Ahoy All, For what it's worth, my two galley propane tanks have lived under the (open) companionway ladder down into the galley for the past 30 years.
They are completely protected from the weather, are in plain sight for easy inspection, and any leakage can be noticed by people quickly as this passageway is in frequent use. Although I have never had a leak, I believe any leaks I might develop will be readily apparent. The nearest source of ignition is the galley range, a about eight feet away and three feet above the floor. I have never had any problems with them. I also have a oxy/propane set in Jan's shop for her jewelry work, oxy/acetylene in my shop, a 30 lb propane in the laundry room for the clothes dryer and a pair of aluminum propane tanks in the wheelhouse for the grill. All but the galley tanks are shut off when not in use. I don't fear any of the above. Perhaps there just isn't a problem. The Coast Guard has told me they have no rules regarding the carriage of propane on pleasure boats. However, I do store the little one pound bottles I use with my propane torch in the deck locker all the way aft because these I have known to leak. Whenever I am finished with using one I unscrew the torch and listen carefully to the valve. Often they are leaking (I have been told it is because of ice in the valve). I stick a object (a chopstick) into the valve to clear it until it stops leaking - but I don't trust them so they are stored outside in the aft locker with the spare galley tanks. The only propane explosion I know the details of happened on a bare-boat charter sailboat in Italy. The outgoing crew changed the propane tank the day they left as a courtesy to the incoming crew. The crewman involved hand-tightened the connection but did not snug it up with a wrench. The tank was in a locker aft made for propane but the propane line was not gas tight through the locker wall. The incoming cook turned on the propane at the bottle to make breakfast in the morning and began cooking. The propane escaped the bottle at the un-tightened connection, filled the propane locker, flowed through the gap between the propane line and the propane locker, then slowly filled the lazarette and engine compartment. When it reached the galley stove it ignited and blew the bulkhead forward. The cook was severely injured but survived. The rest of the crew had less severe injuries but nobody escaped unharmed. All the propane tank explosions I know of were caused by their relief valves being too small to keep up with the gassing off when the tank itself was subjected to a fierce external fire. When the relief valves were of sufficient size and the other openings (fill and drain connections) were properly designed, explosive failure of the tank did not occur. A collision between a ship and a propane barge on the Mississippi River comes to mind. A down-bound ship found itself unable to turn to the right, apparently do to a defective installation in a Spanish shipyard (non-redundancy of steering signals from bridge to steering engine to avoid cost of running wires) of some otherwise high quality steering gear. Primary cause was said to be a blown fuse on the power supply. The ship hit the barge (which was tied to a dock) and a large fire resulted. The ship was, by then, turning Full Astern and ended up backing into the mud upstream from the propane dock and stayed there until all the fires were out. The American Mississippi River pilot was credited with saving several lives by sounding the danger signal on the ship's whistle seconds before the collision. He then dove overboard. Two men on the dock catwalk heard it and ran safely ashore, several crew on a tug tied up on the inside of the T-dock dove into the river and escaped (with some burns) and one man of a deck gang on the ship recognized what the danger signal meant and instantly fled into the ship's interior (his slower companions all perished). The (rather large) propane tanks on the barge that were not breached by the initial impact of the ship's bow were all recovered intact with their propane load still inside them. The relief valves were of sufficient size to allow the propane to gas-off without over-pressurizing the tanks when heated by the fire from the breached tanks, while the fill/drain openings had safety valves built in that kept the propane in the tank with the external valves broken off. (BTW, I just finished replacing the in-tank fuel pump in Jan's daughter's Ford Explorer and discovered that (plastic) tank also had a similar check valve [with a very light spring] where the fill hose connects to the tank, apparently to prevent fuel from gushing out if the fill hose is torn off in a wreck or otherwise fails.) As for attaching propane tanks to the aft rail (and I assume the tanks are aluminum) I would consider welding brackets onto the tanks and u-bolt the brackets to the rail. As for welding heat, remember the combustion triangle and there is no oxygen in the tank. One could remove the tank's valve and ventilate the tank with an air hose while welding, but I have found that these valves are installed using a Lock-Tite type product and are very difficult (yet doable with enough persistence!) to remove. Norm S/V Bandersnatch Lying Julington Creek FL 30 23.8N 081 25.7W _______________________________________________ Liveaboard mailing list Liveaboard@liveaboardonline.com To adjust your membership settings over the web http://liveaboardonline.com/mailman/listinfo/liveaboard To subscribe send an email to liveaboard-j...@liveaboardonline.com To unsubscribe send an email to liveaboard-le...@liveaboardonline.com The archives are at http://www.liveaboardonline.com/pipermail/liveaboard/ To search the archives http://www.mail-archive.com/liveaboard@liveaboardnow.org The Mailman Users Guide can be found here http://www.gnu.org/software/mailman/mailman-member/index.html
