Imagine its after 7pm at night you’re headed home from work. Imagine you drove and decided to get some gas on the way home. You pull up to the pump island on the right because you see that the pump attendants have cones up around the island on the left. Gas is flowing into your tank and, aside from the astronomical price, all is right with the world. Well, except for that Clang…!Clang…!Clang…! Sound from the island across the way. Its there that you see these [del]Boneheads[/del] pump attendants trying to hammer out dents in one of the fuel-pump door with a Carpenters claw-hammer!!!
“DUDE…!!! Are you Out Of Your OGDamned Mind!? Gas fumes! Metal on Metal! Sparks! Does the word ‘Hindenberg’ ring any bells?”
Imagine just getting a deer-in-headlights stare for about a 10-count until the black-smith wannabe goes back to pounding out metal under the spreading Exxon sign. I paid for my gas as quickly as possible and started up my engine to get the hell out of Dodge. As I was leaving, Hephaestus calls out to me, “Hey, it wasn’t going to explode.”
I called back “If it did, you’d never know.”
This Buds for You, oh Metal-Smith of the Mid-grade. Or maybe just a thimble-sized coffin would do…
When I was in the Army, we used to empty 5 gallon diesel cans into a 55 gallon barrel, along with any “secret” paperwork, to do the “burn and stir.” When doing so, you could easily lean into the barrel, light the corner of some piece of paper, and calmly lean back. One time, someone accidentally filled the diesel can with gasoline, and while you can smell the difference if you pay attention, we didn’t usually pay close attention during this ritual. If you lean into the barrel while lighting it when it’s filled with gas instead of diesel, you won’t be calmly leaning back.
Yes, the fumes are that flammable (and I had the missing eyebrows and forearm hairs to prove it).
Gasoline is funny stuff. The liquid won’t burn, only the vapor. And the vapor has to be in a fairly narrow range of air fuel ratios. But if you get that the vapor in the range then WATCH OUT.
Simple rule, don’t take chances with gasoline.
Industries that regularly work with flammable liquids adhere to a myriad of regulations and precautions because, yes, gasoline (vapor) can be really that flammable.
Everyone else has already chimed in with much better answers to this, but I love having the chance to tell my favorite gasoline story ever.
When we lived in our previous house, we had a dry “well” in the back yard that served as a burn pit. Very nice setup, really- the well was a good few dozen feet deep, lined with stone, and the housing for it was a concrete-and-stone square that measured a good 4’ in each direction… you could put the metal cover over the well and have a nice little fire, or drop stuff down to burn. We were always careful to use diesel, used oil, or kerosene, depending on what we were burning.
One day a pigeon flew into one of our windows, and Mr. Kitty decided to give it a good burial. I was in the house working on some paperwork while he was outside. Next thing I heard was “ka-BOOOOOOM,” and I met Mr. Kitty as he came flying up the back stairs with the most shocked look on his face. :eek:
We have no idea who put gasoline in that container (possibly his son, who was mixing up some chainsaw gas the week before), but the way Mr. Kitty tells it, he dropped the bird’s body into the hole, poured on what he thought was used oil, and readied the ignition source (a lit receipt). He apparently somehow realized as he was dropping the receipt into the hole that something was wrong, which probably saved his life- he’d already started moving back when the well exploded. The housing was blown completely apart, as well as the first few feet of the well itself. We had a decent-sized crater in the yard for a while before we could fix it, and were picking up pieces of concrete and stone from across the yard for weeks.
Writer Michael Pollan told a good story about his battle with woodchucks that were devouring his garden, and how his increasing frustration led him to pour gasoline down the burrow and ignite it.
While this may have seemed like a good idea, fire tends to seek oxygen and a roaring gout of flames came right back out of the hole directly at him.
Some eyebrow singing may have occurred. No harm to the woodchuck.
I’m immediately reminded of the appliance installer who tested for leaks in the gas line going to our new dryer by lighting a match over it. It took everything I had not to flee the garage.
When my parents switched from a wood-burning furnace to natural gas in 1990, their older-than-dirt plumber did the same thing. The theory is that the flame will flicker if there’s a leak, like if you hold a candle up to a leaky window.
When that same plumber and his son came to my house to install new lines, the son said, “Use the soap*, Dad.”. I was eternally grateful.
*Nowadays plumbers use a soap that not only bubbles, it turns color in the presence of methane.
Once, while on a school trip, our teacher accidentally tried to drive off without removing the nozzle from the van. Once we heard the noise it made, we all jumped out and let the station attendant know. He shut off the gas and proceeded to go outside and stand over the puddle, just looking at it. As he was smoking a cigarette. We all took off running a bit farther away to wait, but luckily nothing happened.
A friend of mine had a parlor trick he had picked up in the service – whenever we were around a gas can/pump (mowers, dirtbikes, whatever) he’d ask someone to pour out a stream of gasoline, and would then, to their horror, stick his lit cigarette into said stream. And it would be extinguished. Not a good idea, because as many have noted, he couldn’t be sure the vapor wouldn’t ignite, even if it is true that a smoldering cigarette is (apparently) not hot enough to light liquid gasoline.
But he scared/impressed the Hell out of his audience.
Natural gas doesn’t explode, NG + air is what will burn, the NG inside the pipe is perfectly safe. Your gas cooktop is just a bunch of holes on the end of an open gas line that they set on fire. The fire doesn’t go back down the gas line.
NG is treated with a really smelly chemical, if any significant amount were escaping, you wouldn’t be testing for leaks, you’d be wrinkling your nose and shutting off the gas.
Since you can’t smell the gas, at most there is a tiny amount leaking, and that tiny amount is the only gas in danger of catching flame, all the gas in the pipe has no oxygen to burn with.
Therefore, the biggest danger in testing with a match is to have it burn down to your finger. I still would prefer the soapy water approach.
Similarly with your pump jockey, if there isn’t gasoline pouring all over the ground, or gasoline fumes in a concentration that will water your eyes, what is going to catch fire? Not to mention that I’ve never seen a spark generated by a hammer hitting sheet metal (and I’ve spent a lot of time watching guys do just this at my dad’s auto body shop), maybe if he had a dolly behind it, and was straightining out an edge, but a plain hammer on plain sheet metal, I don’t see it. Even if you get the odd spark, gas pumps are not vats of nitroglycerine just aching to explode. They’re designed to be used by any idiot who can get a drivers license.
Now, the guy who showed me my broken fuel pump by pouring gasoline out of the fuel line while smoking… HE made me nervous.
