Gas blew up in my face today

[Luke'sScreenName]

So did the burn pile light?

 

[Dutch445]

As an aside, anyone have any experience with riding an area of faux bamboo? I've got this invasive thing growing like CRAZY and would like to nuke it into oblivion!

And YES, I plan to be WAY more careful, James. (I can be adopted, for a price, a pretty high one, BUT I'm willing to do yard work, but only with a Kioti with an Interstate battery in it!?)

so sorry to hear about the burns, hoping for fast recovery for you with no complications... a good friend of mine did the same thing a couple years ago,
got his legs real bad (flip flops and shorts, standing in the fumes)

as far as the japanese bamboo, or knotweed, it's bad around here in places.
my last house had a bunch of it and i was reading up on getting rid of it.
there is some success with cutting the chutes and dumping roundup down into
each chute, a pain, but that stuff is a rhizome that runs underground,
and pulling doesn't always get all of it so it pops right up again.
if i remember right, the right time was once the plant flowered for the roundup.
i have seen people cover with black plastic, after excavating as much out of the
ground as they could, then cover with plastic for a summer.
i really think if you just mow and mow and mow it it will give up,
but not sure
good luck with everything, sounds like you have your hands full!

 

[Oldpath05]

Great story CM, to bad it wasn't on video. It's a good reminder of how flammable gas is and how things can go so wrong so fast. Glad I'm not the only one that makes mistakes. At least you didn't you didn't end up on Mars, hope you heal up good!

 

[Oldpath05]

So did the burn pile light?

If he didn't, I might have to bring over 10 sticks of dynamite and..............

 

[gwstang]

Wow, glad you are going to be ok. Sounds like being a diabetic, you need to go on to your Dr. so he can evaluate you and take care of the problem areas. The last time (Last year) that I used gas to ignite a very large burn pile. I put some old gas, maybe 2 gallons, on the pile and then poured back about 25' or so and stuck the grill starter to it. It was a hot day and the pile was very dry and whoosh, it went sky high. I decided that would be the last time for gasoline. I picked up one of those harbor freight propane torches that attaches to the tank. This one has the extra setting for super duper jet flame. Just squeeze the handle a little more and it shoots fire out about 5' and very hot. That is the tool for pile burning now.

 

[Coyote machine]

No, problem, I am pretty sure my little Kioti, has an interstate battery.!

OK, so when are you signing the adoption papers?!
I'll need pics of the battery and the battery voltage with a timestamp before the adoption can proceed; not that I'm not trusting it's an Interstate, but one can't be too careful these days...:laughing:

Wild Parsnip, we got that too. Grows like a weed, oh wait it IS a weed, and can give nasty burns/rashes for those who aren't familiar with it's 'features'....Sort looks like Goldenrod, but it's NOT and it is NASTY! :thumbsdown:

I was thinking about people who used to tell me it was possible to put out a match in gasoline. Phew, not a chance I'd ever try that. Scary to think what could go wrong, especially if it was some kids fooling or daring each other.

Yes it lit Luke - you did read about how it exploded in my face, right? It went from zero to 150 in a millisecond, and burned all day and into the night. I had a couple of years of brush stacked and compressed from branches to entire tree trunks 40' feet long. Once it was on, it was not stopping.

See my avatar for a similar burn, the prior one, when I was using the DK-40 to push the logs into that fire. Burned off all the tie-rod boots and steering rod boots too. $200 each for the new steering rod cylinders with boots. Boots not available without the rod. Not a chance I'm spending that kind of dough to get some stupid rubber boots! I'm going to find a solution, or make up my own boots from bike inner tubes or similar when I find time.

Meantime I have a literal forest of 'bamboo' growing alongside and now into my main ditch which the excavator just repaired; as I mentioned I had been focussed on that work beginning today. He got his SuperDuty dump truck stuck crossing back across one of my fields with the debris he had just cleaned out of the ditch and sections of my field's lawn. Had to pull it out with his Cat 320D, I believe is its model #. That was fun; had to dump all the spoils out in the field, I got to 'drive' forward as he pulled the truck with the mini-ex bucket and short chain to the bumper. Guess that cost is on my bill too...

But the faux bamboo is sky high and dense as any jungle crop! IT has rhizomes everywhere, and I too have read about Round-upping the tubes right after cutting, but they are in the ground too, and you have to get every single one to kill it dead. Where's DDT when I need it!!
I'm gonna try to see what I can do to maybe burn it too; with a propane torch, possibly, once I have experience possibly using one on driveway weeds and similar. I just don't know if it's possible to get this stuff eradicated since I made the mistake of cutting it previously and it has come back ten times as dense now....
But, I have to at least try something; I keep getting a demand from the wife unit to do something. I'm NOT moving though- you know, cold dead fingers and all.ullinghair:
I'll go down in flames, no wait, wrong analogy for my predicament....

And W? Where's he when.. oh well, that's a different forum...

 

[turnkey4099]

A burning match, I don't believe. Something about that open flame and the unavoidable vapor above the liquid. Maybe if the temperature were so low that the vapor pressure of the gasoline was tiny?

But back when, a couple of good-ole-boy mechanics that worked at my dad's tire store used to shock and amaze any "audience" they could gather by extinguishing their cigarettes in the open metal coffee cans of gasoline we kept around for cleaning brake parts. I don't ever recall the gas igniting. And they were otherwise actually pretty intelligent guys!

The way I heard it way back in olden times was that 2 conditions were necessary:

1. a cold day
2. Container filled completely to the brim (no place for vapors to accumulate in the container).

I never tried it.

 

[k0ua]

I have heard stories of the GI's during the battle of the bulge using 55 gallon drums with some gasoline poured in the bottom then lighting it and using the low flames to keep warm. BUT I think some of the temperatures during that campaign were like -25F or colder. I don't know if the stories are true, but the extreme cold could help keep vaporization suppressed.

But anything like normal temps, and you pour out a quantity of gasoline and then wait a while for vapors to spread while you hunt up the matches, well you have made a bomb.

I still remember a experiment in Chemistry class when I was in high school, where the instructor took one drop of gasoline and put it into a 2 lb coffee can and put the plastic lid on it and shook it and waited for a while. The can had a little hole in it, to which he applied a lighted match. There was a very loud bang and the plastic lid blew off violently and hit the ceiling. We all jumped and thought it was grand.
He said "now this was one tiny drop of gasoline, imagine what a large quantity would do."

 

[teejk]

Great story CM, to bad it wasn't on video. It's a good reminder of how flammable gas is and how things can go so wrong so fast. Glad I'm not the only one that makes mistakes. At least you didn't you didn't end up on Mars, hope you heal up good!

Yup..."stuff" happens in a flash (literally). Results can be bad...knew a guy that did something similar wearing a nylon wind-breaker. It melted the nylon to his skin (where it adhered)...was a pretty bad situation. Also knew a guy we hired to defrost our walk-in freezer for repairs. Was wearing the old "double-knit" pants and got too close to the salamander heater. That could have been bad but he was lucky. All he lost was his pants.

 

[mapper]

Have a friend who likes to light his burn piles with gasoline, our kids were friends. We were over at their house and one of the kitchen light fixtures was missing and there were a couple of ragged holes in the ceiling were it had been mounted. Asked what happened to it his wife replied that the last pile he had lit about fifty feet from the house had ignited with such an explosion it had knocked the light fixture off of the ceiling!
I don't know if he is still doing it:laughing: