I am planning to buy one or more 100-pound propane tanks. Usage will be light cooking on the barbecue and short-term emergency heat. Can anyone shed some light on how fast I can expect to burn it up? Typically one to three people for food, older drafty house is 2000 sq ft, average midwinter temp here is 40 deg F -- heatwise, at most I will use it to keep pipes from freezing at night. Many thanks.

-- Mark Johnson (maj314159@yahoo.com), August 21, 1999

Answers

Mark, I use propane for cooking and hot water, I heat only with wood (and an electric blanket before I got the latest puppy). By myself only doing a couple loads of laundry a week and 1 shower a day, a 125 #tank,(about 25 gal.) lasted about a month. With a wife and daughter that went down to about 3 weeks. Forced air furnaces suck a lot of propane as my neighbors tell me.

-- Roger (pecosrog@earthlink.net), August 21, 1999.

Depends entirely on the _rate_ of consumption. A typical propane stove will consume about 8,000 btu per hour. An outdoor propane grill perhaps 10 - 12,000 btu/hr, per burner. If a cylinder has, say, 10,000 btu of fuel remaining, and feeds a burner consuming 8,000 btu per mfr literature, the cylinder should last about 1 hour 15 minutes. You do the calculations - all figures are approximate:

Propane contains about 93,000 btu per gallon.

A gallon of propane weighs 4.2 pounds.

A 20# tank contains about 4.76 gallon when filled.

1# cylinders contain about 22,140 btu of energy.

I am not in the energy business, so someone else may wish to "fine tune" this.

-- A. Hambley (a.hambley@usa.net), August 21, 1999.

We use LP just for cooking (used to have a gas refrig , too, but not using it now). We use about three (3) 100 pound cylinders a year just for cooking. When we also had a Servel gas refrigerator and also heated lots of water on the stove for baths in summer, etc., a cylinder would last 6 weeks on the average. We have since gotten a Sun Frost refrigerator to run from our solar electric system, and a larger LP tank so now we get it in bulk instead of exchanging cylilnders, and the cost is only a little more than as much. Well worth getting the big tank if you can.

-- Jim (jiminwis@yahoo.com), August 21, 1999.

I recently called a company by the name of Level Propane about getting a 500 gallon tank to supply my kitchen range and water heater. the person I spoke with said no way on the 500 gallon because a kitchen stove typically uses only 75 gallons a year, and a water heater uses 75 to 100. I said I'd call back.

Five minutes later I called and got another person on the line. I said I'd like to start getting gas from them for my stove and water heater. The girl asked me how big of a tank I'd like. I said, "As big as I can get." She said "How about 500 gallons?" I told her that sounded good to me.

It comes on september 9 and will cost me 59 cents a gallon. I'm currently paying around $2 a gallon. This company sells propane so cheap compared to other companies that everyone is wondering how they do it. Level Propane is a large company doing business in several states. I live in New York. Check it out if you want cheap propane. I have several friends who have gotten 1000 gallon tanks from them.

H Kimball

-- H Kimball (herrickkimball@sprintmail.com), August 21, 1999.

Mark : What ever you decide be sure and have the flame checked and adjusted if need be. Improper combustion is dangerous regardless how drafty the house is. Look for a blue flame with no yellow or white,but a professional opinion is best.

-- kevin (innxxs@yahoo.com), August 23, 1999.