As for the part of you being the only one to do something like that, you aren't. Last summer I rebuilt a carburetor for a chain saw and fired it up. Without thinking I gave it a couple quick revs and punched the end of the bar through the side of the plastic can. Doesn't stand up to a sharp chain for any length of time.
I'd move the snow with a shovel just to be safe, but it's already diluted quite a bit mixing with the snow. But anyone living near the Cleveland area can tell you that water will burn if polluted enough. Remember the river that caught fire? Gas is nothing to play games with but it would take a pretty good spark to ignite it now. If you have a plastic dust pan you might use that to scoop up the left over. If you are really worried, you can dump a bag of kitty litter over the area and wait for it to soak up the gas which it will do. ----- Original Message ----- From: robert moore To: Blind Handyman Sent: Friday, December 07, 2007 1:10 PM Subject: [BlindHandyMan] spilled gasoline To make a short story long I went out and dug out my snow blower and tried to start it and it would not start so I added some new gas. There was some in the tank but not much. I hooked up the electric start and after a while I gave up and went into the house. Well wen I went out to try it again I forgot that I had left the gas tank on the ground and once I got it started I began to clear some snow with it. Low and behold I found the gas can with the snow blower. It was junping around and then I started smelling gas and that is when I remembered the gas can. It is plastic. The two good things are that I did not blow myself up and the other good thing is that I cut into the back side instead of the front so I think I only lost maybe a quart to a half gallon. There is still a fair amounht in the can which I will use to top off the tank and probably put the rest in the car. My question is assuming I spilled say a half gallon on the ground in a pile of snow. How long do you think it might take for it to evaporate to the point that it would be safe to use the snow blower in that area? Also I wonder if I should just use the shovel to move that snow out of that spot. Am I really the only one that does that kind of dumb stuff. [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
