Thursday, September 5, 2013

Fueling up!


Winter is coming and nobody likes to be cold pouring gas into vehicle in the driveway and then going to refill the can down the street at shop-n-rob. We don't rotate much during the winter (if at all), but it's easy to use 10 gallons at a time, more than once a month if we drive a lot, so the rotation waits for warmer weather.

In all fairness I stole that picture from google, but we not only have cans like that, we have the exact same 2 wash tubs (and the stand they go in). We use the tubs for ice and drinks when we have large parties or BBQ's and of course they can easily become a place to clean clothes or do dishes.

Harbor freight had a sale and I had a coupon so we recently picked up a couple of gas jugs to add into the prep storage. We now have close to 80 gallons that get rotated and stabilized, and it sits next to the 5 20# propane tanks. If you are going to go up in flames, at least go big and fast.

With the fuel on hand, and what's in the vehicles, it's around 160 gallons of gas and 25 gallons of diesel. With an inverter hooked up and a few extension cords we can keep the freezer and fridge going for a long time in a power outage. Since we have 4 vehicles (5 including the company car), that's a lot of backup "generators".
We haven't made the plunge for a large generator, but we can take care of the basics (and more) with the vehicles. Since you don't need everything running constantly, we should be able to get 2.5 months of power out of our vehicles and preps. That's assuming 6 hours a day of total use between 5 vehicles at idle... I think the math is sound.

We need to get more diesel fuel but feel comfortable with the fuel preps. I'm going to pick up an electronic single burner "stove". This will help stretch out the propane stores as well.

2 comments:

  1. I use two 500 gallon above ground tanks for diesel. I have a 500 gallon tank for propane. But when it comes to gasoline, I don't keep much. Maybe 20 gallons. My truck is diesel and my generator is diesel so I don't need that much gasoline.

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    1. You store a ton of fuel, the benefit of having a lot of space. I need to look up the longevity of diesel fuel before I store more, need more education.

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