I have acces to a bunch of five gallon plastic containers that were used to hold floor wax. My question is this: Are these types of containers (hard white recycled plastic, with soft plastic spout) suitable for kerosene storage?

-- ActionBill (actionbil@aol.com), October 14, 1999

Answers

Aren't containers stamped with a code on the bottom identifying the type of plastic? Could you compare this with the code on gallon kerosene containers? Or.... ask a local kerosene dealer. Or.. would a local dealer provide the containers free.. esp. for larger quantities?

-- Linda (lwmb@psln.com), October 14, 1999.

Play it safe, go to Home Depot and get the REAL thing. Cost about $8 per can. Made by Rubbermaid and say KEROSENE on the container and are the blue color standard. I bought 9 of them over a couple weeks. HD keeps them in the lawnmower area, sometimes you dont see them individually so look for big RUBBERMAID boxes about 3feet by 3feet on the shelves. I had to rip open a box on a high shelf to get them otherwise I wouldnt have seen them.

-- hamster (hamster@mycage.com), October 14, 1999.

call your local 'oil' dealer and check into a used (or possibly new) K tank - about a year and a half ago, I got a 150 gal tank, with a spigot, brought out and set up by them. They came back out recently and topped it off (at prices a little less than the pumps at the local gas station). Maybe also try some mobile home maintenance places, estate auctions, etc. they may also have a line on some 'cheaper' avenues....

-- BH (silentvoice@pobox.com), October 14, 1999.

If y0ou can't get to Home Depot or can;t afford to play it safe, pu thte kerosene in your plastic drums. As some of the other threads on the Y@K Prerp Forum have discussed, kerosene is really stable if not inert and seems to me is anythign but corrosive. I have sloshed it back and froth between coffee cans and old milk jugs for years, while its sold both in 5 gallon tins, 55 gallon steel drums, and in 1-gal plastic containers. My opinion is that anything made to store a liquid is safe for storing kerosene -- even a wax-coated milk carton if necessary.

-- Roch Steinbach (rochsteinbach@excite.com), October 14, 1999.

For our moderators: there are an increasing number of posts to this forum which rightly belong on the Preparation Forum. Since there will be (hopefully!) lots of newbies coming here for late help, is there some way in which to direct them to that forum, to free up this one, which has the "server busy" message increasingly in recent weeks?

Thanks!

-- Elaine Seavey (Gods1sheep@aol.com), October 14, 1999.