Anyone use a battery operated transfer pump?

[Jerry/MT]

We had a setup like this for lubricating oils at the shop where I once worked... Fire Marshal wrote us up because the gravity flow could feed a fire.

Boss had to buy 12 pumps... one for each 55 gallon drum.

If it had been a metal valve you might have gotten it by the fire marshall. The plastic would melt in a fire and release the all fuel.

 

[ultrarunner]

Why not just use the same pump for all 12 drums?

There were a variety of oils... lubricating, hydraulic, cutting and for rust proofing at the machine shop...

The boss had built a very nice steel rack with just the right angle so all the drums were easy to empty... had been that way since the 50's and each drum had a bronze spigot with a slide drip cap on a pivot.

One day the new Fire Marshall came in to look the place over... all was in order, it was a very clean shop. Then he went to the loading dock and saw the Drums... wrote us up and we had 7 days to correct... the Fire Marshal returned and we were fined something like a $100 a day for non-compliance... didn't matter the set-up had passed for 40 years...

Years later... there was a huge fire there... I lost everything in my tool boxes... they boss let me come in and use the equipment after I had left to work at the local hospital.

The fire was so hot the the aluminum covers on the lathes, mills, etc melted and the overhead crane looked like spaghetti...

Didn't seem to matter whether the drums were gravity of pump... the shop was a complete loss....