My wife uses diesel on a fence row to kill weeds. She uses a pump sprayer that works by pressure. Is this dangerous?
My father did the same. Diesel is a very effective weed killer.
Its much safer to handle then gasoline.
if you mean a hand pump sprayer, it won’t explode or catch on fire. it might cause some of the sprayer parts to deteriorate. depends on how and where you store the diesel may be a fire hazard.
using a glyphosate spray is very effective. not toxic to people or a hazard to things that aren’t plants.
No. Diesel is a combustible liquid not a flammable liquid like gasoline. This just means the flash point is much higher and the liquid fuel or its fumes won’t burst into flames upon contact with an ignition source. You can actually throw a lit match into a puddle of diesel and the match will go out when it hits the liquid. Do NOT try this with a flammable liquid! Diesel fuel will burn quite readily once you get it going, it just takes a lot more to get it going.
So spraying it on weeds in a garden sprayer shouldn’t pose a great risk. That being said, environmentally wise, there are a lot better products to spray on weeds that are much more effective and do less damage to the water tables.
We used diesel in the pump sprayer as a release agent for plywood concrete forms…just sprayed it on the inside of the wood. We used muriatic acid to kill weeds.
Atomizing diesel fuel makes it flammable. However it will take a very hot flame or spark to ignite it, not something likely to be encountered while spraying a fence. If you look at the igniter for an oil furnace you’ll see it’s huge and emits huge sparks produced through with a high voltage transformer. It probably can’t sustain a flame in the open air either. It may illegal to spray it in some areas, a diesel fuel spill on the road is considered toxic waste around here, and inground heating oil tanks aren’t allowed because of potential leaks.