Near Disaster Propane Refuel Experience

The tanks are standard BBQ propane tanks mounted upright. I would venture to say that while optimal tank placement and accessibility is something we expect out of today's modern campers, there are many of us with older camper designs where such thoughts were not given as much attention. For those of us in this category, we deal with what we have. The tanks on my Bigfoot 2500 10.6 are at eye level as they are placed on the side of the camper and sit just above the truck bed rails. I'm rather short at 5'6" but I still have easy access to service the tanks and change-over regulator without an issue. There isn't a need to have two people to fill the tanks on-board either, I was helping to hold part of the hose to be friendly, not because it was asked. The tanks on-board was not what caused the problem but rather a faulty valve on the tank that didn't seal and prevented the hose from being depressurized for disconnecting. It turned out this was an older valve that also didn't have the auto-stop feature now mandated and technically should have been replaced anyway.

Doing some research it appears that tank removal may stem more from the past when the tanks were weighed to figure out how full they were (apparently still practiced in some parts based off of posts here) and not necessarily because of safety concerns. Considering that there are RVs with permanently mounted tanks and even back in the day propane fueled cars, fueling tanks while on-board can be done safely if proper precautions are taken. That being said, in hind-sight of my own experience I may just have to lean more towards removal of the tank. As someone previously stated, if Murphy Law comes to play again then at least the truck and camper are not at risk.