Finally completed a long-running prepper job on the north side of the garage. I got the barrels from an eBay seller down in Commerce City 17 years ago. Fuel storage is a high priority due to cold winter temps and related aquatic life support issues around here. Reliance on the power grid and natural gas makes home heating a single point of failure without a backup heat source. Old school wick-style kerosene oil burners are great, and their fuel supply was properly established a couple years ago.
Then I heard about these diesel heaters and decided to give them a go. We already had the hardest part of that project completed by the people who built the house. The second barrel sat unused all these years, while the first gradually filled with waste motor oil (WMO). I put a hand pump on the 2nd after getting it filled for the first time yesterday, now holding up to 55 gallons of diesel for the Webastos.
Not sure why I decided to do a tap-and-drain on the first one, but the hand pump seems to work quite well. Probably a cost saving measure at the time. It should be enough hydrocarbons to get us through any winter utility interruption, regardless of how long it lasts, if (big if) I can get the Webastos running on a decent WMO/diesel blend. The diesel alone would keep them running for up to a month, depending on their batteries.
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40-gallon auxiliary tank under the truck toolbox makes re-supply fairly trivial. It’s a fully-independent dual-tank setup. Electric pump offloads the aux tank with a valve flip.