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diesel spill — how to clean up and neutralise smell?


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Hi all,

 

I did something stupid and overfilled my fuel tank. After sailing around/heeling, I found diesel in my bilges, sigh.

 

What's the best way to clean this up, and how do I get rid of the smell? It's quite unpleasant to be in the cabin at the moment... I'm prepared to use a lot of elbow grease, but is there something (detergent, or some other stuff) to break down the fuel and neutralise the smell?

 

Cheers!

 

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Bunnings have oil absorbant matts on sale for $5 per pack of 10. they are in their Health and safety area with signs and barrier tapes. Buy as many as you can get because they are a deleted item. Silly people. Burnsco sell the matts for $5 each.

And yes the dish washing liquid works great. But super cheap have a waterbased concrete floor cleaner that works great and you dilute it down which makes it economical. The advantage is it does not leave a trail of foam on the water as the dish detergent does.

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Question I've got is why was there diesel in your bilge? In theory the tankage should be a closed system with the only outlets to the engine, filler and breather.

 

The filler and breather are both on the outside of the hull/deck so is there a leak between filler and tank or breather and tank that a bit of heel and full tanks demonstrates?

 

You could run around never filling your tank right up but Id be looking for the source of the leak to the bilge as a part of the cleanup.

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And yes the dish washing liquid works great. But super cheap have a waterbased concrete floor cleaner that works great and you dilute it down which makes it economical. The advantage is it does not leave a trail of foam on the water as the dish detergent does.

 

Good tip Wheels except that stuff only works on ferro boats  ;-)

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Question I've got is why was there diesel in your bilge? In theory the tankage should be a closed system with the only outlets to the engine, filler and breather.

 

The filler and breather are both on the outside of the hull/deck so is there a leak between filler and tank or breather and tank that a bit of heel and full tanks demonstrates?

 

I haven't had a chance to look into that yet, but that's a good point. The (glass) tank is inside the port cockpit locker. It's been 2/3rd full for months without a trace of diesel anywhere in the boat, so I don't think the tank is leaking. The fuel lines in the engine compartment and the bottom of the fuel filter are all dry, so I know it's not leaking there either.

 

The filler hose goes straight up from the tank to the filler cap, and there's a breather tube next to it. There's also a large round cap on top of the tank. Filler hose, breather tube, and fuel tank cap all had diesel on it, so something's not quite right. I'll investigate.

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I can also confirm that baby nappies are great (I never had to look after babies, so I didn't know this), and liberal spraying of Simple Green and cat urine odor neutraliser did a lot to make my boat smell nice again.

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Just reading this topic out of pure interest (yeah, right) and read of mixing white vinegar, lemon juice, baking soda and something else..., cantbrecall off top of my head. Mix it up (No idea on ratios) in a milk container, and spread around bilges, and scrub. Anyone got any ideas on ratio or other usefulmideas?

Ps: broken fuel line identified and fixed.

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If you think diesel is bad, you want to smell some of the stuff I play around with. Add one cup of Ammonia to the Washing machine with the usual amount of washing detergent.
Another thing you can try is to rub plenty of Baking Soda into the Diesel stain and leave for a day, then wash it. The Baking soda simply soaks up all the oil from the material. I reckon powdered washing detergent would do exactly the same thing.
I have also heard of pouring in a 2ltr bottle of Coke into the washing machine. Never tried it. And another is White vineger and Baking soda or washing soda. Not sure how that works, because the two would surely cancel each other out.

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