Forum Discussion

dirtyhandz's avatar
dirtyhandz
Explorer
Jul 13, 2017

Switch to vertical propane tanks

Anybody switch to regular 20 pound vertical tanks from the horizontal ones?
My Lance 915 uses the horizontal tanks which are something of a pain to get in and out to fill and pretty expensive to replace. And I've got one that needs replaced....
Was thinking of using the readily available less expensive vertical tanks and figured it couldnt be an original idea, someone has had to do it already.
Just havnt found a place to fit them in yet....
Any thoughts will be appreciated!
Thanks!

11 Replies

  • My old (sold) Lance had the lay down bottles (Manchester) as well. Never had an issue with them but I always considered them to be a bit of an oddity. You cannot exchange them, no one has lay down bottles to exchange and yes, replacement is expensive. Problem with converting to vertical is where do you put them. The storage area for a lay down bottle is smaller height wise, Probably the driving force in a lay down bottle, they take up less room in a TC, where room is already at a premium.

    I guess if you were real industrious (pun intended), you could convert to a Hi-Lo style propane bottle (which are exchangeable) and are lay down bottles and are usually 50 pound bottles so a single Hi-Lo lay down bottle will have 2 times the LP capacity of the lay down (lance style, Manchester) bottles, and, the industrial hi-lo bottles are aluminum, not steel, so, they are lighter weight.

    Unlike RV lay down bottles, Hi-Lo bottles can be used in either a vertical or horizontal position. However, I'm not sure if the deliver liquid or gas propane and if they deliver liquid, you'd need a liquid to vapor manifold in line as your appliances all run on vapor, not liquid. Hi-Lo engines have an induction system that takes liquid propane and vaporizes it.