Home Fueling Caddy

I live on a airport but we don't have any fuel facilities. Now that the -12 is almost finished, I'm looking at home refueling options. I'm not looking to store large amounts of fuel in my hangar but I'd like to have some mobile option for refueling. I have access to auto fuel without ethanol close by. My neighbor, who also flies behind a Rotax, custom blends auto fuel and 100LL to get the right octane.

Regardless of the fuel, I'd like a mobile tank that would fit into the back of my truck. I've considered building a custom steel tank with an electric pump but that starts to get pricey and it takes up valuable bed space in my truck. I've come upon a Moeller Fuel Caddy that seems like a viable option. It's gravity feed, which is a drawback, but it seems to fit the rest of the bill. Anyone have any experience that they would care to share?

Randy,

Can't help with the fuel caddy, but please have your neighbor that's mixing fuels read this.

Tony

If I had a good way of getting the rig to/from the airport, here is what I would buy.

http://www.bykas.com/Fun-Fueler-30-gallon-Portable-Gas-Caddy-p/30 gal.htm

Cheap option

I use 5 gallon containers, that I find easier to handle than the larger options, and this little pump. It is not real fast, but neither am I.

http://www.northerntool.com/shop/tools/product_200407825_200407825

i use 5 gallon containers to get the fuel to a 55 gal drum that has an elec. pump. i have all the grounding cables and use them.
it's not the money.......ethanol free mogas is only .$30/gallon more at my airport but it is usually a lot more comfortable refueling like this than out at the pump on the ramp

Storage of Fuels...

My previously owned hangar in San Diego had a fuel storage restriction in the rules and regulations required by the county. Excluding the fuel in the airplane we were limited to a total of 5 gallons of free standing container storage. We also had to pull the aircraft completely out of the hangar before refueling.

Check your rules and regulations.

The problem with larger containers is that they are too heavy to lift. I set a 5 gallon can on a step ladder and use a siphon. Simple, easy, and inexpensive.
Joe Gores

I can second Joe's point. I used a 14 gallon fuel caddy much like the one you posted to refuel the X-Air I had. It was a gravity fed systeem so I would have to pull the plane out, put the caddy on the truck tailgate, and wait several minutes while it refueled. I also pre-mixed for the Rotax 582...that's a pain in a 14 gallon tank. Also, a full caddy is somewhere around 100 lbs. That's a lot to muscle around.

Either way, I found that using four 5 gallon jugs was cheaper, more versatile, easier to handle, and a much better solution. Besides, they take up roughly the same amount of space as a fuel caddy (which you usually have to lay on it's side to fill).

I use 5 Gal poly gas cans. The ones with a dedicated vent seem to work best since they transfer fuel faster than the self venting ones with shutoff valves. Nothing sucks more than balancing 30 lbs of gas on your shoulder while it trickles through that valve you have to hold open!

Go big or go home.

Maybe this will work?

http://flofast.com/

I use 2 of these and roll them around on a Hobba Freight furniture dolly. With 15 gallons, I can fill one up and drop it down onto the dolly from my tailgate. The pump is very good quality and has a bonding cable and clip on it. These units are very stout. Yea Valcik, I beat ya to it!

Geico266 said:

Go big or go home.

Click to expand...

No placards on that baby? I see you found a 8?

This also works very nice for the military style jerrycans, takes less than three minutes to empty a 5 USG jerrycan. Instead off the small handpump you can use a foot pump or a compressor. No need to lift the jerrycan:

Fuel transfer jerrycan

An old timer at my airport uses a pressurized 55gal drum with a hose for refueling. It doesn't take much pressure (5psi?) to get the fuel flowing. He put a standard tire valve on one of the removable bung caps and made dip tube/valve on the other bung. He actually uses a standard water faucet valve and garden hose. This was the setup that he used for years to refuel his crop duster at remote locations.

I suspect you could put something like this together relatively cheaply even using a little more appropriate fuel quality hoses. A cheap dolly for rolling around the hangar would help. You could even get a cheap Harbor Freight trailer to mount it to for transport to/from the gas station.

I have the 15 gal flo-fast and am very happy with it. I strapped it to an existing furniture dolly that I have. But 15 gal is too much to lift in and out of the truck tailgate so I refill it with 5 gal jerry cans using a Mr Funnel. Get the transparent one rather than the red one. The hand crank pump it comes with works very well. I don't like to hold 30 pounds of gas above my shoulder to fill.

Also if you have those new 5 gal poly gas cans with no vent and those &$@//# nozzles that gurgle more than they flow, you can get little plastic vents that pop into a half inch hole you drill into the can where the vent should be. They are cheap for a dozen on ebay. Makes the can work like it is supposed to before the idiot regulators got involved.

I use the Bykas Fueling Caddy mentioned above. I bought it from Steve Rush when he sold his RV-12 and had to go from MoGas to AvGas. It works very well.

