edit: Don’t do this. Embrace modernity and don’t pollute the soil.

  • casualhippo@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    I’m sure there will be people that take this seriously lol, PSA to others don’t do this. It fucks up the land and nearby water sources as it spreads out. In the US you can be forced to replace the contaminated soil

    • KnightontheSun@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      When I was a yout, they had trucks with a huge tank and a sprayer on the back. The truck would drive all the country roads spraying the dirt with waste oils. This was done to keep the dust down. Smelled terrible. Miles and miles of dirt roads that ran all around by rivers and lakes.

      It is crazy to think about that now.

      • Uranium 🟩@sh.itjust.works
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        I’m sure you know this, but that’s exactly how a town got turned in to a EPA superfund site due to Dioxin contamination, because of a fuck up over chain of command for waste oil from the creation of napalm or pesticides(IIRC?). The guy running the spraying business didn’t know, which I can believe, but the company that paid for him to dispose of it should’ve informed him.

      • JJROKCZ@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I assure you they still do that, source: my dad still lived on a back country road that they regularly tarred until they finally paved it about two or three years ago. When I lived there I hated when they did it because I had a white car and didn’t want all the oil on it since it was so hard to wash off and I had to go to the car wash every time I left the house

      • socsa@lemmy.ml
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        1 year ago

        There are still places which basically make rural roads like this. They spray down a layer of heavy oil and then scatter small rock chips and recycled asphalt on top of of the sticky layer to make a roadway. Obviously it’s not suitable for heavy use, but it’s way faster than actually paving the surface.

        • KnightontheSun@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          Chip sealing! I know the process as they still do this for neighborhood streets around here. The oil is more like a tar and solidifies as it cools thus ‘gluing’ the chips to the older road surface. Sort of a stopgap before having to repave completely. I don’t think this is done on dirt surfaces as it doesn’t seem workable.

          This process is pretty different than what I described originally. The dirt roads only hold those oils for a relatively short period.

          • SwampYankee@mander.xyz
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            1 year ago

            Highway engineer here. It’s asphalt (or bitumen), which is a product of crude oil refining. It’s all the stuff that stays at the bottom when you heat crude up to over 1000°F. Because it’s so sticky & viscous, it has to be heated up to around 300°F in order to be used. Asphalt is the “binder” in a pavement mixture that includes silt, sand, and rocks in various quantities and sizes, and these days the asphalt binder is usually modified in some way to improve its performance in the climate or application it’s going to be used in.

            A chipseal is made by spreading a continuous layer of small rocks on a prepared surface and spraying the hot asphalt over it after, which binds the rocks together. It’s similar to Macadam pavement which was developed in the early 1800s and continued to be used well into the 1900s, often as a base layer for a more modern hot-mix asphalt pavement. Tar used to be used in paving a lot, but tar is made from coal and environmental regulations don’t allow it anywhere that I know of. There’s also a more state of the art technique that involves a looser layer of slightly larger stones, sprayed with a modified asphalt emulsion (modified in this case meaning with rubber or polymer for elasticity, and emulsion meaning it’s mixed with water to make it easier to work with), called a stress-absorbing membrane interlayer, used for reducing reflective cracking from an existing pavement surface into a new overlay surface. Modified asphalts & emulsions are often used for chipseals these days, too.

            Lecture over.

            • KnightontheSun@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              Hey, thanks for that thorough explanation! I only have vague hand-waving knowledge, so this is nice to understand. I will probably forget most of it by the next time the topic comes up, but I (and others) appreciate the details provided!

          • RedEye FlightControl@lemmy.world
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            1 year ago

            Our neighborhood was just done via this method. Usually called tar and stone. Quickly resurfaces the road without all that pesky work. It’s like asphalt glue that cools and then solidifies over days/weeks.

      • TWeaK@lemm.ee
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        1 year ago

        They still do that on sites with dirt tracks that get dusty. Only, they spray with water.

        It’s pretty shitty and foul smelling water, mind.

    • Neuromancer@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      This really was the advice given till the 90’s or so.

      My dad use to have a hole filled with cat litter to pour oil as that was the recommendation.

      • wolfpack86@lemmy.world
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        1 year ago

        I think your dad was behind the times. Mine collected and disposed of the oil properly at a waste station

    • nik282000@lemmy.ml
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      1 year ago

      God damned roofers spilled gas on my lawn. I had to dig down almost a foot to get rid of the contaminated soil.

  • reverendsteveii@sopuli.xyz
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    1 year ago

    Boomers: Why don’t you kids go outside and play. When I was your age we played in the dirt for hours at a time.

