Flooded Texas stations = water in their tanks?

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For sure many Texas stations were under water this week. Storage tanks must be vented to allow air in as gas is pumped out. How/where are those tanks vented? Will water enter tanks thru that vent? Through those metal ground plates the truck guys use to fill the tanks?
 
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I probably wouldn't plan on buying anything from that entire area until a few months has passed. Gas could be bad, food could be bad, cars will be bad, etc, etc.
 
Most fuel stations have vent pipes 10' tall give or take. All it will take then is 10' 1" of water to contaminate the tank. The fill connections under the plate have liquid tight caps to keep surface water out. Some times those fail and water gets in during a normal rain storm.
 
Ammolab,

Thats a good concern.

The news made it sound like the entire region was under water and no doubt some areas were terribly submerged but I have seen flood maps and photos of some areas not under water. I would sure make the drive to these areas when fueling up.

I wonder if it might even be a good idea to fill a glass jar from an intended station a day before needing fuel just to run a personal check.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
Houston has been flooding since it was first established hundreds of years ago. Probably not this bad, but still its been through this before.



Yes, I asked the question because I lived there for 44 years. Local flooding common and thus always easy to fuel up in a known dry NOT flooded area. "Probably not this bad".....PROBABLY? Do you have a TV set? FIFTY inches of rain and feet of water for days is something new!
 
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Originally Posted By: Joshua_Skinner
Most fuel stations have vent pipes 10' tall give or take. All it will take then is 10' 1" of water to contaminate the tank. The fill connections under the plate have liquid tight caps to keep surface water out. Some times those fail and water gets in during a normal rain storm.


They don't want someone sticking their cigarette in the vent pipe. Where are they located anyways? The tanks are right under the pumps iirc.
 
Originally Posted By: ammolab
Originally Posted By: Donald
Houston has been flooding since it was first established hundreds of years ago. Probably not this bad, but still its been through this before.



Yes, I asked the question because I lived there for 44 years. Local flooding common and thus always easy to fuel up in a known dry NOT flooded area. "Probably not this bad".....PROBABLY? Do you have a TV set? FIFTY inches of rain and feet of water for days is something new!


50 plus inches of rain anywhere is a problem even if you have a new roof and gutters and live high up on a mountain.
Anybody dismissing this doesn't live in the real world. Even in Texas I suspect many don't get out and see actually what is happening. My area is okay so........... No that isn't the case.
 
As a station owner, I would be far more concerned about the tanks coming up out of the ground and busting through the surface. I have seen ground water float partially filled tanks up through pavement. I don't know if a flood overlay would make that more or less likely.

All of the vents I've seen are usually fifteen feet or more above ground. It would take a lot of water to get to the vents. The fill hole should be sealed but it is possible if you had enough water stand on it, long enough, some could leak through. Most tanks won't pump below one and a half or two inches or so, so depending on the tank this could be fifty or sixty gallons, or more, below the pump inlet. Removing water from tanks is trivial - you just pump it out.

Regardless of what consumers think, water in motor fuel is an extremely rare event in my experience. When it occurs, it is almost always put there by mistake or malice, or a result of some sort of hardware failure.
 
Originally Posted By: Donald
Houston has been flooding since it was first established hundreds of years ago. Probably not this bad, but still its been through this before.


Established HUNDREDS of years ago?....180 years ago in 1836 the population of Houston was 12 people.
 
Originally Posted By: AirgunSavant
Originally Posted By: ammolab
Originally Posted By: Donald
Houston has been flooding since it was first established hundreds of years ago. Probably not this bad, but still its been through this before.



Yes, I asked the question because I lived there for 44 years. Local flooding common and thus always easy to fuel up in a known dry NOT flooded area. "Probably not this bad".....PROBABLY? Do you have a TV set? FIFTY inches of rain and feet of water for days is something new!


50 plus inches of rain anywhere is a problem even if you have a new roof and gutters and live high up on a mountain.
Anybody dismissing this doesn't live in the real world. Even in Texas I suspect many don't get out and see actually what is happening. My area is okay so........... No that isn't the case.


Heavy rain in the mountains is its own special problem because that runoff gains a lot of kinetic energy on the way down. Your house on the mountaintop may be fine, but the road up to it will likely be gone.
Happened in the little ski town where we have a condo a few years ago...locals said the sound of huge boulders being rolled by the roaring waters was just terrifying. A lot less than 50 inches of rain involved here and much less overall devastation than Houston is dealing with was suffered, of course.
 
And that makes perfect sense. No matter how well built the things are, the odds are the service station manager/owner and employees aren't qualified to be checking, and a bunch of garbage fuel would open up a load of lawsuits, I'm sure.
 
