Found it. Since the gas goes through the same hose as the other blends, if you’re buying gas you need to get at least 4 gallons so the previous gas flushes out what was left in the hose from the previous sale, and fills enough of the container that the blend is primarily what you selected.
If you buy E15 and fill your tanks, then the next guy buys E10 and only gets 1 gallon, they might end up with a higher ethanol mix than intended, and if they use that on a small motor, like a chainsaw, it could ruin the seals.
I’m in Europe and I have never in my life seen a gas station that dispenses every fuel through just one hose.
Every fuel has its own hose and “pistol”. Each “pump” has two or three or four hoses.
Same though I do recall seeing pumps with multiple hoses for each grade a lot more frequently back in the '90s and '00s.
In the US only diesel gets its own pump, at least in my experience
Yeah I always thought so too and then I ran into pumps like this in North Platte, Nebraska last June.
https://lemmy.today/pictrs/image/ab6bd220-9b30-47e6-aab6-dbc24ad683c3.jpeg
Edit: I couldn’t fuel up at that pump as my car requires 92+ Octane.
Here’s a pretty typical american pump: https://www.alamy.com/stock-photo-shell-station-gas-pump-135764267.html You can select diesel with the green button, which comes out of the green handled hose on the left, but any other option for regular gas (87/89/93 in that picture) comes out of the right hose.
(US) I’ve been to gas stations in big cities, small towns, little collections of buildings that have no official name but they have a dollar general and a gas station, etc…
I’ve seen several kinds.
Single hose to dispense 87-93 (“normal”) gasoline, and one for diesel
One hose for normal gas, one for diesel, and one for high-ethanol
One for all gasoline types and one for diesel
One super fancy stainless-steel-clad gas station that looked like something from retrofuturism had 5 hoses, one each for 87,90,93, e15, diesel, and the farthest end pump had a line for kerosine.
Never seen a combined gas and diesel hose though.
In America drastically different fuels like E85 and Diesel are dispensed with different hoses as mixing those with normal gasoline or vice versa in the wrong system could cause damage. But when it comes to different grades of just gasoline it’s all the same hose. E10 or E15 are pretty much standard in many parts of the Country of Corn (USA) so they are the primary form of gasoline available for normal cars.
Every fuel has its own hose and “pistol”. Each “pump” has two or three or four hoses.
While those do exist in the States too, a single hose and “pistol” is used for all grades of gasoline and the operator presses a button to select their grade of fuel. The only time there is a guaranteed separate is between desil and gasoline:
The button leads to some interesting minor social problems. The expectation is that the use uses their hand or fingers to press the button, but the buttons are usually disgustingly dirty, so that lead many to using the tip of the “pistol” to smack the grade of gasoline which may put a drop or two of gasoline on the button. So those that come next and use their hands end up smelling like gasoline.
No longer interacting with public gas pumps is one minor joy of driving an EV.
i’m gonna be real with you buddy i have never seen a “disgustingly dirty” fuel button so I think the people in your area just grody. no offense to present company.
I’m in Australia and it’s on the pumps—like little manufacturer stamps that don’t seem to be aftermarket labels. Most people wouldn’t notice it and those that do wouldn’t understand what it means.
It’s generally a tiny label like “Minimum 5L” or something, near the nozzle, or on/below the meters.
I’m not from the US so my biggest surprise here is that you don’t get separate hoses for each grade.
Imagine getting Diesel in Germany. “Sorry, that was actually 15 liters of regular gas. ¯_(ツ)_/¯”
Edit: Ok, it’s not as bad as I imagined, since this picture seems to be about E15/E10, not diesel/regular.
Thanks for the explanation! I wonder what they would do if they caught someone dispensing only 3 gallons.
Probably nothing. I guess it’s possible if you kept switching back and forth between pumping a gallon of premium and a gallon of regular on different pumps to try to steal a few dollars of higher grade, they can use it to give you a ticket, but I’m pretty sure they won’t really care if you were just topping off a tank of gas with 3 gallons before a road trip.
I honestly don’t know what one does if one runs out of gas down the road from a gas station and doesn’t want to call AAA or similar. I assume that gas stations must keep a jerrycan or similar around that they’ll let someone take with a deposit.
I definitely wouldn’t want to be lugging more gallons by hand than would be necessary to get my car to the gas station.
I didn’t know this before and it adds credence to my feeling that it’s better to let my tank get below 1/4 full before filling it up, rather than continually topping it up.
The vast majority of cars run fine on 87 octane. If that’s what you’re using, then it really doesn’t matter if there is some 89 or 92 in the hose.
Depends how much, but you’re right.
