Mancetter Marina doesn't have a diesel pump, but they will sell it to you by the 20 litre can. I envisaged an army-style jerry can with a spout and decided it was worth it, so I got from Amazon a large rectangular funnel designed to help put diesel into tractors, etc. Today Kathryn came across with the cans, and they turned out to be plastic containers without a spout. Tricky!
But all the activity attracted a crowd of neighbours. Anthony (NB William Gladstone next door) got an absorbent mat from the stock they have for their puppy, and then kindly volunteered to do the pouring.
Others stood around offering advice to do with avoiding spillage, cleaning up any that did occur, and alternative methods of transferring the fuel that they knew about. It certainly was harder to do it cleanly than I'd thought it would be.
Getting a fresh container halfway through, Anthony caught with his foot the windlass I'd put down to stop the kneeling mat from blowing away. It dropped straight into the water. Anthony was embarrassed. But since he'd already earned Honourable Mention Of The Day, he was immediately forgiven and, anyway, I recovered it later with my magnet. That was why I'd used a steel windlass, not an aluminium one.
Why fill up with diesel when we're just about to go home for the winter? One good reason is that a full tank acquires less condensation, offering a bit more protection from the dreaded "diesel bug". The other, of course: who knows what the price of diesel is going to be when we are next needing to use some?
If I'd realised the complications, I might just have taken Erin Mae down to Springwood Haven Marina, 40 minutes away, and filled up there.
But then we'd never have had our neighbourhood get-together around Erin Mae's filler cap!
What you needed was a jiggler! It's a transparent plastic hose with a device at one end containing a glass(?) ball. Placing this end in the container, and jiggling it up and down, instigates the flow over and down into the tank, which is where you have inserted the other end. Siphoning starts and transfers the diesel easily, taking less than five minutes. A few pounds from Machine Mart or similar.
ReplyDeleteThanks, John. Afterwards, and in the context of draining the calorifier for winter, I looked up siphons on Amazon, and found a range of devices, including "jigglers". The reviews made me hesitate, as they indicated the important bits might just fall off. But should I ever fill up the tank this way again, I might just invest. Machine Mart sounds a good idea.
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