"Wayne B" wrote in message
...

On Thu, 21 Feb 2013 15:36:15 -0500, "Eisboch" wrote:

That's the only problem with propane. You really can't shop for
competitive pricing ... at least not in my state .... because only
the
supplier who installed the tanks can fill them.

===

Is that state law? Sounds like restraint of trade to me. Someone
should challenge it in court.

==========================

I really don't know if it's a state law or just a policy of the
propane suppliers. I am sure the concern is liability.

To the best of my knowledge the same is (or was) true in Florida. We
had a propane powered spa heater in one of the houses down there and
when I called a supplier to fill it he told me he couldn't unless he
installed a tank provided by him. I've never investigated buying our
own tanks as Harry mentioned but again, we really don't use enough
propane up here to make it an issue.

I had a friend who lived on Long Island who installed a propane heater
for his pool and then regretted it as he watched his tank being filled
weekly.
When we put our pool in here in MA, I went for an electric heater.
It's big (150,000 BTU heat pump) but we only use it to initially get
the water temp up in the spring and then later in the fall to extend
the pool use a bit. Most of the time it is off.

When they were putting the pool in, the electrical contractor was
trying to sell us a whole house, propane powered generator. He said
we could tie it into the 100 gallon tank we have for the garage
heater. He ran all the wiring for it but, after thinking about it,
I elected to hold off on it. That was 7 years ago. The number of
times we have been without power for any extended period of time in
the last 7 years just doesn't justify the cost of a huge generator
like that, plus it would also go through propane fast.

The longest period we've gone without power was for 3 days and that
was two weeks ago during the "blizzard". Even if we had the big
generator, we would not have been able to get more propane for it if
it ran low because nobody could drive anywhere due to the fallen trees
and power lines. We got by fine using the little Honda EU2000i. I
ran power to a refrigerator, a couple of lights and to the furnace.
The little generator worked great and It used a total of about 6
gallons of gasoline over the 3 day period. The furnace, circulating
pump and a couple of booster fans only draws 5.6 amps according to my
clamp-on ammeter. A refrigerator only draws 2 amps or less in normal
operation (compressor only). The little Honda maxes out at about
13.4 amps (continuous duty and a peak of 16.7 amps for starting
currents, etc.) so it had no problem running a refrigerator and a
couple of those new type lights. The only time it was really loaded
was when the refrigerator went into a defrost cycle when the refrig
draws about 6 amps, but that only happens once a day. If I noticed
it, I just unplugged the furnace for that period of time. Most of the
time it ran at the low RPM (Eco mode) level. It would run for 9
hours on a fill-up of a gallon of gas.

I also just found out that you can purchase a special fuel cap for it
that allows you to connect it to an auxiliary fuel tank (looks like a
fuel tank for a small outboard motor). That would give you a six
gallon capacity and it could run continuously for days.