Lower octane that puts in higher octane aren’t burning the fuel because higher octane needs a hotter spark to burn it all so you’re essentially wasting money or slowly killing your catalytic converter by putting in a higher octane than what your car is meant to use.
On the flip side, lower octane in a car that requires higher means the gas ignites quicker which will cause knocking and can damage the engine.
There’s probably more to it than this, but that is what I was always taught.
I fill up when I hit 1/4 tank as well. Don’t wait for it to go below though, as it can be bad for the engine with deposits and other stuff in the tank.
I would hope your car has a fuel filter installed that would never let deposits get to the injectors. (Or carb on the off chance you drive one of the last ones on the road.)
How fucking big are American canisters? In Germany the regular size is 5l, [Edit: just shy of a bit more than] one gallon.
5l, just shy of one gallon.
5L can’t be shy of a gallon. 4L is more than a gallon.
checks
Yeah, a gallon is 3.7854118 L.
Oh…wait. You’re in Europe. I bet that you’re thinking of imperial gallons.
checks
That’s about 4.5 L. Still not the case even with imperial gallons.
When people are talking about gallons in the US, they won’t be using imperial gallons. They’re using the US gallon.
Well, I just typed “1 gallon in liters” into google and took the first number, because I couldn’t be bothered to deal with your system of measurement more than necessary. My point stands regardless of the exact volume of one gallon.
OF COURSE THERE IS MORE THAN ONE DEFINITION OF GALLON
Portable US gas tanks are typically 1, 2, or 5 gallon.
I usually just grab a 5 gallon (about 20L) can to fill up my lawn mower, throw some fuel stabilizer in there, and then I don’t have to go back to the gas station for a long time.
These signs also exist in the Netherlands, and the reason is because pumps are calibrated to a certain accuracy (say, 1%, for convenience).
But in the real world, you can get a lot of variation from temperature, to how long it’s been since a pump was used, to how full the underground tank is. They all made a difference, mostly at the start and end of pumping.
So you get a law in percentages, and you get a real world deviation in volume. Obviously, if your pump is short 50ml on 1 liter, you’re off by 5% and breaking the law. But of you slap a sticker on, telling everyone they “must” get 5 liters, you’re off 50ml on 5L, a perfect 1% deviation and entirely within the limit.
But 8 gallon is BIG volume, damn.
What happens if you try to fuel a vehicle with a tank smaller than 5 gallons, for example a typical small motorbike?
Just spray the rest on your car, the ground, or whatever. It’s like having fun with the water hose!
I saw a guy filling a Home Depot bucket at the Arco earlier today. Now I’m wondering if it’s because of something like this.
Does this pump also dispense marked fuels through the same hose?
In my province of residence gas stations near farming communities often sell “marked fuel” (fuel with an added red dye in it) that are taxed less, and which are intended for farming machinery, road work equipment, boats, and other non-highway use only. If you’re caught with red-dyed fuel being used for any other purpose you can be charged with an offence, and levied fines or other penalties.
If you dispense a small amount of regular gasoline after another purchaser had bought marked gasoline, the dye in the fuel remaining in the lines likely isn’t diluted enough to tell the difference — and you could (hypothetically) then be charged with possessing marked fuel without the proper paperwork.
(Anywhere I’ve ever seen marked fuels sold usually has a separate hose for the marked fuel to be dispensed from to prevent this from happening — but I don’t know your gas station or where you live, so maybe they rely on dilution rather than separation to differentiate?)
The rural area i live in has pumps thst give non-ethanol fuel but is not dyed and costs more than the e85 they sell. No placards anywhere stating any federal fueling minimums either. I routinely fill a 2 gallon tank of nonethanol for my old yard equipment and have never had an issue
how often do the police pull people over to check their fuel color though?
It is not uncommon for semi trucks and other heavy haul vehicles to be checked. They can frequently hold several hundred gallons of fuel. So there’s a real cost saving using off-road diesel. Though if I remember correctly fine is $10,000 for the first offense so that wipes out your savings pretty quickly.
I can’t say for Canada but in the USA I have never seen or heard of off-road gasoline. And I worked enough farms and ranches that at least one of them would have been using it if it existed. So I highly doubt this is an off road tax reason.
Edit - it seems some people maybe thinking I am talking about off road diesel. I am not, I am specifically referring to only unleaded gasoline.
I talked to a farmer in Kansas (near Colby, iirc) who had his own gas pump for farm/off-road use only, so it does exist here. Probably only found on pretty big farms though.
Just curious are you sure that was gasoline and not off-road diesel? Off-road diesel is very common and almost all farm equipment is diesel.
I know you weren’t directly questioning my assertion, but in case anyone else happens to think I’m just blowing smoke: Coloured Fuel | DriveSmart BC.
