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Don Foreman Don Foreman is offline
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Default OT plumbing together two 20 lb. propane tanks?

On Mon, 4 Jan 2010 01:29:42 -0600, "William Wixon"
wrote:

is this possible? plumbing together two 20 lb. propane tanks? i've got a
propane heater in my workshop, it draws too much propane for one 20 lb.
tank, freezes the propane. i was wondering if i plumbed two together if i'd
be able to get enough gas to run the heater. is this stupid? do people do
this? was wondering if they were plumbed together should it be before or
after the regulator(s)? wondering if that's even possible, to have two
separate regulators on two separate tanks running one heater. i don't want
to get a larger tank, i've collected about 6 - 20 lb. tanks, i don't want to
have to buy or rent a larger tank. (100 lb.?) i usually use propane for
quick heat, warm up the shop until i get the wood stove fired up and making
heat, then i turn off the propane heater so i'm not running propane
continuously, maybe 1/2 hour.

b.w.

Manifolding multiple small tanks should work OK. I'd do it upstream
of the regulator. Tanks manifolded together would then be similar to
a larger tank. Boil rates in each tank would be similar because
they're at equal pressure, so the boil rate in each of two 20-lb tanks
would be half that of a 40-lb tank serving the same demand, and so on.
A problem with manifolding downstream of regulators is that the
regulators would need to be set to the exact same pressure. If they
weren't, the highest pressure reg would dominate until the tank
feeding it freezes enough so it can't meet delivery pressure setpoint.