Ever since I built the Secret Lair the kitchen stove has operated on one small propane bottle. And it never fails…
It simply never fails. The pressure never fails on a mild, dry winter morning. No.
It invariably gets me out in this.
Yesterday it snowed and snowed – and the snow couldn’t decide if it wanted to melt or freeze solid. Overnight it made up its mind, so it wasn’t so much replace the propane bottle as chip out the propane bottle and then replace it. Ditto the wrench, which was buried under all the ice on the shelf above the bottle (which was one of my better ideas, BTW.) And get it done before your fingers freeze. Then you can go in and make your coffee. After you remember to re-light the oven pilot.
Yeah – come Spring I need to rearrange a few things and get another of those bypass regulators for the kitchen propane.
I keep telling you…Murphy was an optimist
And that happens because the colder it gets the larger a surface area of fuel in the tank you need for there to be sufficient evaporation to sustain flow. Here in Maine you can’t get away with anything less than one of those chubby 100 gallon tanks to keep a propane stove going.
Perhaps a somewhat larger “shelf” would be in order? Shelf-2.0?
Already in the plan. I knocked those together from some 1X12 scrap in 2018, and the lumber wasn’t meant for outdoors. It’ll need to be replaced/improved next year.
That wrench thing was a bit of an oversite, Place it on a hook just inside the nearest doorway where it will stay warm to the touch and be easily found.
It seems to me that all you need is a tee and enough pipe to hook your stove to the bypass regulator that you already have. Yes, you would have to change tanks more often, but you would be able to do it at a time of your own choice.
I like switchover regulators, and putting the propane tanks in smallish cabinets. Those regulators have check valves, so I can refill the empty (takes an hour) without disturbing the heater.
The second time I did a dual-tank setup, I made the cabinet big enough to hold a couple spare tanks. If the weather’s too vile, I can wait a while before refilling one.
Kentucky… I’m not thinking “shelf 2.0, as much as “roof” Like a dog house. Propane sinks – it is heavier than air, so there is no worries about it collecting under a roof. It’s one of the reasons I don’t have propane. I have a basement, where a leak would concentrate it in the sump, waiting for the pump to come on and ignite it.
If you have propane on a boat, and there is a fire, the Coast Guard won’t approach your vessel, you need to abandon ship and get to them. It is that explosive.
One of our cabinets is quite open to the bottom, and the other is good for a slow leak. We’re in snow country, and wrestling 40# and 50# pounder tanks is bad enough without the white stuff everywhere.
ZD, my point was that if the shelf were just a little bigger it would shelter the bottles a little better. I was NOT suggesting a complete enclosure. If Joel decides to build more complex protection for the bottles it’s certainly OK with me. And I’m fully aware of the characteristics of propane/LP, and wouldn’t think of totally enclosing the bottles.