It's 30 gal capacity but I usually don't fill it beyond 20 gals. It has a nice service station nozzle that makes fueling the airplane very easy. It works by pressuring the tank. Some people pressurize with shop air - I use CO2, which is what the design calls for. I like that the CO2 acts as an inerting medium in the ullage, increasing its safety and reducing the risk of static electricity from a stoichiometric mixture in the ullage.

The tank has a standard Schrader tire inflation fitting, and a pressure relief - which is set at about 2.5-3.0 psi. That pressure allows a nice volume of fuel to move to the nozzle. After finished fueling, I drain the hose back into the tank, close the hose SOV, and then re-pressurize the ullage with CO2, improving the safety of the tank while it is not being used.

When fueling, I electrically bond the airplane, the fueling nozzle, and the drum to a common ground (earth.)

The downside of this system, is it requires a double transfer - I fuel my 5 gal jerry cans at the filling station, and then must transfer the fuel to the drum. When I do that, I use a syphon, and a long neck metal funnel, which is also grounded to the drum and external ground.

Every airport that I am aware of has this 5 gal storage restriction - and for good reason. I suppose. The problem is that it is problematic for people, like most of us, that want (need) to use MoGas which is not sold at most airports. The airports I am involved with "prohibit" more than one 5 gal container - filled or empty - on the premises. So, how do you fuel your airplane? Besides the LS Rotax crowd, there are many T/C'd airplanes with MoGas STCs, and they have much bigger fuel tanks. It's difficult enough to fuel a small capacity LS, much less an airplane with 50 or 80 gal tankage, using 5 gal cans. Especially just one! You'd have a pickup bed full of 5 gal cans.

I also believe all this transferring is dangerous - static electricity is a very real danger in moving fuel around - and the danger from the multiple cans and transfers probably outweighs the dangers of combustion while sitting in a hangar. Plus, what do you do with all these fuel cans? They are likely prohibited because they are thought to be a fire or explosion hazard in the event of a fire from another source. Do you take them home? Most home-owner policies likewise restrict fuel containers in your garage. If you have a fire and your house burns down, losing insurance coverage because you had those gas cans stored in your garage - because you couldn't store them in the hangar - would be a lot more costly than losing your airplane.

Because of these problems, the airports I am familiar with that have all these fuel container prohibitions also have numerous violations that are on-going every day. The airport authorities write these rules into the regulations to CYA, to please the Fire Marshall, the insurance companies - and then look the other way.

One advantage - maybe - of the drum - is it will allow easier mixing and blending of fuels. I know, Jabiru calls mixed fuels "Shandies" and calls the practice unsafe. Well, Rotax doesn't, nor do many other engine companies - and besides, I don't have a Jabiru.

I'm going to try and reduce the ethanol content of the fuel I use - due to Vans SB -and other considerations. I can only get 87 AKI non-ethanol, so I am planning to blend it with 92 AKI MoGas with ethanol and 100LL in a ratio that will give me between 91 and 92 AKI fuel with about 2.5% ethanol content.

Mixing the fuel in the drum will be a lot easier and more precise than trying to mix it in the airplane.

We'll see what happens.

Bob Bogash
N737G

I'm with Gary, go big baby!

100 gal tank setup from Tractor Supply on Sams cart bought from a recycler.


Just bring 5gal jerry can full of fuel when coming to fly and dump them in.
Easy Peasy.

Thank you for all the great replies. You've given me a number of options to consider. A couple of notes:

Since the hangar is attached to my home, I get to make the rules. Like I said, I may just carry it in my truck.

I was hoping to avoid 5-gallon cans and any double-transfer process, but I may need to compromise to keep the cost down. Tractor Supply has fuel tanks, 12 volt transfer pumps, and trailers, but the costs start to add up.

I'll research all the options presented and make a decision on what works best for me. Thanks again.

you would be surprised how many people have not heard of a shaker siphon hose. make the hose as long as you want and off you go. gavity is a wonderful thing. free. pilots like free.

How do you prevent overflowing, when you are refueling an RV-12 using a shaker siphon hose??

I thought the Bykas fueling caddy was a great option and about what I thought it would cost me to build a caddy (approx. $500). What I decided to do is have a tank custom built to fit along the side of the bed of my Dodge truck. My son is an engineer at a local manufacturing company so he did a CAD of the tank and had the parts water-jetted. I'll weld them up.

I purchased a fuel transfer pump, vented cap, and all the fittings from Rural King for about $200. This will keep me busy while I await the arrival of the engine kit. I'll post pictures when I'm done.

The benefit of this is that I can fill directly to my truck from the pumps, mix the fuel in the tank, and fill the airplane directly without transferring any fuel. The tank can be removed if necessary but it is designed to minimize the intrusion into the bed area and still allow me to keep the cap cover closed.

The airport Nazis at my field don't allow us to store more than one 5 Gallon can in the hangar. They'd have apoplexy if they saw a fuel caddy in a hangar. It would be nice to have the flexibility you guys have at your airfields.