Volume Twelve - Pre-Victorian to the Present Day - further aspects - Petroleum-Storage Installations at Avonmouth and at Cardiff [1890] . . . .

The main floor, which is of wood, is about 6 feet above the ground, and has a 10-foot platform all round, communicating with a long platform at a lower level, about 150 feet by 30 feet.

This long platform is at the level of the floor of the railway trucks, and is used for taking empties or loading up full barrels to be sent by rail.

In the centre of the filling-house are two rectangular wrought-iron tanks about 12 feet by 4 feet by 4 feet, raised about 3 feet above the floor, and provided on each side with a number of 1-inch filling pipes, about 2 feet apart (Fig. 16).

From the main storage-tanks to the filling-house tanks a 4-inch screw-jointed pipe is laid similar to the 6-inch main already described (Fig. 17).

The arrangement of branches under the filling-house, from the 4-inch and 6-inch pipes, is as follows :-

The 4-inch branch A leads from the main emptying-pipe into the two small tanks ; the 4-inch branch B is carried round to the pump, and by C to pipe A ; another branch D is carried from the 6-inch pipe into branch C ; the main-pipe draining-branch E is carried from the point F to the pump. All these branches are fitted with screw-valves as shown at a, b, c, d, e, f, g, h, i (Fig. 17).

Oil in the ordinary way flows by gravitation from one of the large storage-tanks by the 4-inch pipe, and along A into the two small barreling tanks, until they are filled, the valves e, f, g, h being closed and the rest worked as required.

When the oil in the large storing-tank has been lowered so that it ceases to flow by gravitation, it is raised by pumping, and passes along B to the pump, and thence through C and A, into the barreling tanks, the valves a, b, f, h being closed, and c, d, e, g opened.

When the main filling-pipe is being emptied, as already described, the valves h, e, c, d are opened and a, b ,f, g closed, and the remaining oil pumped along E, C and A into the barreling tanks.