Prepping Fuel Plan | Emergency Preparedness | Forums

I have been thinking of how to store some fuel now that I got my little generator. I was thinking about getting a few truck gas tanks from the junk yard and building a rack system for them....just brain storming. I was at lowes last night and they want 20 bucks for a five gallon can!

I don’t think there are any laws against it, but that would not be my first choice. Oil barrels like that are not rated to handle any pressure (zero psi) and gas especially gas with ethanol needs to be sealed to keep the moisture out. Not to mention old oil tanks always have a layer of old sludge at the bottom and can also have some significant pitting and erosion of the steel from the water being trapped at the bottom of the tank for extended periods of time. I would not recommend something like that for storing gasoline.

I store my gas for small engines in the steel NATO 20l cans that were prevalent and cheap several years ago. I replaced the seals on all of them to insure as little exchange as possible with the outside atmosphere. They are stored in my heavily insulated temperature controlled garage and only experiences temperature changes between seasons. The temperature fluctuations are what is most likely to introduce moisture into your fuel and from what I have read the plastic fuel cans will allow the moisture to pass through it over time and contaminate your fuel. This is not the case with steel cans and the fresh rubber seals insure as little contamination as possible.

As I have mentioned before I only store pretreated ethanol free Mogas and I haven’t had to rebuild a carburetor since I started using it. The next step in the evolution will be to acquire a 55 gallon drum that was previously used for racing fuel. It’s lined and appropriately rated to handle pressure fluctuations for temperature change. I will store it in my temperature controlled garage and use a simple hand pump with a pressure lock to extract it. Between snowmobiles, ATVs, genny and chainsaws I should be able to rotate through enough to always keep it fresh. Mogas has a two year shelf life. If I feel I need more I will add a second barrel. I would welcome any further insight anyone had to add.

http://en.wikipedia......wiki/Avgas

For those not familiar with Mogas check the link, scroll down until get to automotive gasoline. The product available locally is 91 octane and pretreated for long term storage. It costs about $5 a gallon. Expensive, but in the scheme of things having reliable fuel available and not having it gum up my carburetors is worth it.