Your repairman is correct and so is your research. These ethanol fuels are not a problem if they are consumed quickly in the engine. The problem lies with all equipment that has a tendency to get unused for long periods and boats are also one of those items that get put into storage in the off-season. For boat owners, this issue has been horrendous and often expensive. As I understand it, some boat owners have had to pay to have their tanks removed because there was no way to clean the bad fuel out of the tank. This meant cutting up the old tank that had been installed as the boat was being assembled but could not be removed due to the access hatch being too small. On some of the older outdoor power equipment engines, carbureter floats were made from a foam material which performed just fine in pure gasoline but began to swell when in contact with gasoline containing ethanol. This swelling caused the float to jamb against the side of the floatbowl causing engine flooding or fuel starvation. The current thinking is that these ethanol fuels should be consumed within 30 days of purchase to ensure no problems. I'm not aware of any fuel stabilizers available that will guarantee no problems but others are free to comment on this issue. You should purchase small quantities instead of filling a 5 gallon gas can like we used to do. After 30 days, dump whatever is in that gas can into your vehicle and burn it up. Run your outdoor power equipment until the engine uses up all the fuel in the tank when storing the item for winter. You can use a turkey baster to remove the greater amount of fuel from most tanks and squirt that fuel into a gas can. It is unwise to do this procedure indoors or while smoking your pipe, cigar, cigarillo or cigarette.

I absolutely second wwwonderwhiskers advice! And, if your digital camera will take videos as well, shoot very methodical videos of each room starting in one corner and working your way around the room in a clockwise or counterclockwise direction. Then take your overlapping still photographs immediately after taking the video. It is often much easier to figure out what is what in a video. But still photographs will be sharper and show more details. With a combination of videos and still photos taken on the same date, you can use the video to help you orient your still photos and figure out what you are looking at...especially if you take the time to tape numbered squares of paper up around the room before making videos and shooting photos. Our "open wall" photos have saved us a couple of enormous repair bills as well. And, when we got ready to hang our TV, it was nice to be able to look at the photos and see right where the studs and extra bracing were located. It is also nice when you start to hang a picture on the wall, to KNOW, that you're not fixing to accidentally drive a nail into a hidden pipe. Oh, especially if you're going to have a slab foundation, don't forget to photograph where all the pipes and stuff run UNDER the slab before the concrete gets poured. And don't forget to take pictures of the outside of your house before the sheathing is put on. If your house has more than one floor, be sure you have pictures of everything that runs thru the space between the two floors as well. Water from a leaking pipe or waterline can often travel along joists quite a way before dripping through the ceiling sheet rock and showing up as a wet spot. Rather then unnecessarily tearing out a bunch of sheet rock, It helps to know where the water COULD be coming from.

This is an interesting thread... The story of Brazil's ethanol policy in the 70's is very interesting... and has much more to it than is portrayed here. When I was doing my MBA, we had a large contingent from south america in the class... some from Brazil... and a few from the energy industry there. They went pretty deep into the dynamics with all of us. I thought you might be interested. I'll try to keep it short: The above thread is correct that the dictatorial mandate for ethanol production, distribution, and use in the 70's laid the foundation for today's ethanol success... but it also caused many, many troubles for their economy, and actually set their ethanol use back 25 years. I realize that statement is a strange conflict... but both are true. In the 70's, auto technology and production was not to the level it is today... and dual-fuel and "flex-fuel" vehicles were not available in mass. So, when the price of oil was extremely high in the 70's, Brazil's gov't pushed mandates for independence through ethanol... and everyone went out and bought ethanol-run autos, which helped develop the industry and infrastructure. The problem, of course, was that oil prices did not stay high. When oil prices tanked, Brazil's consumers were stuck with ethanol, though the production of it was dropping since it had to compete with very low oil prices... and profitibility suffered. This eventually created shortages of ethanol there, and it became extremely expensive and scarce. Consumers were understandably pretty upset about it since their cars couldn't run on the cheap gas that was now prevalent. So, to make a long story a bit shorter, Brazil's people became disenchanted with ethanol, and converted largely back to gas until new government initiatives again pushed ethanol in the late 90's, with new autos that ran on either gasoline -or- ethanol (flex-fuel) to help ease consumers' anxiety of a repeat situation of the 70's. Consumers gradually warmed to the idea, and in the past 4 years use has been skyrocketing. This is, of course, aided by Brazil's perfect sugarcane growing environment... which as was pointed out earlier here, has an efficient conversion to ethanol. My buddies from Brazil say mini-plants have been springing up everywhere in the countryside... similar to how cotton gins formerly speckled the mid-west US... in every small town. One of these guys told me a story about him driving through a very rural area recently to check out some farmland his family was planning to purchase for an investment. He was just driving along when he looked down and noticed his fuel gauge was almost on "E". He'd driven ~40 miles since the last fuel station... and didn't know how far it was until the next would come along. So, he stopped at what he called a "very run down... scary bar" to ask where the nearest fuel stop was. Well, as you can probably guess, there was no station within ~40 miles (converting from kilometers)... and he knew he couldn't make it that far... so, he purchased some jugs of locally brewed alcohol from the bar (sorry I don't remember the name of the stuff, but it's everclear-like and very popular in Brazil). He said he very nervously poured this into what happened to be a flex-fuel auto... and drove without problem to the next fuel station ~60 miles away. Disclaimer: don't try this at home, kids... This is second-hand, but direct from some very trusted and well educated friends. Cheers. and BTW... I'm very much pro-ethanol as a bridge to hydrogen fuel cells. Don't know if corn on a mass scale is viable using current technology, but I do know that sugar cane from Brazil would be.

When I started shopping for flooring, I scoured houzz for ideas and visited a multitude of stores, from speciality retailers, to big box stores and finally found Lumber Liquidators. (Sidebar: I think their name is very misleading as it implies downscale products ~ inferior or lesser quality flooring. Not true.) They sell flooring sourced from all over the world (including the USA) so to associate their brand with China is misleading. It was the Lumber Liquidator staff and houzz that educated me about flooring (kudos to houzz!) and I ended up choosing reclaimed pine and the natural rubio monocoat. I couldn't be happier with my decision. I wouldn't hesitate to shop at Lumber Liquidators. I'm not a laminate consumer, regardless of source. Overall, I believe that this laminate story will end up being about the safety testing of compressed wood products, regardless of the source (think IKEA and the many manufacturers who use the same materials in manufacturing consumer products). I'm disheartened that Lumber Liquidators was considered guilty BEFORE anything has been proven outside of a 60 Minutes show. Bah!