It has been a long journey but I think I am nearing the end. I have secured a 500 gallon propane tank thanks to a huge favor by someone in the propane industry. Very nice tank. So I now have a 500 gallon tank and a 250 gallon tank. I have a guy ready to do my welding. He is going to make the saddles and we are going to put the 250 on top. Can someone please tell me what he will need to do to connect these tanks and get me set up so they are ready for the plumber?
Help setting up my storage
- Thread starter Birdman
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stee6043
Minister of Fire
Do you already have a plumber lined up? You may want to ask him what connections he wants. Some people plumb tanks in parallel, some in series, some plumb them for extra connections, some don't. Some folks plumb with dip tubes for return, others will plumb with connections on the bottoms. Many options!
Nofossil
Moderator Emeritus
Birdman said:
I assume that you mean 'pipe size'. There's some benefit to using pretty large plumbing near the storage tanks to reduce water velocity and turbulence inside the tanks. 2" is nice if you can do it.
Looking at the sticky " Simplest Pressurized Solutions" I notice the tanks are connected and the hot water comes out on one side and the cold water returns on one side. Are those the only connections I need? How do the tanks get charged with hot water?
Nofossil
Moderator Emeritus
Birdman said:
This is a topic about which much has been written. Conventional wisdom is that stratification is good - the more the better. A layer of very hot water on top of a layer of cool water (in storage) is a whole lot more useful than a whole tank of lukewarm water.
For that reason, the 'simplest pressurized storage' design provides top-to-bottom flow when charging storage, and bottom-to-top flow when drawing heat from storage. IMHO, this is pretty important to get the most out of storage.
Other designs use other techniques to get the same effect.
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