If you have ever been caught with an empty propane tank when you were counting on the grill for dinner, you need to check out these tips!

How Can I Tell if My Propane Tank is Full?

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Whether you grill or barbecue, you need to know how much fuel you have before you get started. Here are three ways you can tell if your propane tank is full. No matter what tools you have available, you can figure it out!

Quick and Easy Method – Use Warm Water

This is my favorite. It’s fast, it’s easy, and all you need is some warm water! Pour warm water down the outside of your propane tank.

Then feel the outside of the tank with your hand.

The water will warm up the metal of the tank, but the liquid propane inside the tank will keep it cool. Feel where the temperature of the tank changes from warm to cool. This is how full your tank is. If the cool line is about halfway down the tank, it’s about halfway full.

That’s it! It’s a rough estimate, but it will tell you if you have enough propane to cook dinner tonight.

At A Glance Method – Use a Gauge

Using a gauge is more accurate than just the water test. It works sort of like the fuel gauge in your car. The arrow points to how full the tank is. In the photo below the arrow is resting right along the bottom of the logo on the gauge, so it’s a bit hard to see. The arrow is pointing about 1/4 way into the green. So I still have plenty for now, but I might need to think about refilling the propane tank soon.

Some grills have gauges built in, so there isn’t an extra piece. If your grill doesn’t have a built-in gauge, you can buy a separate one. (This one has a glow-in-the-dark dial, so you can even read it if you’re grilling after dark.) This does mean that you have two connections between your propane tank and your grill (one from the tank to the gauge, and one from the gauge to the grill), so that’s two possible places for a leak. Be sure to tighten the connections as tightly as possible to avoid propane leaks.

Most Accurate Method – Use a Scale

The most accurate method to determine how full your propane tank is, is simply to use a scale. You could take the propane tank inside to your bathroom scale, you could bring the bathroom scale outside to the grill, or you could even use a portable hanging scale (like this luggage scale).

Every propane tank should have a “tare weight,” or an “empty weight” stamped on the handle (the collar of the tank). You can see in the photo below, the T.W. (tare weight) of this tank is 17.5 pounds.

Liquid propane weighs about 4.2 pounds per gallon. Once you weigh your tank, simply subtract the tare weight from the total weight. Then divide that by 4.2.

My tank weighed 26.4 pounds. After I subtract the weight of the tank (17.5 pounds), I’ve got 8.9 pounds of liquid propane. Divide that by 4.2, so I have roughly 2.2 gallons of propane left in my tank. That’s definitely enough to grill a few steaks!

If you don’t want to do the math, you could get a hanging propane scale. They work the same way as a hanging luggage scale, but the scale tells how full your tank is instead of how much it weighs.

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Enjoy!

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