No, it exists in the States. I used to be a truck driver, and we used marked fuel in our refrigerator units all the time since those engines are not powering a highway vehicle.
Really where? I’ve straight up asked farm fuel delivery services and they said it was not something they could provide. Interesting, I wonder if they were being lazy or it has to do with state taxes or what.
Edit - your reefers weren’t diesel? Most of the reefers I’ve ever seen had those little three-cylinder Perkins in them. But I’ve never worked as a trucker so I wouldn’t know for sure.
Thank you for sharing the link. Here’s the relevant bit from the article:
Most gas stations don’t want to install new tanks just for E15. Instead, they’re installing blender pumps, which mix the ethanol and gasoline together in the right proportion depending on which one you want. But there’s a problem: if you pump E15 into your car, about a third of a gallon remains in the fueling hose when you’re done. If someone comes along, switches to E10, and buys a single gallon for their lawnmower, they’ll get a third of a gallon of E15 and two-thirds of a gallon of E10. That comes to about 11.7% ethanol, and that might be enough to set your lawnmower on fire.
So the EPA produced a new rule: if you sell E15, you have to require your customers to buy at least four gallons of gas regardless of what blend they’re buying. That’s a big enough purchase that the residual fuel in the hose is too small to matter
So… what are they gonna do if you don’t fuel enough? Is it just up to God to not let someone else fuck up their equipment after you’ve fueled up?
and that might be enough to set your lawnmower on fire.
Ethanol burns hotter?
No. It does degrade some fuel system components on fuel systems not made for it.
Except the warning is on the e15 and not the standard gas.
So it doesn’t matter if I buy 1, 2, 20 gallons of e15… As an e15 buyer I get the chance that it’s more gas than ethanol.
The warning of 4 gallons needs to be applied to the non-ethanol blend gasolines, as those are the ones at risk!
Buying E10 fuel (a mixture that contains 10 percent ethanol) from a hose that also supplies E15 fuel (a mixture that contains 15 percent ethanol) must buy at least four gallons to protect customers following behind. Ethanol is hard on engines and less efficient than regular gasoline. E15 can even cause engine failure in smaller or older engines. So if you’re using a blender pump to buy E10 that sells both E15 and E10, the residual amount of E15 left in the hose from the previous customer could cause significant damage to those smaller and older engines—unless you purchase at least 4 gallons.
Hold the fuck up.
Customer A buys 10 gallons of E15.
Customer B buys 1 gallon of E10 from the same pump.
Customer C buys 1 gallon of E10 from the same pump and puts it in his chainsaw. If that gallon ruins Customer C’s chainsaw, it’s legally Customer B’s fault? What the fuck?
Forcing B to buy more gas than he might want, to protect the customer after him, because of the customer that came before him, is some horseshit.
Why is it bad to have rules which prevent harm to everyone?
Nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything. You ever see a 2oz bottle of Coke?
Nobody is forcing anyone to buy anything.
In the given example, is the gas station not forcing Customer B to purchase more gas than they may want or need? What if I have a chainsaw with a 1 gallon fuel tank? Now I need to not only buy more gas than I can use, but a container to safely store it in. (It’s also illegal to dispense gasoline to/from an unauthorized container!) Now if I use my chainsaw once or twice a year, I also get to dump out that extra gasoline because it’s gone bad by the time I need to use it again.
That doesn’t prevent harm to everyone it just allows gas stations to use a single pump and shift the liability onto consumers.
That’s a pretty stupid comparison. These aren’t prepackaged containers, and that’s a pretty key part of the terrible point you were trying to make.
This seems like it’s flipped around backwards. The picture says you have to pump more than 4 gallons if you are getting E15, but the explanation seems to explain why someone pumping E10 would want to pump more than 4 gallons.
I bet the real reason is that someone could pump a couple of gallons of cheaper E15, knowing they’d actually receive E10, leaving the next person to actually get that gas.
Why force companies to buy pumps that blend when you can force all liability onto the customer?
Gas stations can get away buying cheap blending pumps and if it breaks someone’s older car just shrug and say it must have been the previous customer’s fault, we’re not liable.
It’s probably administrative law associated with DOT regulations. So yes it is a law but not quite in the same way you think of when Congress passes a law. Instead Congress passed a law that said DOT we give this agency the power to regulate these specific things. Go create a working committee and create some regulation. Administrative law is a bit more like civil law than criminal law. In general violation is just fine and they are handled by administrative law courts. Part of what makes them so different is they do not fall under the justice department they are contained within whichever agency has jurisdiction over that area of regulation. They’ve been affirmed to be functionally the same as federal courts, but can only sanction the guilty party in the exact manner the regulation says. Otherwise when the case is concluded and a party is found guilty is then referred to a federal court for sanctions.
