The jerry can is a fuel tank parked inside your house: the storage rules a generator household needs

Every generator household stores fuel, almost all of it stored by feel, and the difference between a safe arrangement and a bad one is not luck - it is about six decisions made once and never revisited. This guide is those six decisions, written for the way compounds actually run: a can by the generator, a can in the store, maybe a can in the boot "for tomorrow".

Where the can lives, non-negotiable

• Outside the living rooms, preferably outside the ground floor entirely: a locked cage, a ventilated shed corner, the boys' quarters - anywhere fuel vapour can rise away from where people sleep. Vapour is heavier than air; a can on the floor of a closed storeroom under the bedroom is the exact layout fire investigators describe.
• Away from every ignition story: not beside the generator while it is warm - refuel a cold engine, the hot-muffler flash is the classic - and not beside the kitchen, the charging phones, or the fuse board.
• Off the ground and out of sun: a shelf or pallet, in shade; sun-cooked petrol expands and pushes vapour out of every vent it can find.

What the can is allowed to be

Approved, opaque, screw-capped, gasketed - and it stays a fuel can for life. The washed-out water container and the soft drink bottle on the generator are how households invent accidental poisoning: fuel bottles keep getting treated like water bottles by exactly the people who should know. If a can stays, its cap stays tight - the smell of stale petrol in a store is not the can "breathing", it is a leak, a perished gasket or an overfilled vent, and it is a find-it-tonight job, with sand or cat litter as the spill bed you already have at home.

How much is too much

The honest household ceiling: what the generator burns in a few days plus a small margin - enough that you never ration your safety for a fuel-queue gamble, little enough that old fuel never becomes your inventory. Petrol ages; a can that has sat two months on a shelf starts varnishing carburettors, which is how "the generator suddenly won't run" stories actually begin. Rotate: buy smaller, burn fresher, label the date on the cap with a marker like the sane operator you are.

The household rules that cost nothing

One funnel, one can per purpose - petrol and kerosene in different-coloured cans, because a mis-fuelled generator is a repair invoice; children taught the cans are never, ever toys and the storage spot is not a play area; and a standing rule for whoever buys fuel that the car boot gets the can ventilated and upright, not parked Sunday-to-Sunday in a hot box. None of this is exotic; all of it is the difference between a nuisance smell and a bad night.