These floor drains in a garage are really a dangerous and not well understood thing.
I read the threads about PVC and air and the OH my gosh stuff in one of those threads. To be quite honest with you guys an improperly run floor drain in a garage is a heck of a lot more dangerous than the air issue yet none of you guys realize it. I guess you just don't understand the physics of it.
Another of the odd things is that in a lot of cases you guys will say that it is A OKey Dokey and legal by you to do anything you want. I doubt that, I really do. And I base that upon the chemical physics f the situation.
You know each and every one of you that gasoline is flash flammable and explosive.
You know the most of you that fuel vapors can travel and collect and that you can have a flash fire across the room from an ignition source like a water heater.
Most of you also realize that strange things can happen on a car or a container of solvents, vapors. Tanks leak and rupture. **** happens.
Now where I fear that many of you are failing here is that you are not understanding that there are ways to keep you from dying in the event you walked into a shop with a cigarette in your mouth that had a fuel tank rupture.
A triple basin dilution basin. This is really the only way to contain a fuel spill in a safer way.
When a vapor source leaks it goes into the basin, is stored there and you have to call out a company to evacuate the fuel vapor source in a safe way. Stored as in contained. Contained as in kept from other people, water sources, drinking waters and kept in a way that any of the additional vapors will be let off into a safe area until the pumper comes out.
In a fuel spill situation that leaks into french drain you are now going to have a vapor source under the floor of your shop, that could cause a myriad of different troubles.
If you tie it into a basin that goes through your home, you can vaporize the basin, send vapors into the kitchen and god forbid your wife or yourself smokes or plug in the toaster. Boom.
If you dump fuel into a sewer it travels vaporizing the entire way, leaving a trail of flammable vapors along the street at each vent cover, into each homes vent system and this opens a lot of dire scenarios.
If you dump it onto the surface outside or into a leach field you are spreading contaminates and vapors into your yard or field, again this is not cool, a buddy goes out and has a smoke or you have a dry day and a little static and boom, fields of death.
So you might say well what am I supposed to do? Well unless you want to spend the money for a proper system you just should curb your garage edges and slope the floor so anything goes out the door.
Truth is you can be F'd in a hurry in a fuel spill, you want to be able to control the troubles, there's a reason you see the fire men come out and treat oh just a little spilled fuel as if it was so dangerous, fact is that it is just that dangerous. If you have the misfortune of a fuel spill it is best to if, god forbid you lose your shop at least it is just the shop, not the house, the family and half the neighbor hood.
You may say, Dude it could not happen. Stranger **** has. If you want to understand why all of the water heaters now have a glass door and a sealed burner unit you may want to research it. You should find a story about a guy who was filling his lawn mower full of fuel in his garage on a Sunday morning in not much more than his skivies and flip flops. Well this poor guy had the misfortune of physic not liking him very much, and ...to put it bluntly it kicked his ***. The vapor went into the heater, traveled across the room lit the can and him and everything on fire and burned the holy gosh out of him.
Now you may say gee just that one time what's all the fuss? That is not just the once, it happened a lot of times. And that sort of coincides with all of tis, it happens a lot more than you guys realize and that is why there are laws and codes. And BTW if you don't think you have a code or a law covering this you could be technically correct, however keep in mind that physics and odd stuff really don't give a rats **** about a code. Sometimes good old fashioned common sense and proper practice on your part are the only thing that can keep you safe.
All I ask is that you think about it, apply your common sense knowledge to it, what you know. I'd hate to see a picture of you as a hit on some web site all burned to **** over something as damn stupid as a floor drain.
