Ok, I have had the opportunity to work with a bunch of junk plastic automotive gasoline tanks, and came up with a whole list of things to do with them. Forget tires- these puppies are great, cut easy, are FREE, well, the list goes on... SOURCING FREE GAS TANKS (PLASTIC ONLY) Auto crushers and junk yards are the best lace to get free tanks- tell them you are not interested in taking the fuel pump, only the shell and they will generally be happy to give you all they have. When a yard crushes cars and recycles them, they recyler does not often accept plastic tanks, so yards and crushers will often have a large pile of these tanks pulled and ready to go. Call around, you'll find them! USES: A major concern of people is: these things used to hold gasoline, thus they wont b suitable for much like livestock watering trays, etc. This is a misconception! Plastic tanks can easily be cleaned and made suitable for such containers. FIRST: make sure all the gasoline you can get out of the container is out of it- a pick axe can be used to punch a hole, or a knife with a sharp tip can be turned round and round (or a drill, but remember- electric drills emit sparks and could ignite fresh gasoline). Make the hole on the top of the container and flip it over to drain, if need be. THEN fill the container with water. Let it sit for a week or so. Drain out the water, cut the tank into the desired shape (cutting tips in a min) and scrub it out with a stiff brush. Fill it back up with water, let this stand for a while (a week if time permits). Drain and its ready to go. USES: heres the ideas I have come up with and used the tanks for so far: goat and horse watering troughs. Just cut the top off. The best tanks for this use are ones with no side inlet holes (where the gas went in to the tanks when it was under the car or truck) and ones that are basically rectangular. Dodge dakota tanks are great for this as they have a handle on both ends which can help move the trough around- if you find some of these handled tanks, choose the Yellow handles over the white ones, as the white handles are not UV protected and quickly detoriorate (get brittle) when sunlight hits them, where as the yellow handles are UV protected. Feed troughs are nice too. HAY saver (retail value 89 buck, made mine for 50 cents) take a rectangular tanks- I used a jeep wrangler tank for this one, but any smallish rectangular tank would work, Dodge vans if flipped on their side, perhaps ranger pickups, and jeep grand cherokee tanks would work equally as well. I took a 2 foot wide by about 3 foot tall scrap of 3/4 inch ply wood, screwed the board into the tank and put 2 scrap 2X6s along the sides of the board. Then I screwed another board across the tops of the 2X6s and drilled holes 4 inches apart into that board (3/8" holes). Then I screwed another board between the 2x6s at the bottom and drilled holes in that board- not all the way through 6" apart,. also 3/8"... then I put rebar into the holes (2' long or so) and this created the bin to put 2 flakes of hay into- with the tank on the bottom to catch dropped hay. If thius is hebrew to you, go look at a store bought hay saver and youll see what I mean- basically I made one like that I saw at the feed store. AWNINGS: I cut a tank in half lengthwise then cut the half in half lengthwise and took a 2 by 4 and screwed that to the one edge. Inverted, this became the awinings over the windows on my barn- they look nice if they are all fromnm the same sort of tank and are fromn the same side. Shingles: taking some of the left over tanks I had on hand, I cut 12 inch by however wide flat portions out of the tanks and used these as shingles on the hog house (its small). Tanks can be used for planters, feed storage bins, water tanks, passive solar heat storage containers for a green house (they are black plastic and readily absorb heat), etc. To cut tanks, I use a sawzall- any blade will work, though the fewer teeth per inch, the rougher the cut will be as far a shavings are concerned, though the shavings are easily removed by raking a knife along the cut edge. Make SURE the plastic shavings dont get into the water you plan on giving to animals as the shavings could possibly irrate the throat ( I used ME as the guinee pig, so take it from a pro). A saber saw would work, but dont be brave (stupid!?) enough to try cutting the tanks with a circular saw- the plastic is slippery and the saw would buck you. A drywall saw may also work. Kevin (the Karate Gas Tank Man, as my buddies call me- long story) in NC

-- Kevin (the Karate Gas Tank Man, as my buddies call me- long story) in NC (Vantravlrs@aol.com), December 11, 2001

Answers

This sounds like a great idea, but I was wondering... during the cleanout, does the water you use to clean it become unsafe to dump on the ground? We have some rigid codes here about groundwater. If it is possible it could contaminate the groundwater, could a person ignite the gasoline on top of the water before dumping it, or would this be too dangerous or not burn at all?

-- Dawn (olsoncln@ecenet.com), December 11, 2001.

Plastic is VERY VERY hard to clean. Just running water and over the tank is NOT!!! going to clean it out. Steam cleaning might do it, but even that I wouldnt trust. An old food grade plastic tank are just as common and cheap and a lot safer in my opinion.

-- Gary (gws@columbus.rr.com), December 11, 2001.

During the clean up, you can, if dumping out trace amounts of gasoline is a concern, simply drain as much as you can out, and let the gas vapor off (there should only be a few tablesspoons left)- in other words- air dry. Since there is so little amounts of gasoline involved in the clean up, I doubt contaminating water supplies would be a concern- your car drips more oil on the ground in a week than this would amount to (chances are). I understand peoples concerns over cleaning these puppies- but think of it this way: A: oil products FLOAT on water. Leaving the water in the tank for a week would bring these deposits to the top. B: after cleaning, if the water (if thats what you put in it) was contaminated in any way... you would see a film (the rainbow on a parking lot puddle) on top. After cleaning, this was NOT present. C: I drank for one week from one of the tanks that I cleaned. No ill effects. You figure you would be able to taste the gas- if any was left. Just pure cold water. D: If you really are concerned about it, heck, do a test on the water. Or dont use it for water, just the other stuff I mentioned. Steaming isnt mnecessary.

-- Kevin in NC (vantravlrs@aol.com), December 12, 2001.

Yeah I wouldn't worry about it at all. Just leaving them out in the sun would evaporate most traces of gasoline. If you're worried about MBTE, a few rinses would take care of that. You've never gotten a mouthful of gasoline from a siphon hose? I have a few times, nothing bad happened. Got an earful once too, now that burned like heck.

-- Dave (something@somewhere.com), December 12, 2001.

I have only one comment on this. PLEASE remember that an 'empty' tank is more likely to explode when exposed to a spark than a full one (fumes). Be real careful working with these around ANYTHING that can spark. I hope this helps.

-- Gary in Indiana (gk6854@aol.com), December 12, 2001.