Propane fill question
OK I am officially confused. I took one of my 40lb. propane cylinders out of my new RV to have it filled. A note on the door of the propane compartment said do not fill over 80%, could cause fire,e...
Forum Discussion
RinconVTR wrote:wnjj wrote:RinconVTR wrote:sato4000 wrote:
My RV dealer said he will fill up the propane 100 percent if you want.
Impossible.
For perspective...take a pressurized garden sprayer. Fill it to the brim, 100% filled. Then try to add air pressure and spray. You might get a drip of water, if your lucky.
Same principle here with LP tanks, but there are yet more reasons as to why 80% max fill is standard, and already mentioned.
The garden sprayer works nothing like your LP tank. With the garden sprayer, you need air that is compressible to store the pressure needed to push water out the hose.
LP boils at -44F so it wants to convert to gas and flow out of the hose, all by itself. There's no pressurized air helping to move the LP along.
The 80% is for thermal expansion.
I was hoping that when I started my post with "For perspective...", using the reference as only a crude example to help others understand 80% fill issue...would not be taken as a claim that pressurized water tanks are the very same as LP tank.
I didn't take it as a claim that the two are the same, only the claim that they worked the same. You used the words "same principle". That means the same theory of operation. I simply pointed out that a garden sprayer operates NOTHING LIKE an LP system. There's no more point is suggesting that overfilling a garden sprayer is "perspective" for an LP cylinder than overfilling a wheelbarrow is. The only thing they share is that both are some kind of liquid in some kind of container.
The reason for not filling the garden sprayer to 100% is a functionality one. The reason for not filling the LP to 100% is a safety one. They operate on completely different principles.
