20 lb. Propane Tanks

*grumble*
Cost me $32 CDN to fill a 30lbs the other day.

 

I refill my small one pounders from my twenty pound bottles. You can get the adapter to do this at wal-mart,the adapter for $16.95 if I remember right. It doesn't take long to get your money back this way.

 

I have read that people do this but I have never met a person that actually does it.

 

Tried that years ago but more than half of the one-pounders leaked afterwards. Finally decided it wasn't worth the hazard

 

I have been doing it since the late 80's or thereabouts.

 

Here is my cheat sheet that I go by... I started to purchase 30 lb. tanks but @Motomom34 convinced me that 20s are the way to go for a number of reasons so now, like her, I am on the constant look out for yard sell or etc where someone wants to get rid of their 20 lb tanks (see MM34, I am listening! )

20 lb. tank = 4.7 gallons propane, weighs 37 lbs. full
30 lb. tank = 7 gallons propane, weighs 55 lbs. full
40 lb. tank = 9.4 gallons propane, weighs 72 lbs. full
100 lb. tank = 23.4 gallons propane, weighs 180 lbs. full

 

When I filled propane tanks at an RV park we opend the 10% valve at the same time and stopped when it began spitting liquid fuel.
RV's tanks are not removed for filling, usually.
I did the tanks for the shop as well as my own the same way . we did not even consider weight at all.
I also fill my 1 Lb bottles with a 5 pounder all the time , in fact I found brass caps for the 1 pounders and they work nicely.
while filling anything with propane ,

 

I get the little one pound cans cheap on sale all the time and we never use them. I stoipped buying them after I filled the third large tote. Im collecting 100 pounders now as each 100 pounder is a year of water pumping run for half an hour per week.

 

@Kingfish , any way you could set up a 500 gal or a couple of 250's and cut down on having to have all the smaller bottles?

 

Heads up Monkeys- I have 20 lb propane tanks that I get from the propane exchange. Twice now I have had issues with these tanks. Since I have quite a few, mentally I think I am prepared. Last weekend we swapped out tanks on the grill. The new tank was one from a Blue Rhino exchange. I cannot get the valve open. The boys can't either. This will not budge.

I am hoping that I can swap out this full tank for another at zero cost, the receipt is long gone. It made me think that I need to check these tanks when I am purchasing. I do not want to have a prep that I cannot use if I ever need it because I failed to check it.

 

Bring it by, I'm used to working with pressure and flammable gas!

 

I have only ever had that happen on high pressure gas cylinders.
Someone tried to open it, won't open, comes back with a wrench, breaks the valve stem knob off because the gas bottle was left open from the last time they used it.

 

matter of leverage - as already mentioned you can use various conventional wrenches to apply force on that tank valve >>>> if you can find one - there is a wrench socket that is made specifically to fit that universal 3 lobe shaped valve handle - never saw one commercially available to buy ....

 

I prefer to fill my own as well.
That being said, I've picked up several of these tanks off of sites like LetGo for $10-15.00. I check them out, check the dates. If I'm not happy with them I trade them off at a tank exchange for current ones then keep those for refilling.

 

I have propane stored far away from everything I love. It's an alternative, and easy to use, but because everybody has a gas grill it will be the first to go, likely along with a couple houses from careless use.

As Plan C, you can always add a couple of these, and some late model single mantle lanterns that will run on anything short of pure diesel fuel without much tuning. I'm running Coleman fuel from 1971 without issues and Regular Unleaded Gas that's over six years old.