OutdoorKing Repair Forum Forums General Discussion Forum Off Topics What to do with old fuel?

As we all know fuel has an expiry date, but how do you get rid of old surplus fuel stored in containers and bottles around the place? I know my dad always had the perfect answer to this question, and that was "Oh just go pour it on a post or some weeds some place." But we lived on a farm so could get away with the occasional acts of environmental vandalism. I recall old diesel and oil served a useful purpose, as farmers often poured it over posts that had become infested with white ants. Old oil was used to oil hinges and gates and the windmill etc. Diesel was handy for spraying on prickly pears and other succulent weeds to eradicate them. Nothing got wasted.

But recently I came across some old fuel in the back of the shed that would probably be over a decade old. I've also got dirty fuel stored after flushing out fuel tanks. I've thought about taking it to the dump as they have a chemical shed there. But I seem to remember there was a hefty charge on disposal of some chemicals? Oil is no problem as you can simply pour it into the oil recycling tank at the dump and there is no charge. I am not sure if oil contaminated with fuel is permitted. I have never asked.

I remember reading somewhere that a small quantity of old fuel - a litre or two - can be safely put into a car engine, providing it is clean, because it will quickly get mixed into the whole tank of fuel. Cars are less fussy about the gummy particles that would otherwise clog up a mower carby. A car engine will just push it straight through and burn it up.

Anyway, just wondering how others deal with their old and dirty fuel?

In some ways it serves a useful purpose in the shed, because I do not label my containers. Only I know which ones are good fuel and dirty fuel. So if anyone breaks into my shed and steals fuel, they could have a lot of fun if they pour a can of dirty fuel into their mower or car.

Hi vint_mow,
I use it as weed killer, especially the ones that grow in the joins on paths or driveways. The beauty is, it generally evaporates pretty quickly, although a little two stroke oil residue may be left behind.
Hastening a BBQ is another one, though I wouldn't recommend it tbh as you don't want your snags tasting of petrol spice.

Like they used to do in the old days, just toss it in the incinerator and throw a match to it. Isn't that how we used to get rid of everything ?

No No No please don't do that I was only kidding !!!!

Hi BB, the old besser block incinerator in the yard, what happened to those? They certainly saved $$ on disposal costs. I'm old enough to remember back yard burn offs. I know a bloke who remembers burning tyres in his backyard once and seeing the smoke signal from miles away!!

Yep, I remember every night at 6.30 it used to be time to take out the trash to the incinerator down the bottom end of the back yard and toss in a match. We had small metal trash cans back then and everything would fit.

Gee how times are a changin' !

I would pour it along the fence lines........
Sometimes I light them........just to clear the grass.........

speedy
Bundy

A mate of mine gave me 3 jerry cans of fuel because he wasn't sure if they had diesel or petrol or a mix of diesel/petrol in them. I haven't worked out what to do with them as I don't have any weeds around my fence lines. I have slipped the occasional liter out of one of them into a 20 liter of petrol but it would take me years at this rate to get rid of it all

Howdy Norm. Offer them to a bus or trucking company. They would burn them if pretty quick within a day.

Hi MF, that is an option I had not thought of

G'day all,
Don't think that would be the case, MF, given that the composition is unknown and possibly a shandy.

Diesel contaminated with petrol is bad news for common-rail diesel engines. Conversely, diesel contamination of petrol decreases the octane number substantially, even at quite low levels.

Norm, the 'detox your home' dropoffs are the best bet in Vic, for getting rid of this sort of household stuff. Old fuel can also be used for parts cleaning - with appropriate safety precautions, if petrol is involved.

Businesses have to use commercial waste disposal services, and this can cost a bit, as it all has to have EPA 'chain of disposal' paperwork. In a past life, I had to use a waste disposal service [Chemsal] to pick up waste crude oil from a lab I ran.

There's a 'detox event' coming up in Dandenong next month; http://www.sustainability.vic.gov.a...ur-home/Event-locations-and-registration - you'd need to register via the link.

One thing though, if you want to keep the jerrycans you might need to find a few 20L drums to decant the stuff into, for dropoff.

That's good advice there Gadge.

Now all I wanted to do is get half a tank of fuel out of a Subaru Liberty Wagon yesterday that we sent to scrap and it was impossible to get to with all the bends in the inlet filler, as such it would've been around $50 worth of fuel good for parts cleaning as you've suggested as that's what I generally use if it's just a quick and small job to do.

A mixture of Petrol and Diesel is absolute poison to diesel powered vehicles but great as parts cleaning fluid as you suggested.

Wish you were just down the road Norm as I would've quickly solved your problem.

Cheers,
BB.

Thanks Gadge, I had a look at the sustainability site and that is good they will take the fuels but my bigger issue is the 70/80 litres of engine oil I still have to get rid of.
BB you would be more than welcome to the fuel if you were closer.

