There's actually a really good explanation for this.
This is a mixing pump. It mixes ethanol into the fuel. Because the mixing happens before the part of the pump that measures how much is being dispensed, you need at least a few gallons to fully flush things out and get somewhere close to what you're actually buying.
Nobody is going to come arrest you if you buy 2 gallons of gas. But the gas you get me not be the mix you wanted.
1: It’s not.
2: The pump charges a minimum of 4 gallons.
3: The pump dispenses at least four gallons, and won’t shut off before then.
4: A cop watches every time a person fills up.
Personally, #3 would be the most fun, from a distance.
Fucking 15% ethanol now? So they basically just raised the price of gasoline 5%, and reduced the fuel efficiency of everyone's vehicle, without so much as a peep. Where is this?
E15 is a different blend of fuel, it's not at all gas pumps and regular 87/89/91 octane level fuel is still available (because not all cars can use E15 like the sticker says). Sheetz stations sell it in my area around Raleigh, NC.
I would expect it to also be less expensive but they don't show us that information.
I personally wouldn't mind if my fuel mileage goes down if the cost is also proportionally lower.
Also, ethanol has a energy density of roughly 2/3 that of gasoline, so yes e85 would have 5% less energy than gasoline with no ethanol, not e10, which is what I see as the listed price in most places. When doing a price comparison, it should be against e0, not e10 if you are expecting a 5% energy difference.
Would you prefer they ban driving? we simply cannot keep going as we are, things have to change and you can either change your habits alongside it, accept that you have to pay more, or whine as you keep pumping poison into the air and contribute to your own early death from climate change.
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
Sounds like the warning label is about all they will do. Guess it's one of those situations where if you ignore the label or don't read it you might be penalized?
It also gums the fuck out of fuel injectors, and you'll notice a drop in gas mileage Dependant on the blend. Its pretty awful shit. I don't know why the hell it exists.
I think it exists because people have an unreasonable price sensitivity when buying gas. They will drive miles out of their way to save a nickel a gallon. I also think they don't really have a good understanding of mpg factors. I was told by one guy purchasing it that he gets better mileage on it(which we know isn't true)
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
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.
In Canada ours have a sticker that says the amounts are calibrated to a certain temperature (15C I think), so I assumed it took that into account. I try not to think about how much it costs so didn't over analyze it.
Ethanol is wildy bad for the environment and is raising the cost of food.
I read somewhere awhile back that it takes something like 3 gallons of gasoline (through running farm equipment and transportation) to make 4 gallons of ethanol. That coupled with ethanol being less efficient that gasoline and causes more wear and rear on vehicles probably means that if we ditched it altogether we'd probably the same carbon emissions wise.
Also, for every acre of corn raised to go into ethanol, that's one acre not going into feed corn or other food crops so we're effectively raising the cost of food via limiting supply and competition.
The only people that benefit are farmers that recieve substantial subsidies to grow it and government personnel who administer said subsidies and elected officials that campaign on taking money from you the tax payer and funneling it into these programs.
The cost to all of us is diffused, probably no more than a few tens of dollars taken from us via taxes so nobody is gonna go stand up to these people and demand that we end this subsidy. The benefit to them is very focused and large so they have every interest to keep the cash flowing their way. Every interest to take money from all classes of people but most damaging to the poorest of people since those dollars mean more to them than richer peoples.
This wildest part is that you who is reading this right now is probably outraged that this program is in place but the even crazier part is that you can substitute this with practically any and all industries and they are all doing the exact same thing but for the things that you agree with, are perfectly fine with keeping those subsidies flowing. After all, it's only the other people that are greedy. The only real solution is to completely end all federal subsidies but I'm sure you'll disagree and say that XYZ is necessary because it's your special interest.
My RV200's tank only holds 1.7 gallons, and my CH50 will only take one. I guess I'm meant to just dispense the remaining three gallons onto the ground, then...?
Running your bike on E15 may cause your engine to run hot and could possibly damage your bike's catalytic convertor as well as cause crud buildup on your valves and pistons.
No, it's working precisely as intended. There are so many layers of byzantine laws and ordinances in the US on multiple levels -- federal, state, county, municipal -- that anyone who really wants to is guaranteed to be able to find something to harass and/or arrest you for, no matter what. Probable cause can be rendered meaningless by making a humongous array of trivial things technically illegal.
Does your window tint meet the specific requirements for this county? Is your stereo 0.01dB louder than our municipal maximum? Are your license plate and registration sticker acceptably clean? Do your tires have the correct tread depth? Do you have a radar detector installed? Do you have an air freshener hanging from your rearview? Are you carrying your written prescription around with your pills? Is your pocketknife blade too long? Do your cigarettes have the wrong state's tax stamp on them? Did you remember to sign the back of your registration card? Whoopsie doodle, this state passed a law mandating minimum headlight height from the road, too bad your car left the factory out of compliance. Could you step out of the vehicle for me, sir?
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.
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.
As it's a federal regulation, it would need to be the feds pursuing it. It's highly unlikely they'd come after the individual. They would be more likely to pursue the gas station.
You'd be amazed how many people learn the hard way that they first need to head to a separate store to buy a gas container, then head to the gas station. Most places could care less about keeping a container on premises because it is both a rare situation these days, and storage is at a premium in most stores. If you saw the back room or manager's office, you would see the floor-to-ceiling stacks of inventory (usually drinks or tobacco products).
Around here stations have a purpose-built plastic bag that seals after filling up and fits in the car's fuel intake. It holds a few gallons, but I'm not sure how many.
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.
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.)
I've seen pumps that have individual hoses for each octane grade in the US, but they're definitely uncommon, at least where I am, and I believe more prevalent on older pumps. But diesel always has its own hose.
Diesel are often entire separate sections of the gas station.
Most of the pumps in the US have the same hose for 87/89/92 octane pumps that are E10 (10% Ethanol) and if there is a higher ethanol like E15 or E85, they're usually a separate hose.
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 Rageface
(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.
Multiple tanks hooked up to one valve and hose vs. multiple tanks with their own separate valves and hoses.
Obviously, it's a different kind of valve in the first setup to prevent backflow into other lines, but that's probably about the extent of it. With the second setup, you probably need to run a new line and pump for each station for each gas type, compared to just tying the tanks into the one valve and pump per station.
I'm not a plumber or anything, though, so take it with a grain of salt.
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.
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.
You never hit up a Shell station? Majority of them and independents I’ve been to have buttons that are worn through on the octane text for low grade. High octane is usually next most worn
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.
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.
