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Comment by yellowait44 | Hacker News Reader

LPG or Propane is awesome down until -42 celsius. Then it’s basically useless as it won’t vaporize. Live in Quebec too and my backup is a dual fuel generator. Propane and then regular fuel if it’s too cold or I’m out of propane. Never too careful!

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You do have us on the regular fuel backup :) don't have that but we also don't have a backup generator in general. I wanted to last time we had a >12 hour outage but couldn't get the expense approved by the "finance minister" (i.e. the SO). When the electricity goes out for more than an hour or so the neighborhood is suddenly very loud though coz several next door neighbors go and bring out their generators so I'm not too worried about our survival and there's always the firewood pile in the backyard.

It doesn't have to be useless. It could have a way to keep the tank warm.

Edit: Downvote? I really want to know why you disagree, please respond! What am I missing?

I haven't downvoted you, but it's perhaps because the LPG tank is usually outside with a rather large surface area, so if -40 degree days are rare, insulating the tanks and providing a heater might not be very cost-effective vs. having multiple fuel jets in your burner for multiple viscosity fuels.

Also, either the "way to keep the tank warm" would probably be an electric heater (which would fail in these corner cases) or else a small burner... next to your tank of highly flammable gas with lots of no-smoking signs around.

Though, I would guess in colder climates, if you really wanted to use LPG, you could put an electric fuel pump in your tank (so it doesn't rely on vapour pressure to feed) and have a burner that pre-warms the fuel and includes a small electric heater for starting.

> it's perhaps because the LPG tank is usually outside with a rather large surface area, so if -40 degree days are rare, insulating the tanks and providing a heater might not be very cost-effective vs. having multiple fuel jets in your burner for multiple viscosity fuels.

It's more or less a one-time cost and you might want the simplicity. Tradeoffs rather than it being inevitable.

And multiple fuel jets aren't enough. If you can't depend on the propane, then you need a lot of backup fuel.

> small burner... next to your tank of highly flammable gas with lots of no-smoking signs around.

You have fire that's not very far anyway. It's not hard for an expert to design something that's safe, since you don't need all that much heat.

> Though, I would guess in colder climates, if you really wanted to use LPG, you could put an electric fuel pump in your tank (so it doesn't rely on vapour pressure to feed) and have a burner that pre-warms the fuel and includes a small electric heater for starting.

If you prefer keeping the tank design the same, that sounds fine. A tiny pump would take barely any power, so a cheap solid-state generator attached to the burner could run it and charge your phone too. You don't even need a battery to get things going; a 1 pound tank could be warmed by hand if everything else goes wrong.

Is "regular fuel" fuel oil? At what point does the fuel oil sold in your area start to gel?

The range is pretty broad -40 to -200, but in colder region they put additives that prevents gasoline from freezing so it can save you.

Gasoline and fuel oil are different things.

They also change the composition of at least Diesel at the pump. Not sure on fuel oil which is essentially the same as Diesel at the pump, save for possibly things like that (definitely the color)

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_diesel_fuel

Yes, most of my relatives on my mom's side are farmers in the upper Midwest. They have separate (gravity fed) tanks on their farms for #1 and #2 diesel, and the tank they use for filling the tractors depends on the season.

(Farmers buy diesel in bulk and don't pay road tax on it. It's illegal to put the untaxed diesel into a pickup that ever leaves the farm.)

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