westend wrote:
DutchmenSport wrote:
...
...I'm up here in MN and have NEVER seen a meter freeze up. I have seen water in propane supply piping freeze, it is rare...
The one time I dealt with a frozen meter was in Cicero, Indiana, (several years ago) the church we were attending at that time. Outside temps were about 10 below (F) and it as a Sunday night for evening service. The meter was frozen up. When we showed up for service, they guys of the church had built a makeshift tent around the meter, and were taking turns with hair blowers and electric heaters trying to get the gas to flow.
Another church we were associated with in Ohio, (that was another life-time ago too), had a rental property. An elderly woman lived in the house and temps were quit cold that night also. The call went out to all the guys in the church that could help help, so I went. The meter and/or lines were frozen, and here again folks were trying rather unique ways to get it unfrozen. I wasn't much help, more in the way than anything (I was much younger then), but at least some of the ladies of the church brought out some hot chocolate and coffee, so over all, in spite of freezing our keesters off, we had a pretty good time! I remember lots of laughing more than blistery cold!
A few years ago, I had problems one winter with my own camper. I had 2 full propane tanks, and wanted to fire up the furnace in the camper. Temps WERE 20 below zero (F) and I could not get the furnace to fire. I figured the regulator froze up. I think it was several months later, when filling up one of my tanks, I was chit-chatting with the old-timer that filled my bottle. He said, probably, the temperatures were so cold, the propane tank simply lost it's pressure. In other words, the opposite of what one would expect if the the tanks got hotter and hotter and hotter, expanding the gas to the point of explosion. In this case, the gas might have contracted enough, it simply did not have any pressure. I had a hard time swallowing that one. But then he did say, the regulator could have frozen up.
We were at the KOA in Jeffersonville, Indiana (North of Louisville, KY) and they had a number of permanent campers, with the 100 pound propane tanks, some had 2 - 100 pounders. I talked to the owner of the campground and she said it was quite common for the winter residents to have their propane lines frozen. In the winter, they take extra precaution ... AFTER they've experienced a frozen line or regulator. She said, they receive phone calls in the middle of the night asking for help, which they always attempt to do.
You may be right on one thing though. It might be water in the lines that's causing the freeze, or water in the regulator that causing the freeze. That would explain it. But still, it does happen.
