Spill kits?

[mudfarmer]

Wondering what folks are using for spill kits if anything and what your storage solutions are?

Have to have one on this job but figured it wouldn't do any good sitting in the truck since the back of the plot is so far from landing. Took a bit to find absorption pads that just absorb oil and not water. Not really a good place for it on the tiny open station Kubota..



 

3x 4ft booms, 10x oil pads, 10x anything pads, bunch of plugs and hose clamps and a few garbage bags crammed in an old canoe dry bag bungeed to the bumper...  :

[barbender]

The canoe dry bag is a great idea👍 I've always got the pre-made spill kits through the company I worked for, but the clear plastic pouch they came in always fall apart.

[Gere Flewelling]

I worked on snow cat groomers for many years at a ski area in NH. I can't imagine any machines that could leak any more oil on the ground than a modern Piston Bully groomer. It usually wasn't the occasional drip but the two or three times a season each one would doing a catastrophic leak up on the ski trails.  They use ATF fluid exclusively so every time a leak occurred it gave the appearance on the white snow that an elephant had just been slaughtered.  We had to be prepared to clean that mess up in a hurry and deal with the red snow appropriately to keep the environmental watchdog's at bay.  I used to purchase box's of the white "oil only" absorbent pads from New Pig Corporation to take care of the problem.  They were the most efficient systems we ever came across to take care of the spills. The pads were about 16"x24" and were reusable if you had a way to wring them out.  You could put a dozen or more in a gym bag to get them where you needed them and once used toss them into a 5 gallon pail.  We went through about 4-5 boxes of these pads in a winter season.  If I had had more time to clean/wring them out I probably would use half that amount.  I used to keep a few absorbent booms to use if a spill got into a pond or brook but rarely ever used them as they weren't reusable and hard to properly dispose of.  The white pads would take all the petroleum products out of the water very consistently.  New Pig was a great company to do business with in my experience.

[barbender]

That sounds like a fun clean up😬 Some of the forestry clean up guidelines, I think the regulators think that the hydraulic oil comes out like out of a water faucet, you notice the leak and turn off the spigot, and then pat pat pat the spillage up. When in reality, it is usually 25 gallons that blows out nearly instantaneously in a mist!

[Gere Flewelling]

Most of our spills were in the winter time on snow. That actually made clean up much easier.  You can see the oil and only small amounts made it to the ground level and even then the ground was usually frozen keeping the oil on top.  We used to scoop up the pink snow and put on tarps or in plastic barrels to bring off the mountain.  Once down we rigged up a 55 gallon barrel by cutting the bottom out, put a 2" elbow and 1/4 turn ball valve in a top bing and then turn barrel upside down on 3 milk crates. Shovel the pink snow into the barrel and let it melt in the heated shop. One or twice a day I would drain the water off the bottom and add more pink snow until it was all melted. The petroleum products stayed at the top.  Not as much fun in the summer when ground was dry.  Hard to absorb petroleum out of dry dirt.  After thinking about what we had to clean up in the winter, maybe we didn't have it so bad after all.

[mudfarmer]

Thanks Gere, that is a lot of good info for sure. Had no idea the oil pads can be reused. The most this tractor holds in any one fluid is about 7gal, a lot different than your experience!

[stavebuyer]

Here good management is they pull off to the side of the landing and change the oil without a bucket to catch the used oil but do take the empty buckets and filters when complete. Bad actors don't bother with pulling off to side or taking the empty buckets and filters.

[mudfarmer]

There were multiple 5gal pails of oil and fuel filters tucked in the woods off the landings at our place when we bought it. Bad actors is much nicer language than I use :D

[realzed]

Not instances of Logging - but instead 'Drilling' around here in N. Ontario - where diamond drilling for mineral exploration goes on all of the time and has for centuries - and for an mining company I worked 30 years here for.  
It creates holes a few thousand feet deep and the contracted drill crews who do this work these days to a degree still are - but to a larger degree always were very notorious for making a mess of their sites with all sorts of oils, diesel fuel, and all manner of greases since there are all sorts of lubricants and fuels used to power and maintain one or more of these drills and drill rods, per site.
A few of our departmental geologists and technicians went around visiting many older (up to 15 and 25 yrs) sites that weren't as strictly monitored 'back in the day' and found the growth of trees and general greenery at sites famously noted for being total messes for spills was actually producing much more lush and thick growth in comparison to others that had been noted for having been under much stricter operational rules, with crews who were well monitored, and made to be much more diligent in keeping spills and general fuel and oil storage in check!
Who would have thought!
Not a scientific or actual monitored program of comparison - just general observations done by some in the business who over decades, had vast experience with such properties and the field experience necessary to easily judge and compare..  

[Southside]

That sounds like a fun clean up😬 So.e of the forestry clean up guidelines, I think the regulators think that the hydraulic oil comes out like out of a water faucet, you notice the leak and turn off the spigot, and then pat pat pat the spillage up. When in reality, it is usually 25 gallons that blows out nearly instantaneously in a mist!

And usually you have a full tree in the head that prevents you from just killing the engine because doing so will make a bigger mess when the machine rolls over as a result of the lack of control on the fulcrum.  So you sit there, saying bad words, watching more fluid pour out until everything is on the ground. 

[BargeMonkey]

"PIG" is a great place to order from. I try to keep a bundle of pads in the tool box. Typically on iron its not going to matter anyway. We lost 14,000 gal of fuel in NY harbor punching a hole in a fuel tank one night. Remember, the solution to pollution is dilution. You need 3 key things to actually have a spill. Oil, water, a witness, without one of those it never happened. 

[barbender]

And that remaining fluid sprays out right onto your windshield😂