    Also boomers:

    • Techmaster@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      I’ve had boers tell me that as kids they would pick up balls of tar from the street and chew it like gum

  • Kotsi3P0@lemmy.ml
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    1 year ago

    Tradition is to save it and use it as a wood oil so the wood will not decay after some time on the rain. Absorbs really good, doesn’t stink or stick…

  • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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    1 year ago

    Shit like this is why people doing home gardening, especially in areas that have been inhabited for hundreds of years, without testing the soil first give me heart palpitations. What are you eating?? I don’t know, and neither do you!

    • June@lemm.ee
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      1 year ago

      My neighborhood soil is laced with arsenic and lead from an old foundry that used to be nearby.

      A bunch of my neighbors grow and eat food in that soil knowing it. It boggles my mind.

        • June@lemm.ee
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          Yea, and the response has been ‘I’ve been eating food I’ve grown here for 20 years and I’m totally fine!’

          • zeroAhead@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            Just like the people that love to tell their grandparents lived a long life smoking tobacco everyday.

            • Beaphe@lemmy.world
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              1 year ago

              It wasn’t the smoking that didnt kill em. It was the minding their own fucking business.

      • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        Almost everyone I know of that gardens at home just tills the soil they have available. Gardening soil isn’t cheap and they view it as an unnecessary expense. It’s especially hard to convince people in rural areas that just using the dirt out back can be harmful.

        • Aux@lemmy.world
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          1 year ago

          When I lived in a private house with a garden, we would buy new soil EVERY YEAR. Because fuck all grows otherwise.

    • Casey @mander.xyz
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      1 year ago

      I know you can send soil to be tested by your local university extension, but how do you test for conaminents like used hydrocarbons, arsenic, lead, glyphosate-based herbicides, etc?

      I am about to embark on a hobby of composting and would like to know.

      • Catoblepas@lemmy.blahaj.zone
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        1 year ago

        If your local university doesn’t test for the specific contaminants you’re concerned about you can send samples to a private lab instead, sometimes they offer more testing options. I don’t know the specifics of how each one is tested for, but on your end they usually just require you to take (and possibly dry) soil samples before sending them in.

        If you don’t have a good idea of the history of the site, it would be good to try and figure it out through your local historical society if you have one, or land records from your local records office. Whoever is testing the soil will have a better idea of what to test for if they know it used to be a mining town, or it’s 50 feet from a house old enough to have used lead paint, if it was farm land, etc.

  • RegularGoose@sh.itjust.works
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    1 year ago

    Also, heat your home more effectively in the winter by always having a bucket of coal burning in your living room.

  • Semi-Hemi-Demigod@kbin.social
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    1 year ago

    The first couple times I helped my dad change the oil in his car he dumped it down the storm drain which lead to the Chesapeake.

    We don’t do that anymore.

    • mkhopper@lemmy.world
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      1 year ago

      I think of all the times I did that working on my cars years ago.
      It was just something you did and no one ever even blinked. Old oil, gas, brake fluid, etc, right down the storm drain.

      Now I think back and shudder.

  • w00tabaga@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    My grandpa would just set the old oil filters when he would change the oil in the 3 farm tractors he owned. He did that for years and 30 years later that spot is still like blacktop. At least it’s only a 2’x2’ spot but I couldn’t imagine if he dumped the actual oil. And that’s only 3 diesel tractors twice a year.

    The thought that shops were doing it for years is sad

        • atlasraven31@lemm.ee
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          1 year ago

          Absolutely. You never know when you might need an old car battery for torture.

          • hackris@lemmy.ml
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            1 year ago

            How? Isn’t it just 12 V? Genuinely curious, because I never understood this stuff in movies…

            • Pinklink@lemm.ee
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              1 year ago

              That’s why it’s more likely used for fetish purposes irl, and even the maybe two in series? You’d have to ask the experts, which I’m totally not one of. Not involved in that world at all. Definitely don’t have a monthly budget for that…

              • hackris@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                I’ve heard of electric stimulation used for fetish, but none of the manufacturers state how high of a voltage the tools produce (at least I couldn’t find any info about this).

            • bigBananas@feddit.nl
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              1 year ago

              I don’t know for sure but I think it’s the current, higher voltage will bridge a bigger gap/higher resistance but a human body doesn’t have that high of a resistance and car batteries are capable of providing plenty of current (I think?)

              • hackris@lemmy.ml
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                1 year ago

                Yes, but to penetrate the top layer of human skin, you need about 60 V DC, or 30 V AC. A car battery is 12 V DC…

                Edit: I got the voltages from an old ElectroBoom video and I just remembered them so I know when to use protection when working with electricity and when it’s not needed.

  • Blastasaurus@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Instructions unclear, now the swing set in my back yard needs it’s tires rotated.

  • Big Miku@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    The modern way of doing this would involve reversing the process of dinosaur bones turning into oil. So you just put into the oil-to-bone-inator and bury those bones back into the ground where they originally came from.

  • imgonnatrythis@lemm.ee
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    1 year ago

    Thanks. It nice to have a reliable source to turn to when I am inspired to follow guides published in the 1960s.