual pump.

 

Thanks; I'm thinking I might be able to find a manual pump that shuts-off somehow. Or the other persons suggestion about metering and not trying to fill completely holds merit.

Yeah, the truck/SUV idea isn't bad IMO. They are getting real cheap lately, and I'll be keeping an eye on prices the next few years.

Yes, there are a bunch of contractors around here that use extra fuel tanks or just strap 55 gallon drums to their pickup truck. Not necessarily the safest route in many cases, but I think it can be done more or less right if you are careful. Biggest risk, if done right IMO, is risk of crash if you are doing your own "Tank engineering". I think I'll be safer just strapping down a few normal gas cans in the hatchback, behind the upright seats.

Yes, I agree fumes/VOCs etc. are bad for us and the environment. I've NEVER been too paranoid about fume ignition/explosion because I ALWAYS make sure there is plenty of ventilation. IMO, you REALLY don't know what you are doing if fumes build up enough that explosion becomes possible. I'm reasonably sure my nose would be complaining long before that point.

I'm concerned enough with fumes that I'd REALLY like to create some better system for filling my lawnmowers than tilting gas cans upside down. THATS one reason why I want a pump. I DO believe I've seen inexpensive electric pumps for consumer use.

 

That has some potential, but I'm not sure I can re-tune the Prius to run on alky... Can I ?

I'd REALLY prefer some sort of hemp seed oil dual-use fuel however, with everything from the Beatles to RATM... :attention: