Kevin Standlee (kevin_standlee) wrote,
Kevin Standlee
kevin_standlee

It's a Gas

We took things fairly easy today. Because the weather was so nice (a high of 12° C seems positively tropical), we did deal with one outside chore: installing the new propane gas hose on the travel trailer. This was more difficult than I thought it would be. First, the replacement hose is five inches longer than the one it is replacing (we couldn't get anything shorter), which means finding a way to loop the hose around to use up the extra length without kinking it or preventing putting the propane bottle cover back on the trailer. Second, and more seriously, you have to get the fitting very tight so there are no propane leaks.

I held a wrench on the regulator while Lisa tightened the fitting. How to test for a leak in the fitting: hold a match near the fitting dribble dish soap onto the fitting and look for bubbles. Every time it seemed like the fitting could be no tighter, there were still a few bubbles in the soap. Finally, after several additional tightening attempts, there were no bubbles and Lisa pronounced herself satisfied with the replacement.

The trailer has two seven-gallon propane bottles. Because of the cold weather, Lisa is using the gas furnace in the trailer a lot, and it's also what runs the stove for cooking. Furthermore, as the electrical part of the refrigerator has stopped working (again) but the propane version is working, that's even more gas being burned. As I mentioned yesterday, normally you want to have both bottles running with a "failover" valve in the regulator that swaps bottles automatically when one is empty. In weather like this you check the valve daily. If it shows red, that means one bottle is empty and you replace it with a full bottle, then move the valve over to the other bottle so that it swaps the other way. In our case, we then roll the empty bottle down to Hanneman's Service and buy seven more gallons of propane. This time of year, we're regulars at their place, and they've been very nice to us, including fixing the tires on our hand cart when they went flat.
Tags: fernley, house, lisa, propane, trailer
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