Tank Water & Gas Bottles

I guess i am wondering from people in the same situation as us how often you refill your gas bottles and have you ever run out of water?

We have 3 HUGE tanks all full considering we have had some great rain lately but i often wonder how you go over summer.
Do you make an effort in summer to use less water because your on tank water?
Have you ever had to truck in water and how much did it cost?

We have 2 gas bottles and from what i am aware they only run the stove or oven??? gos i should know that.
How often would you think we would need to refill them and what is an average cost. I am pretty sure the old owner left us some info but it's buried in boxes somewhere.

Just wanting to see what to expect and how you 'use' these kinds of things at different times of year etc.

My parents have a 20,000 gallon tank and have put water in it from a truck maybe seven or eight times in 17 years - but they have an enormous roofline too. Saying that, growing up there, we were all pretty frugal with water. Quick showers, no baths, no dishwasher, taps off when brushing teeth, etc, all the stuff that has become second nature now. They have a second unfiltered tank for their garden which collects the water from their shed roofline. I don't know how much it costs to put water in, but its usually a wait because it seems everyone runs out of water at once, and there just isn't enough water carriers around, so keep an eye on your levels once the weather gets warmer.

As for gas, they keep two bottles, one hooked up, one beside it ready to go. As soon as the hooked up one runs out, they send it off to be refilled. Again, this rarely happens, they too only have the gas stove top, and it is cheaper than the typical surburban gas bill.

FWIW too - on Black Saturday, the gas bottles showed to be a real issue, so they unhooked them and dumped them down the paddock away from the house. Make it part of your fire plan so they don't explode near the house, should the unthinkable ever happen.

I am interested to read this thread as we have just recently moved to the country. We had to get our two gas bottles filled when we moved in and it cost $97 a bottle to fill, we have a gas stove and oven is electric but we do have a gas heater that i put on in morning until fire gets going. We have been here just over 3 weeks and i got Dp to check gas bottle he estimates that one is about half full.
The water i guess is hard to judge, i am timing my DD (14) when she showers atm as she use to stay in a good 20 mins but now i give her 5.lol
We have no bath either.
Sorry i probably havent helped you much, but i look forward to seeing replies.

My old house has about 40,000 of tanks and is in a very low rainfall area. We only ran out once - when we had less tanks and they hadn't had a chance to fill up as they were new - but you really need to be frugal. The last two years have had shockingly low rainfall. When there is summer rain there are no issues with water.

It costs $50 to get 2000L of non-potable water delivered there, as I had to spell out explicitly to my tenants and put in the lease as that is something I'm simply not going to pay for. The neighbours of that house used to run out of water all the time - they had less tanks and lots of kids there on and off - and if the water truck was busy they'd be waiting for days to get water. In summer I'd quite often have them turn up on my doorstep at night with a 11L springwater bottle asking to 'borrow' some water to drink. Not a request you can in good conscience say 'no' to :(

Thanks everyone, it's good to know.. DP knows the size of our tanks so i will update once i remember but they are 3 very big tanks!

Thanks for the tip Corelly about moving the gas bottles should something horrible happen, worst comes to worst we can take it and dump it in the dam, it will be dry by then but might save us the dig out fees should they actually blow.. kill 2 birds! ;)

Have no idea how much our tanks hold, but we have 2. The concrete tank is bigger than our plastic tank.

We've run out about 3x since living here [oct 07]. Costs $140 to get a load of water, that about 1/2 fills our smaller tank.

We have a system now as water has been a real issue for the past 18mths. Concrete tank is the one we use the water out of. Both are hooked up to the house, but to keep an eye on what we have we have the plastic one turned off. The water from the roof feeds into the plastic one, so we can keep an eye on what we have as backup. When the concrete one runs out, we turn on the plastic tap for about an hour to feed water over to the concrete one. Then switch it off again. A foot or two of water can last about 4-5 days if you're careful... but that's minimum washing too [and 7 house occupants]. Right now my laundry is full of dirty washing and I can't do anything about it.

Bath water is used for the washing machine & toilet. Toilet tap is ALWAYS turned off. I never realised just how much water toilets waste until I lived here! We also have a bucket in the shower to catch water for the toilet/washing machine as well.

I have a river pump here as well, that we use for washing sheets & blankets when it's clear enough. Right now though it's beyond filthy and I wouldn't let the dog swim in it, let alone wash with it!

I have no idea on gas bottles though. We have normal leco here for everything. But I'll be keeping an eye on this thread because we are looking at a house that uses gas bottles & solar...

We used to use bath water for the toilet too. We put in a dual flush for the tenants - there's two of them and there were 4 of us.
We took our washing to the laundromat in the next town once a week to save water.

Getting gas bottles for the new house, just for the stovetop and heating (eventually) and solar hot water but not power. We're going to get a big rainwater tank (23,000L) there too for showers but the house is on mains, and the rainfall here is higher than at my old house. Rainwater showers are so nice :)

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FWIW too - on Black Saturday, the gas bottles showed to be a real issue, so they unhooked them and dumped them down the paddock away from the house. Make it part of your fire plan so they don't explode near the house, should the unthinkable ever happen.

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Oh yeah, all you could hear was BOOM, BOOM, BOOM as all the gas bottles exploded.

We used to have a gas fake log heater run by bottled gas. It was costing around $3,000 a year just to run it! It was a stupid gas guzzler, and thankkfully we replaced it with a reverse cycle air conditioner. So, be careful of adding any other gas appliances before checking out how efficient they are.

teehee - its Pandora here in disguise ;)

With the gas, keep a full one on had all the time, when the one in use gets low order the new one, cos if you run out completely its not fun. We had that happen when we lived on the farm, and it took 3 days to get onebrought in

I have just had our 2 gas bottles refilled recently ( accidently let them both run out..silly me), cost us $296 for about 176 litres. But it did take us around 5 months to use that with a gas cooktop and a gas heater that was only on in the mornings though we will be rationing that now to.

we're on bottled gas for everything (cooking, heat, hot water) so we go through a lot. DH was watching an ad yesterday for 100pounder (about 90kg) for $90. for some, that would last ages. we got through about 200 worth of gas a month (part of the reason we're selling up and moving!)

and yes, no disguises now - it's really me!

Yikes ... you guys are making me think that a reverse cycle aircon and a sunlizard (solar powered heater on your roof) is going to beat a gas heater hands down!

We are on bottled gas in the house we are building, I went in yesterday to get quotes on heating and cooling and the sales guy advised reverse cycle is the only way to go as bottled gas chews thru a phenomonal amount of gas when u r on bottled, something about the valve outlets being a lot bigger.

i have lived country for the last 2yrs and we havent had to fill our tank as of yet (5,000) we just come close this week but thankfully we have just had 70mls of rain and has half filled our tank...We were quoted $120 to half fill our tank from truck delivering it

Keep in mind i am in Tamworth and we get hardly any rain at all

Our toilet runs off bore water so we dont need to watch how much we flush but the bath for DS can take a fair bit of water up....Washing well we have a washing machine that has a water saving option to wash so we choose that to do our washing

We are pretty much same as everyone else with watching how much water we use

dont know about water coz we are on mains but we usually get a small gas bottle filled at the moment for $25 a 9kg one coz weve been broke but when we do get big bottles we get a 45kg one filled for $100 and that usually lasts about 3 months we did have an option to have 2 but we ran out quicker coz the pressure equalises between the 2 we live in a country town and in town so its not hard to swap it over we used to have an automatic refilling service but they were charging just to come out even if we didnt need any gas we have gas stove and hot water