as others have said, they coat them. i buried mine, and was just wondering why they didn't do this a lot more. i expect the empty tank costs more, but i didn't compare prices when i ordered mine. it certainly was more expensive for permits and time consuming to get the fire dept to come out to inspect and map it for their records.
all you can see is the metal cap over the valves, which are below ground level. i saved in that i didn't have to build a wall around it to hide it, so the cost was pretty much a wash i'd expect.
Tanks designed for burial are coated with a very thick, probably half inch, coating of asphalt. Such coated tanks do not rust. Burying propane tanks has been around at least since I was a kid, for I recall seeing them. I imagine they have this coating thing pretty well figured out by now.
FWIW, they recently dug up some est 80 year old asphalted gas tanks from an abandoned gas station across the street. The tanks were in perfect condition and still contained some probably 30 year old gasoline. No rust inside or out. It seemed such a shame to cut them up and haul them away.
This is correct. The head is the strongest part, as is the weld. I've seen the aftermath of two BLEVEs and seen many more photos. Most opened up at the seam as you say, but one opened away from the seam. In that case, it looked like the fire had been concentrated in that area, undoubtedly weakening the metal.
Maybe, but direct soil contact will rust a tank a lot faster than just being out in the atmosphere. And, braindead lawmakers being what they are, probably can't differentiate between this fuel and other fuel tanks.
Well, it was pretty exciting when one neighbor came over and said "His car is gone, but I think his parents used to live there with him..." For a while, we didn't know if we'd have a recovery situation, or just the fire. Turned out they had moved out years before (he didn't talk to anyone much).
Did I mention top-heavy?
Is that metric, or imperial "for-freaking-ever", though? These details are important. FWIW, the ride there seems pretty damn long too.
I've been told that horses, when they see a dangerous situation, want to run "home". That's bad if "home" is the barn that's on fire.
oh, yeah. You bet. Also all those spray-paint cans in your basement shop? Nice popping. Ammo sounds like firecrackers or popcorn. Underwhelming.
That'll make an impression on you...
Exactly.
Haven't had to deal with that, yet. Been to one where the person didn't get out of the barn, though. 15 years later, I can still picture it. not good.
Yup. Careful with that around here. You'll get angry emails.
Ah, we don't have that option. Although, the medical helicopters are about 30 minutes out either direction which is nice. Again, that's a LONG 30 minutes.
Yeah, sounds like it wouldn't have mattered anyway. You might be surprised how good a "totalled" structure can look.
As usual, EPA. They require disturbing tanks that are not leaking just to say that they've been removed from the ground. If someone decided that something just had to be done as a symbolic gesture, cutting a hole in the tank and filling it with soil would inert the tank and preclude any possibility of a cave-in. But that's not good enough. According to the project manager when I asked this question, the tank has to be dug up, cut up and disposed of and photos submitted to the EPA. Madness.
Even if they've been leaking, it makes no sense to disturb something that has been buried for decades and are not contaminating things. That's what happened to the station adjacent to this one. The station closed in the 60s. Several tanks had leaked but the fuel had not migrated beyond a few feet from the tank as evidenced by core drilling.
They still had to dig up the tanks AND the "contaminated" soil before the property could be sold. It cost over $60k for that meaningless endeavor.
At first, the (electric) hot water heater was suspectd, but once they got that out of the pit and into the lab for analysis, the verdict came back saying that other than fire damage, it appeared to be in perfect working order, with no signs of shorting or other possible fire source.
Second "most popular" suspect: Brand new (Less than 6 weeks) HVAC system, but that was basically untestable - It pretty much turned into a melted puddle of aluminum and copper with embedded "other widgets" in the bottom of an almost unrecognizably warped and twisted steel box.
Verbiage in the "final determination" box of the report: unknown cause/accidental.
Oh, I agree, but that's not direct soil contact then. You wouldn't want to bury a stanard propane tank, though.
Asphalt goes back a few thousand years, so probably, yup.
And yet, no doubt, by some law it was required, am I right? I mean, why actually test for real problems when you can just pass sweeping generalizations and all that?
Ugh... We were in the same situation here - After calling 911, I went back down to the house (I live in an apartment hooked to a separate garage/shop several hundred feet away from the house) and managed to call two of the three dogs to the master bedroom sliding doors and drag them out, but couldn't get a visual or audible confirmation that the house was clear. Third dog didn't answer to calls, and the smoke layer was low enough that I couldn't get an angle to see whether there was anybody in the bed. I was trying to get a visual when the hallway ceiling started falling in flaming chunks and fire started blasting through the bedroom door. Being dressed in a nothing but a pair of fruit-of-the-looms and bluejeans, I decided that discretion was probably the better part of valor, slid the door shut with a muttered "I hope they're all out...", and dragged the dogs further away.
