Option for placing a DHW coil in a propane tank

[Ron Lloyd]

The pictures of the tank on craigslist in this thread gave me an idea.

https://www.hearth.com/talk/threads/21077/

For more than 20 years I had a part time cabinet shop. My former partner and I purchased much of our equipment at public auctions. At many of these auctions used pressure tanks could be bought for cheap. The tanks look like this:

(broken link removed)

They are often covered with many, many layers of whatever coating they had once held. We bought 4 such tanks (various sizes and brands) at an auction in Hagerstown Maryland several years ago for $10.00 or $15.00 for the lot. We restored and sold a couple of them for $200.00ish each. They are used to force feed the coating of choice to a spray gun.

My idea is:

You could cut the top off, a couple of inches below the locking clamps, and weld it to your propane tank. If you were standing your tank on end it would be a straight cut around the spray tank. However, even if you were placing your propane tank horizontally the spray tank cylinder could be cut to match the contour of the propane tank side. The lids already have 3 or 4 tapping’s in them. It looks like the DeVilbiss tanks are rated at 110 psi. There is a large gasket under the lid that is made of santoprene according to this parts list:

(broken link removed)

I’m not familiar with santoprene so I don’t know if the gasket would handle the necessary temperatures. I went with the weld on flange as a means of placing my DHW coil in one of my tanks but I wish I had thought of using one of these pressure tank lids before going that route. Especially since I think I still have a couple of those tanks in the barn.

Ron

 

[Ron Lloyd]

I dug one of the tanks out of the barn last evening. After looking at the potential for it being the “lid” above my DHW coil I am seriously considering having the weld-on flange cut off my propane tank and use this instead. The fitting just to the right of the pressure gauge is double threaded. It has male threads for a large nut that holds the fitting in the lid and smaller female threads that the pickup tube threads into. It would be ideal to thread copper fittings into to hang a DHW coil from. The open hole to the right of that fitting is the same diameter and could accommodate a second fitting. That would give me and inlet and an outlet. I would need to get a pair of new fittings from DeVilbiss as I wouldn’t want to reuse the one that is on the lid now. All of the smaller holes are threaded. One of them could be used to mount an air scoop.

I did a little research on Santoprene. It looks like it would easily handle the temperatures that it would be exposed to in this application. Does anyone see any disadvantages of using this as a hatch on a propane tank?

Ron