1000L Old Oil tank - needs cleaning out

[magnethead]

Hi, just a quick question on cleaning..I have an 1000L green plastic heating tank, (Imagine Large Beer fermenter, if you think this is not relevant  )
There is still some small amounts of Diesel left in it. I'm wondering if it's even possible to really clean it out so I can use it as a water butt. The water would be going on homegrown Veg, so it would need to be fairly clean.

Thanks for any advice, cleaning solutions you have.

[Parky]

Hi Magnethead, I've never cleaned out a tank before, but have cleaned up diesel spills on occasion - the same advice might help:


1 Firstly, you'll need to soak up as much of the surface liquid as you can. This can involve the use of paper towels, but particularly effective is sand and /or cat litter (helps with the odour to).
2 Next you'll need to scrub with a detergent, soapy water will work, so too does biological washing powder (does a good job of getting rid of stains and smells from clothing too).


Not sure how big the access hatch to the tank is, so the above might be tricky, maybe a power washer with detergent could get into the hard to reach places once the majority of liquid had been removed.


They're just a few ideas, but I'm sure others may have more experience to help you out 

[Leann ull]

Sorry it needs to be dumped as its only use is Diesel for 2 reasons
Green pigments used are certainly not food grade and would migrate into your water and your veg even from a virgin tank
The diesel or oil has already migrated into the wall and a bit like our whiskey barrels takes an age to come back out
Sorry its not better news
Look out for those cubic metre square IBC's if you want to water the veg, make sure it had foodstuffs in it before you get it.
Try and get a get a black one or paint/cover the opaque ones as otherwise you will have a lovely crop of algae

[magnethead]

Thanks Parky: It only has a very small hatch so I was never gonna get at all surfaces.

excellent answer Ciderhead so this idea is most definitely a dead duck now Time to hit adverts and buyandsell for a IBC

Knew it was a good idea to post here before wasting all that time!!!

EDIT: Jaysus €50 euro is way cheap, I imagined an IBC container would be  a LOT more!!

[Leann ull]

Yep just make sure its had a foodstuff in it beforehand, so open the lid and take a good sniff
look out for those submersible garden pumps in lidl as well
other option is to connect a load of 55G drums in series

[Pepin The Short]

I`v seen lots of people sink IBC containers into the floor of a greenhouse/poly tunnel ,so that only a ft or so is above ground  .some cut the top off and flip it round as a grow bed others leave it be . either way they mainly use them to grow fish like trout and many other cold water fish. there by feeding the plants in the greenhouse/poly tunnel via circulating pumps as a aquaponics system. which acts as a water filter fir your fish .sinking the IBC into the ground keep its round a steady temp for the fish and saves room .

anyway here is some info on aquaponics systems.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dnXw4kjRXx8

you may also want to look at this . you could run a few of these off an IBC .
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rj4MzjxjGck