Howdy, Gadge, BB & NormK.
Up my neck of the woods, there is (or was) an oil recycling business who will take old engine oil off you, but they are a good 40 minutes drive away, so I kept putting it off and ended up accumulating twenty bottles of used black engine oil. Lucky my local mechanic who was only five minutes walk up the road, agreed to let me dump it all in his oil collection tank, which gets periodically emptied by the same business.
I'd be surprised if there wasn't such a facility near to you. Maybe the local mechanics will be as generous as mine was.

Haven't heard of any of these detox sustainability events up my way yet. Sounds like a great idea. My shed could definitely do with a "detoxing" lol!

I'm laughing at some of the solutions proposed here, like putting it on weeds along fencelines. I can imagine the look of horror on my neighbour's face if I had just done the fenceline and he gets out with his gas weed wand. He's merrily burning off the weeds around his pavers, then decides to hit a few along the fenceline. Woosh, instant "scorched earth"!

G'day Norm,
Many council 'transfer stations' in Vic will accept limited [i.e. non-commercial] quantities of used engine oil for disposal, however they usually charge for this.
Maximum container size is usually 20L, and often they will keep the container too.

There's a list of those in your area here; http://www.greaterdandenong.com/document/7456/recycling-and-disposal-centres

And the rate seems to vary a bit - Monash Waste Transfer Station will accept up to 30L at a time for free, but above that it's $2.50/L.

Knox and Westall Road both charge $1/L; Hampton Park charges $0.55/L by the look of their website price list; https://outlookvic.org.au/environmental/hampton-park/

Thanks Gadge, I might have to catch up with a bloke I know who has a sump oil powered paddle steamer up on the Murray and he uses a fair amount of oil because he sometimes travels from Echuca as far as Goolwa in SA.

Incidentally, I recall some years back a friend of mine bought a bush block which had a shed on it. When he opened the shed for the first time he found it was stock full of just about every noxious chemical known to man. There were drums of old, banned products like Rogor, Aldrin, arsenic pentoxide, and Dieldren, to name a few, and lots of bottles with stuff that the labels had fallen off of. I am sure he felt like locking the door again and pretending it didn't exist. Seems like he had bought someone else's problem. I'm not sure how he ever got on with that stockpile of old chemicals. I never heard any more about it and next time I visited he had the shed all cleaned out.

And speaking of arsenic pentoxide, which was very widely used in the old days for spearing the prickly pears, many farms still had stockpiles of the stuff by the time the cactoblastis moth had done its job of decimating the pest. And by the 1960s better chemicals came on the market for treating weeds. Arsenic pentoxide was no longer needed. It was very common for landholders to dispose of arsenic by dumping it in local dumps, or waterways, or down old mine shafts and wells. I have little doubt that suburbs now exist on old farms where this practice occurred. It was a different time and a different attitude I guess. But most people today are blissfully unaware that it ever took place. How many people get their bores tested for arsenic levels? Councils for that matter?

Well they now tell us that PFOS is basically harmless, or at least they are saying there is no clear evidence that it harms us. That was after making a huge issue out of it, and needlessly scaring a lot of people. Asbestos is still a scourge, but after I saw a neighbour's house getting its asbestos roof replaced by "professionals" I really wondered about how harmful it must be. The first day they wore suits and goggles. The next day they wore shorts and thongs and face masks. Yes really!!! The third day they had no protection at all, but were still throwing bits of asbestos off the roof. The wind was blowing a gale and they were throwing the broken sheets into an industrial bin. The dust was blowing all across the street and neighbouring homes. They left a pile of asbestos dust near my neighbour's back door and when he complained about it they told him to just sweep it up and throw it in his bin. The neighbour was picking up shards of asbestos roof from his lawn for many months after.

When I was young we lived on a farm at Mirboo North in Gippsland and my father used pentoxide constantly, mostly in an old exarmy knapsack that didn't seal to well on the lid and he would come home with the back of his shirt soaking in the stuff.Mum used to be concerned about it. After selling the farm in the mid sixties we moved to Melbourne and he worked in the building industry and a lot of the work he did involved working with asbestos materials on boilers and pipework. Eventually he did die but at 96 the odds were always stacked against him

Sounds a bit like my dad. He worked on the rail line in his younger days and often spoke about the times they sprayed weeds with a knapsack all day long. He said the chemical came in big drums with a big skull and crossbones label on the side. The knapsacks leaked something dreadful and by the time he got home his clothes were drenched through with the stuff. He later worked on a farm and often recounted the times when he stood out in the paddock to help direct spray planes over his crops. Again he would get soaked in chemicals like Glypho, Tordon and 24D. He also sawed through plenty of sheets of asbestos fibre whenever he was building or renovating around the farm. He lived to the age of 89, eventually passing away due to heart failure. As far as we know, it seems he did not suffer from any conditions normally associated with chemicals or asbestos.