OK! It's #EarthDay for a bit longer so I'm going to do a short thread about why you ABSOLUTELY SHOULD NOT stockpile crude oil in your backyard swimming pool. <1/ >
This week has seen some unprecedented drops in oil and by proxy, gasoline. Let's ignore the whole refining process for a bit and just look at one extremely idiotic response to this generational low: regular people purchasing crude oil and storing on personal properties. <2/ >
Take that one step further, what's the largest reciprocal on many people's properties? The swimming pool! Let's be generous here and suggest that if one *did* get a hold of crude oil barrels they would place the barrels, not the oil directly, into the pool. <3/ >
Ok, so our savvy suburbanite now technically has secondary containment for their barrels. But, given that our Average Joe has no idea how to care for 55 gallon steel drums, let's assume there is no further protection from the elements. <4/ >
Give the drums 6mo-1 year and they will assuredly start to corrode. Crude oil is not just the oil itself, it is often (depending on deposit) saturated with sulfur which can fairly easily convert to sufuric acid given the right environmental conditions. Acid erodes metal. <5/ >
As we approach October and the contents of the barrels are starting to leak. Given that you haven't used your pool all summer (your kids aren't pleased) your regular pool maintenance has gotten pushed back and a crack develops in the pool bed. <6/ >
Let's skim over the details but the obvious bit is where crude oil leaks directly into the substrate of your pool. Given that pools are not double-lined like gas tanks there is no further containment so the oil (now we call it free product) migrates directly into the soil. <7/ >
We start to get free product moving outward, towards your house and downward, due to gravity. Here comes some fall rain and BAM the free product is now in your water table. The horizontal migration is under your house. <8/ >
The horizontally migrated free product starts to break down, due to the helpful microflora in your garden bed, an inadvertent bioremediation. However the breakdown products they make include benzene, a known carcinogen. Everyone living in your house gets cancer w/in 10 yrs. <9/ >
However you don't know that yet, you're currently 2 yrs post-Quarantine panick-buying crude oil and you manage to sell the barrels to a refinery. They mention the corrosion and you shrug because how were you supposed to know? <10/ >
Next, you plan to sell your house. (Again, before the cancer sets in.) It so happens that your land is sought after by a big real estate developer, who want to pay LOTS of money for your plot. <11/ >
Unfortunately this developer sends someone like me, who is very good at my job, to poke holes in the ground and I discover the free product and the benzene. Dev calls off deal and you're left to succumb to your cancer in your house. The end. Don't fill your pool with crude oil.
