owning propane tanks in New Hampshire

[Dan Lanciani]

I'm trying to get a pair of customer-owned 1000 gallon underground
propane tanks installed in New Hampshire. I had talked to a couple
of propane dealers who would supposedly do the job but they just faded
away. (They obviously preferred to rent the tanks to me. I wish they
had said up front that they wouldn't do the job rather than stringing
me along and disappearing...) The general contractor thought he could
buy the tanks but found that it has to be done through a propane
distributor. Can anybody recommend a propane company in New Hampshire
that is friendly to (or at least not seriously hostile to) customer-owned
tanks?

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com

 

[Dan Lanciani]

|
| >I'm trying to get a pair of customer-owned 1000 gallon underground
| >propane tanks installed in New Hampshire. I had talked to a couple
| >of propane dealers who would supposedly do the job but they just faded
| >away. (They obviously preferred to rent the tanks to me. I wish they
| >had said up front that they wouldn't do the job rather than stringing
| >me along and disappearing...) The general contractor thought he could
| >buy the tanks but found that it has to be done through a propane
| >distributor. Can anybody recommend a propane company in New Hampshire
| >that is friendly to (or at least not seriously hostile to) customer-owned
| >tanks?
| >Dan Lanciani
|
|
| ... underground.
| Might be the problem ?

I don't think so; they were happy to _rent_ me underground tanks. One
place even has a page on their web sight about how nice these are for
locations where an above-ground tank would be ugly... But if that is
the sticking point I'll give in and go with above ground.

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com

 

[Larry]

I'm trying to get a pair of customer-owned 1000 gallon underground
propane tanks installed in New Hampshire. I had talked to a couple
of propane dealers who would supposedly do the job but they just faded
away. (They obviously preferred to rent the tanks to me. I wish they
had said up front that they wouldn't do the job rather than stringing
me along and disappearing...) The general contractor thought he could
buy the tanks but found that it has to be done through a propane
distributor. Can anybody recommend a propane company in New Hampshire
that is friendly to (or at least not seriously hostile to) customer-owned
tanks?

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com

This sort of question would probably go better at city-data.com in the
New Hampshire forum.

 

[Shawn Hirn]

This sort of question would probably go better at city-data.com in the
New Hampshire forum.

Or the OP can just ask his neighbors.

 

[enigma]

ddl@danlan.*com (Dan Lanciani) wrote in

I'm trying to get a pair of customer-owned 1000 gallon underground
propane tanks installed in New Hampshire.

try nh.general, but don't expect much. i don't know anyone that owns
their tanks. i suspect that the EPA frowns on underground tanks, or at
least underground oil tanks are not allowed. and why do you need *2*
1000 gallon tanks anyway?
lee

 

[vaughn]

i suspect that the EPA frowns on underground tanks,

I don't know about what regulations apply here, but leakage of LP gas is far
less of a danger than leakage of diesel. Propane tends to find its way into the
atmosphere, not the ground water. It's for exactly this reason that I used to
specify LP generators rather than diesel for my (then) employer's
installations. Especially the one that was right next to the settling basin for
the city's water plant!

Vaughn

 

[Dan Lanciani]

| I see no one has answered your question.



| I own a buried propane tank
| in NH, but I did not do the installation. It was done years ago and,
| although the propane company thought they owned it, they did not have
| any documentation. Since I did not want to pay the yearly rental, as
| I would be using far less than one tank full per year, they decided to
| just transfer ownership to me.

Lucky you.

| The tank was originally used to fuel a 400,000 btu heater for an
| inground pool. However, we do not use the pool or the heater. I use
| it solely to fuel a backup generator. Unless we have a long power
| outage (which does occur some years), my annual usage is minimal.

I expect heavy usage--it's a big old house and my plans to insulate
will take a while to implement. I'm also getting a generator (thinking
of a Kohler 15RES) but I don't have any experience with power reliability
in the area.

| As I recall, when I was dealing with all this, there was a firm in
| Nashua who did installations, but I can't recall their name. I had
| the "line work" from the propane tank to the generator done by Energy
| North Propane.

Interesting; they were the first ones I called. They were good initially
when I told them I wanted two 1000 gallon underground tanks. Said they
would put them in and "light up my appliances" all at no charge to me.
But when I said that I wanted to own the tanks things got a little more
complicated and I had to talk to somebody else. He quoted the price of
the tanks themselves at $3900 each but he didn't think I should buy them.
We got as far as a sight visit, but I think he still thought that I would
give in and rent.

I explained that I wanted a remote level readout with alarm contacts for my
computer. He kept talking about how I could access my level over the Internet
from their server and how they could program their "modem" to dial me or
something like that. I said that I was talking about a readout that was
completely local and did not depend on their service at all. I gave him
a copy of the Taylor catalog with the appropriate product highlighted. He
was supposed to get back to me with a quote for the whole job but nothing
happened and I realized that he hadn't even given me a card or contact
information.

If this is really such a big problem these days I'll go with oil in
(obviously) above-ground tanks and a diesel generator. Not sure what
I'll do about the stove.

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com

 

[David Lesher]

I explained that I wanted a remote level readout with alarm contacts for my
computer. He kept talking about how I could access my level over the Internet
from their server and how they could program their "modem" to dial me or
something like that. I said that I was talking about a readout that was
completely local and did not depend on their service at all. I gave him
a copy of the Taylor catalog with the appropriate product highlighted.

Oh? I've been seeking that myself. Everything I found was dealer-focused,
needed a cell phone connection, etc. I'd like to know what you found.

 

[Dan Lanciani]

| ddl@danlan.*com (Dan Lanciani) writes:
|
|
| >I explained that I wanted a remote level readout with alarm contacts for my
| >computer. He kept talking about how I could access my level over the Internet
| >from their server and how they could program their "modem" to dial me or
| >something like that. I said that I was talking about a readout that was
| >completely local and did not depend on their service at all. I gave him
| >a copy of the Taylor catalog with the appropriate product highlighted.
|
| Oh? I've been seeking that myself. Everything I found was dealer-focused,
| needed a cell phone connection, etc. I'd like to know what you found.

The dealers are very focused on dealer-focused solutions.

See here:

http://www.squibbtaylor.com/subfiles/taylorcatalog.pdf

The 136619 is the nice (but expensive) one with aux contacts. The
136617/136618 is much cheaper and appears to fit more gauges, but
no contacts.

Dan Lanciani
ddl@danlan.*com

 

[David Lesher]

| Oh? I've been seeking that myself. Everything I found was dealer-focused,
| needed a cell phone connection, etc. I'd like to know what you found.

The dealers are very focused on dealer-focused solutions.

And gievn there's no cell service there.....

See here:

The 136619 is the nice (but expensive) one with aux contacts. The
136617/136618 is much cheaper and appears to fit more gauges, but
no contacts.

I found this <http://www.rochestergauges.com/pages/PDFs/R3DReedSwitch.pdf>
earlier.

 

[enigma]

m:

High winds blow down trees, causing local outages that they
usually fix in a few hours. Maybe once a decade a winter ice storm
can take out power for a week.

which perfectly explains why we were without power for 9 days in 08 &
7 days in 09... and rates have increased nearly 14% because they didn't
have insurance for ice (it cost too much) or crews to trim trees by the
lines and now have to pay the crews that were imported to fix their
stupid mistakes...
at any rate, i have an old house & it works just fine when the power
is out, so it's only an issue when i've got chicks in incubators (but
that gives me priority when they restore power).
lee