Propane usage - expectations vs realities

[chorky]

I'd think it's the showers honestly, it's a 28k btu heater according to online. This is probably your biggest propane use.

We can cook for a few days on a single small green bottle on our double burner Coleman camp stove. The YouTubers mostly aren't showering every day or even every other day, and just cooking is very low use so they can easily get away with a single 5lb tank.

I suppose that might make sense. Do you by chance know the btu ratings of some of these
popular fireplaces? I have a hard time believing the water heater would burn through more lp than those.

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[bleda2002]

I suppose that might make sense. Do you by chance know the btu ratings of some of these
popular fireplaces? I have a hard time believing the water heater would burn through more lp than those.

The fireplaces definitely burn more, like way more, they're basically just massively inefficient use of propane. As the other guy said, he goes through 20 lbs in 3 day just for his fireplace.

I looked up some numbers and your heater is using about .3 gallons per hour so dishes and showers probably accounted for half or more of your propane use. By comparison a 10k btu jetboil uses .1 gallon per hour more or less and that's on full blast so for just cooking it can last for a lot of hours.

At the end of the day a gallon of propane is about 92k btus so you can basically just divide that by how many btus what you are using uses and that will tell you how many gallons per hour to run it.

 

[ttn333]

I suppose that might make sense. Do you by chance know the btu ratings of some of these
popular fireplaces? I have a hard time believing the water heater would burn through more lp than those.

Ignik has a 38k btu and 50k btu model. My lava box can go up to 280k btu.

 

[Blade1668]

One area to possibly use less propane is to use old white gas Coleman 2 burner stove but with a propane conversion BTW: this stove can work with filtered gasoline. With mine I finally used up a 1 lb bottle, I had used it for many days doing all my pan cooking. A Jet-Boil flash or other butane stove for coffee.

FYI I did have windows and doors open when I was using it.

 

[GrubbyBaja]

I'm pretty sure your 5 lb tank is 5lbs of propane at 80% full. When I was in college and working at a propane supplier, I would routinely fill 20, 30, and 100 lb tanks. I always filled them based on weight. We would weigh the empty tank then add the appropriate weight to the scale and fill until the scale balanced.

 

[chorky]

The fireplaces definitely burn more, like way more, they're basically just massively inefficient use of propane. As the other guy said, he goes through 20 lbs in 3 day just for his fireplace.

I looked up some numbers and your heater is using about .3 gallons per hour so dishes and showers probably accounted for half or more of your propane use. By comparison a 10k btu jetboil uses .1 gallon per hour more or less and that's on full blast so for just cooking it can last for a lot of hours.

At the end of the day a gallon of propane is about 92k btus so you can basically just divide that by how many btus what you are using uses and that will tell you how many gallons per hour to run it.

That's a good way to look at it thank you. I will have to covert the .3 gallons per hour to gallons per minute (0.005) and add up the estimated number of minutes per day of each item used to see if that also is consistent with what usage I saw over the 8 days. But I like redundancy like that to verify initial calculations. Either way it looks like I will be getting a larger tank, which also means a larger bracket and re-doing that - hopefully there is enough room in the current spot for this.

ered gasoline. With mine I finally used up a 1 lb bottle, I had used it for many days doing all my pan cooking. A Jet-Boil flash or other but

Yeah I had a larger stove, but the jetfoil folds up and fits perfectly in the spot I have available for it. thats cool they have conversion kits for those older stoves though

 

[Blade1668]

Yeah I had a larger stove, but the jetfoil folds up and fits perfectly in the spot I have available for it. thats cool they have conversion kits for those older stoves though
[/QUOQUOTE

Very understandable, my first camping stove was a U.S. Army alcohol stove and Esbit folding one. I have 3 Coleman single burners second one due to how much of PTA to ship when I PCS to Germany in 95. Number 3 to have easy ready supply of fuel "JP8" dual fuel stove. Weekly supply from fuel filter on Humvee part of P.M.C.S. of vehicle. During deployment. My backpacking stove became Jet-Boil flash. On #2, first got stolen when my Wrangler was stripped in GA. Became "keep in Wrangler, ready to go" use. I bought quite a stock pile of fuel for them when only $2-3 or $5-6 big tanks. Heck I've got a gal of "Coleman fuel" that's probably 20 years old.

 

[Mister Lamb]

There is only one man who can answer this question with 100% certainty:

 

[chorky]

I have decided to swop out the 5 pound for a 10 pound. I will use the 5 pound in my TJ for shorter trips.

 

[MPMB]

Work the calculations from the other direction. How much do you *need* to run your appliances.

I've worked propane and electrical numbers for our trips and the math never works out because things are less efficient than we hope. lol.

According to the Internet, 1 gallon of propane holds 91,000BTUs. A full 5 gallons is 455,000BTUs, so you're left with 56,000/day for camping trips.

Figure how efficient the appliances are, or assume an 80% level. Leaks are unlikely, you'd smell it at some point.

We used to use the 1lb bottles, but we upgraded to an Everest stove that runs two 20k BTU burners and some trips I take a Blackstone grill & the propane fire pit. We take the big BBQ tank (I think I have 4 or 5 to chose from).

I had an on-demand water heater hooked up to my wife's Pinterest pool (8' stock tank). One 20# tank could heat ~700gal from over 70* to 100*. Rough figures; I know we broke 100*, not positive on the starting temp.

 

[Jteakus]

I went to “The Man”

 

[biplaneguy]

Note that those BTU ratings for the stove and water heater are BTU/hour. Propane as @MPMB said is 91,000 BTU/gallon. So a 5 gallon tank would run that 28000 B/hr water heater continuously for 16.25 hours, or the 10KBTU Jetboil for 45.5 hours. Algebra to determine combined usage is left as an exercise for the student.

One BTU is defined as the amount of energy (heat) required to raise one pound of water one degree Fahrenheit. Thus to heat 10 gallons (80 lbs) of water from, say, 60° to 120° requires 4800 BTU or 0.05 gallons... say 0.07 gallons assuming the heater is 80% efficient.

One other thing to keep in mind is that propane cools as it's drawn from the tank. If you use it too fast, especially in cold weather, the tank may cool enough (ever see moisture or frost on the outside of a propane tank?) that the pressure drops and the appliances running off of it may have reduced performance or not operate at all if it gets cold enough. The larger the tank, the less of an issue this is.

 

[MPMB]

One other thing to keep in mind is that propane cools as it's drawn from the tank. If you use it too fast, especially in cold weather, the tank may cool enough (ever see moisture or frost on the outside of a propane tank?) that the pressure drops and the appliances running off of it may have reduced performance or not operate at all if it gets cold enough. The larger the tank, the less of an issue this is.

Also, keep the tank upright. I had laid my tank down so the tonneau would fit and tried to run a stove off it. Froze the line, so that didn't work. And of course the higher the altitude, the longer it takes.

 

[kb5zcr]

I use a dual fuel Coleman stove for all my cooking. Had it over a decade now. Works great and I always have gas cans with me.
I wonder if one could rig up a water heater using one of those diesel camp heaters that are so popular these days.

 

[smlobx]

…..And of course the higher the altitude, the longer it takes.

Up to a point. Above about 9500 -10,000 feet ASL there is not enough atmospheric pressure to operate the valves correctly. We camped at Little Molas Lake just South of Silverton, CO 2 years ago and I think the elevation was right at 11,000 feet and we couldn’t get the stove to light. We ended up eating PB&J’s for dinner. Once we got down from there everything returned to normal.

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