It was nervous when the first truck got here, since I couldn't give a definite "somebody/nobody inside" response. It wasn't until about 10-15 minutes after the first truck arrived that I was finally able to raise the owner by cell-phone - Not for lack of trying - Kept getting that "The customer you have dialed is unavailable" message. Once things got calmer, I found out why... He was in the cell-phone place at the mall buying a new one, getting his old one turned off, and the new one programmed. His very first incoming call on that phone was me with the news that the house was burning - Helluva "phone-warming gift". Once I raised him, was able to verify that nobody was supposed to be in the house other than the dogs, since he, his wife, her father, and their weekend houseguest were all in the next city over. For some strange reason, the boys in yellow suddenly seemed a *WHOLE LOT* happier when that news was relayed. I can't possibly imagine why... :)
Well, according to my understanding, it's similar to "forty below" - It's one of those special values they call a "dimensionless number" (or, if you're a Fred Pohl fan, a "Gosh number" - See his "Annals of the Heechee" series for a full discussion) - You can say the number, and it doesn't matter what scale you use: It's all the same. 40 below Farenheit, 40 below Celsius - Same thing.
I don't doubt that even a little - "Am I gonna buy it this time? Is Joe over there across the aisle? How many dead bodies are we going to have to pull out of this one", and similar things have to be going through your mind on a constant loop for the whole ride.
That's more than an "I've been told" - It's absolute fact. Horse response to a threat of any kind that can be run away from is "Go to safety, at high speed." The downside of that is that it's completely predictable what's going to happen in a barn fire: You're going to find the horse that managed to get back in dead in his/her own usual stall - A place where it's "safe" according to their little pea-brains - even if there are burning timbers falling into it.
Yeah, the ammo (a mix totalling several hundred rounds of 9mm, .38, ..30-06, .22, and 12 gauge) was far less than impressive. Sounded about like the usual popping and crackling of a typical campfire. The canned stuff was *MUCH* more impressive, sounding a lot like mortar rounds being launched. (and behaving much the same, overall)
In more ways than one!
Being the misanthropic @$$hole I am, I'd be more inclined to have nightmares/flashbacks/PTSD/whatever you want to call it over the horses that didn't make it out than a human that didn't. But that's just my (admittedly somewhat "bent") personality.
I honestly don't think I've ever thought that on the way to a fire. We're pretty careful not to take stupid chances. If there's nobody in there to rescue, we're not going to risk lives to save a building. Life first, _then_ property.
That, yes. "Hope they all got out".
Not really, it's pretty busy getting all your stuff together,testing out the air mask, getting the "nomex" (actually PBI these days) hood to fit right around the mask, checking the guy next to you, getting radios together and on and in that damn pocket on your sleeve where they don't fit right, and so on. But once that's done and you're slowly warming in the gear, then the ride gets long.
For a smart animal, they can sure be dumb some times.
Well, I'm pretty...what's the word...gruff? But, that one still bothered me for quite a while. For a couple years, if I'd singe some hair or something the flashback to the scene was intense and detailed. Only good thing about that whole deal is that the coronor's report showed he died pretty much immediately, soon as he stood up and got a lungs-ful of fire.
If I had a nickel for every time I've either heard or said that...
Yeah, that's what we keep telling ourselves here over the dog that didn't make it out. She was last seen sleeping under the dining room table, and that area of the house was fully involved (as in flames roaring out the broken dining room windows, the ceiling collapsing in flaming chunks, and the roof above it starting to droop) by the time I discovered the place was burning. Chances are high that her end was pretty quick, if she even woke up at all. She was a little 10-15 pound-ish "Benji" style mutt. No trace of her was found during the cleanup operation, but that doesn't surprise me a lot - a roughly 50 by
40 foot house and everything in it (and believe me, there was a
*SHITLOAD* of "everything" in it, including a complete woodshop setup, brand new, still in the boxes 'cause they didn't have room to get it unpacked and set up until after Dad and his stuff got moved into the new house that was about 10 days from completion) was reduced to about six of those 10 yard dumpsters worth of charred rubble.
On the "plus" side of the ledger, they didn't find out until the next day when I recovered the fire-safe (which, by some miracle, landed "door down" when it fell through the floor into the basement - slamming it fuly shut from its usual "sitting there with the door cracked for easy access" state) and the insurance policy was located, but they were grandfathered in with a "full replacement cost" rider on the policy. Which we found out a couple days later is no longer sold at all since the Oakland firestorm, but since the policy was written prior to that, and was paid up to date on the IC's books, it was by law still in effect for them. They knew they had insurance, but they had completely forgotten about the rider, so it came as at least a hint at a silver lining in a rather large cloud.
As I sit here and type this, I've got another window open in the background - That window is output from a homebrewed video system that's creating "time-lapse" movies of the rebuilding that started back toward the first of the month - By the calendar, three days short of being two years to the day from when it burned.
As for progress, it's been fast, once things got started. From the camera's viewpoint, it's currently a house that's had the siding and shingles peeled off, and all the doors and windows torn out - All of the exterior framing, along with much of the interior, plus the roof are in place, with the outside walls sheathed and awaiting inspection/insulation/siding/finishing, and the roof about 90% decked. The plumber started building the drains and such yesterday, with an electrician expected to show up sometime next week to start wiring, closely followed by the HVAC guys. I imagine the roofers will be on scene and hammering at about the same time the "inside" guys are doing their thing next week.
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