63# Propane Last......?

For summer use I get almost 2 full months out of a standard 20# propane tank. That would include cooking and running the hot water heater about 20 minutes/day for showers. Use of the furnace changes everything rapidly. For say 70 degree days and 40 degree nights, I set the furnace to a low temperature at night. It will run a few minutes each hour. In the morning I will run it for 15 minutes to warm up. Along with everything else that sort of use will bring me to about 1 month per propane tank. If night time temps are at 20-30 degrees or lower, the furnace will run through a tank pretty quickly...in about 2 weeks.

sullivanclan wrote:
Typically how many days does a 63# propane tank last on a small class c motorhome?

The only unscientific test I ever did was this:

With both tanks full, 20 degree nights, hot water heater on, I can blast the heater all night long for 5 nights. I learned the hard way I can't go 6 nights.

That helps a lot, thanks !

If your RV usage and needs while camping remain about the same as in the TC, then triple the life of the 20# bottle should be in the ballpark for your Class C. Anyone else's LP usage experiences is only useful in very general terms.

A pound of propane provides about 21,500 BTUs; call it 20K BTU for ease of estimation. Appliance burners are rated in BTU per hour (though they often just call it BTU for some reason), so a little math can give you some reasonable answers.

A large range burner in an RV is often 9000 BTU; two and a bit hours on high use a pound of propane. The range is not likely to be a big consideration for propane use overall.

The fridge burner runs most of the time, and is around 1000 BTU as I recall; figure a pound a day and you're probably as close as you'll come for a general rule. It does depend on how warm the ambient temperature is and how frequently you open the fridge door and so forth, of course.

An RV water heater is perhaps 12,000 BTU, so an hour and a half or so of run time would use a pound of propane. That might be about a pound a day if you take a shower or two and wash dishes etc.

Furnace sizes vary, but 30,000 is not unreasonable. That's 1 pound every 40 minutes of furnace operating time. Propane usage goes way, way up in the winter.

No idea on a propane generator, except that it's not very miserly. A gasoline or diesel generator is in many ways more practical since it draws from the large main fuel tank for the motorhome.

The fridge typically uses somewhere around a pound a day, give or take. (There is quite a bit of give or take, of course, depending on how hot it is outside and how frequently you open the fridge door and so forth.)

Edit: Removed redundant leftover text from first draft of original posting.

Lots of good information, sorry I didn't provide better detail. Our first class C, our last rig was a truck camper with a 20# tank, that I filled about every three months, camping two weekends a month, usually just using it for the fridge, hot water heater and simple cooking on stove. Just wasn't sure what to expect in a class c during the summer for the fridge, hot water and stove. I guess time will tell!

mowermech wrote:
IMO, that is like asking "How long is a rope?"
It is, quite simply, an unanswerable question!
How many meals will you be cooking per day? Will you be baking anything? How much hot water will you use? Do you practice water conservation? Will you need to use the furnace? Will you have full hookups, or will the frig be running on gas?
Personally, I have never run a motorhome propane tank empty. But, that's me. "Your Mileage May Vary"!

Amen. Here's your sign.

Our Class C has a 56# propane tank. Before the start of our seasonal stay (May 1st), we had it filled. We have run the furnace about 5 times overnight (from about 10pm - 7am) when we had some overnight lows in the 40s and a few times in the morning. We use the oven a lot, probably 4 - 5 times a week about 20 - 30 minutes at a time. We also use the stove a few times a week. All other cooking is outside using a 20# propane canister. We also lost power for 5 days after a storm so the refrigerator and hot water heater ran on propane for those 5 days.

Right now we have 1/4 tank of propane. That should last us the rest of our stay here (end of August) and the rest of the summer and fall. When we start winter camping we'll have to fill it again. If we didn't need to run the furnace, we'd have a lot more propane still. Running the furnace will exhaust 60# of propane quickly.

When we bought our previous RV we were told that running the furnace and hot water heater burn about 1# per hour. Once the hot water is hot, keeping it hot doesn't take a lot of propane, however we keep our hot water heater on electric because we don't want to have to unhook and drive somewhere to have the propane tank filled.

When we first bought our Class C it had a full tank of propane. We bought it end of April. When we first had the tank filled 15 months later, there was about 1/4 tank of propane in it. We did not use the furnace during that 15 month period.

-Michael

Picked up the Sahara last November, the gauge read 3/4. Ran the heat and the LP generator for a total of 3 hours over the winter, took 5 trips already this year, some using the heat in the morning. I run the generator before each trip to run the A/C to cool the bus down, probably 30 minutes. We do use some propane for cooking, but the majority is done on a gas grill that has it's own fuel.

Gauge now reads btw 1/4 and 1/2.

Had the previous motor home for 2 years - never filled the propane.

IMO, that is like asking "How long is a rope?"
It is, quite simply, an unanswerable question!
How many meals will you be cooking per day? Will you be baking anything? How much hot water will you use? Do you practice water conservation? Will you need to use the furnace? Will you have full hookups, or will the frig be running on gas?
Personally, I have never run a motorhome propane tank empty. But, that's me. "Your Mileage May Vary"!