I hope the folks in south eastern Texas are doing as well as they can and they get things back on track quickly.

Either way, I would add some sort of proven water remover to your fuel; at least for the next few weeks at minimum. You may also want to get some water detection kits for gas and diesel. It is easy for us not in the affected area to say that water contamination is a rare thing but this storm is unlike any we have had in the US. I have been testing and experimenting with K-100 and I really like it. If I were in the area, I would play it safe and use it until gas stations can get straightened out. You can buy K-100 at any Napa, I say that hoping they are even open to sell you some.

Hang in there Texas!

http://k-100.com/why-k100/eliminates-water/
 
Originally Posted By: AMC
I hope the folks in south eastern Texas are doing as well as they can and they get things back on track quickly.

Either way, I would add some sort of proven water remover to your fuel; at least for the next few weeks at minimum. You may also want to get some water detection kits for gas and diesel. It is easy for us not in the affected area to say that water contamination is a rare thing but this storm is unlike any we have had in the US. I have been testing and experimenting with K-100 and I really like it. If I were in the area, I would play it safe and use it until gas stations can get straightened out. You can buy K-100 at any Napa, I say that hoping they are even open to sell you some.

Hang in there Texas!

http://k-100.com/why-k100/eliminates-water/


Except here is the thing...all gasoline for on road use in the US is required to have 10% ethanol mixed in, as we know ethanol is a type of alcohol. Water sticks to alcohol, so water in the gas tank will be removed without any added water removing snake oil additive.
If you have so much water in your gas tank that your engine won't run adding a water remover will not help.

That is one of the reasons E-85 corrodes fuel systems, it has so much alcohol in it that is absourbs moisture from the air and carries it to the engine where as E-free gasoline would just allow the water to condense on the bottom of the tank and ride around harmlessly for decades.
 
Originally Posted By: Spike555

Except here is the thing...all gasoline for on road use in the US is required to have 10% ethanol mixed in, as we know ethanol is a type of alcohol. Water sticks to alcohol, so water in the gas tank will be removed without any added water removing snake oil additive.
If you have so much water in your gas tank that your engine won't run adding a water remover will not help.

That is one of the reasons E-85 corrodes fuel systems, it has so much alcohol in it that is absourbs moisture from the air and carries it to the engine where as E-free gasoline would just allow the water to condense on the bottom of the tank and ride around harmlessly for decades.


Wow, that's a lot of misinformation......
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Here I will break down your falsehoods by the number.

1. Not all gas sold in the US is E-10. There are plenty of stations that sell non-ethanol gas around, you just have to know where to find them.

2. Water does not "stick" to ethanol or any type of alcohol. Alcohol emulsifies with water and mixes with it; if that is what you mean.

3. We aren't talking about having so much water in gas that your engine won't run, that is a separate issue. Even small amounts of water will cause engines to not run properly though.

4. There are plenty of products out there that do a better job of treating water contaminated gas than ethanol. Pure, fresh, ethanol added to gas with some water in it is one thing. Ethanol that is added to gas at a local gas refinery weeks in advance and then stored in a less than perfectly sealed gas tank under a gas station for days, weeks or months at a time is a very different set of circumstances than what you are describing. K-100 fuel additive has been around for over 50 years, mostly in the commercial trucking industry. The makers of K-100 must really have the art of selling snake oil down to a science in order to fool (mostly commercial industries) people for that long. If that is the case, maybe they should quit bothering with fuel additives and write books about how to sell people useless products that don't actually work.

5. E-85 does not "corrode" fuel systems because it absorbs water. The real problems with E-85 come from having a fuel system that was never designed to handle that much ethanol. Rubber and plastic components begin to break down quickly if they were not designed for use with E-85. E-85 also has very different burn characteristics and the engine has to be tuned via an ECU designed to run e-85 or manual adjustments via an outside source (a person) tuning the engine. Water and its problems are one possible side effect of E-85, but not the real issue when talking about E-85.

6. Water at the bottom of the gas tank is hardly harmless. Most gas tank's pick up lines are either directly at the bottom or very close to the bottom of gas tanks, in most fuel systems. If there is water at the bottom of a gas tank, the water is usually the very first thing fed into a fuel system and that will cause problems if there is enough water down there.
 
I filled up 3 days ago, both vehicles, no problems at all (except for the $0.20/gallon price increase).

There were a few stations around me that had the pumps shut down for a few days, but they are open now (not sure why, but I know 2 of them had the pump area underwater for at least 12 hours).
 
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