Up here the cold does not ease in. You get a run of good afternoons, and then one clear night drops thirty degrees and the furnace runs until morning. That first hard freeze is the week everybody looks at the gauge at the same time, and it is the week we are busiest.
Filling in September or October is not about getting ahead of a price or a promotion. It is about not being third in line behind a storm. Here is what we tell people.
Read the gauge before you need to
The dial on your tank shows a percentage, not gallons. Two things about that number:
A tank is only filled to about 80 percent, and that is by design. Propane sits in the tank as a liquid, and liquid expands when it warms up. The space at the top is there so it has somewhere to go on a hot day. A "full" 500-gallon tank holds around 400 gallons of propane. Plan on that number, not the one stamped on the tank.
And do not let it drop below 20 percent. Below that you have almost no room if a route runs behind or the weather goes bad – and a tank that goes all the way empty is not just a refill. An out-of-gas system has to have a leak check done by a qualified technician before it goes back in service. That is a second visit, on the worst possible day. Twenty percent is the line we ask everyone to hold.
If reading the gauge is new to you, call the office or ask the driver next time he is out.
High desert burns more than people expect
Customers are often surprised how fast a tank moves once real winter starts. We are at six to seven thousand feet across most of the territory. The nights are clear and get cold fast, and the wind does not help. A lot of houses here are older, or were built for summer more than for January. A house that coasted through October can go through propane quickly in December.
The other thing that catches people is a demand nobody counted – a shop heater used more than planned, a generator running during outages, a building finished over the summer. If something changed this year, the tank will notice.
Will-call or automatic – which one are you on
There are two ways this works, and a fair number of people are not certain which applies to them.
- Will-call means you watch your own gauge and call us when you need propane. It works well if checking the tank is genuinely part of your routine.
- Automatic keep-full means we track how you actually use propane and schedule a delivery before you get low. You are not the one watching the dial during a storm.
If you travel, look after a second property, or simply do not want to be watching a gauge in January, tell us and we will switch you over. We also offer tank monitoring, which reads the level for you instead of you walking out to look.
Give the driver a way in
Our bobtail needs a clear, drivable path to the fill point: a gate that opens, a dog put up, and enough snow moved that a heavy truck can get in and back out. Sort that out now, while the ground is dry, rather than have a driver make the trip and not be able to fill. If your approach changed this year – new fence, new building, a washout on the drive – tell us before the first delivery.
Fall is also the right time to have the tank, regulator and connections looked at, especially if you have noticed anything different: a hissing sound near the tank, an odor, or frost that was not there before. Call us. Do not work on it yourself.
Carbon monoxide
Propane appliances work harder in winter than at any other time of year, and that is exactly when a problem shows up. Every level of your house should have a working carbon monoxide alarm, and now is the time to test the ones you have.
If you smell an odor like rotten eggs – that smell is added to propane on purpose so a leak can be detected – or if a CO alarm sounds, get everyone outside first. Call 911 from a safe place. Then call us. Do not go looking for the leak yourself, and do not go back inside until responders say it is safe.
Weather sets the schedule
Our drivers run out of Moriarty across the Estancia Valley through Edgewood, Tijeras, Cedar Crest, Sandia Park and Sedillo; out of Mountainair through Estancia and Willard; and out of Pecos toward Glorieta, Rowe and Ribera. That is a lot of ground and a lot of different weather in one week. We get to people as fast as it is safe to, and in winter that is not always fast. Being full before it matters is what actually protects you.
Call whichever office is closest and we will get you on the schedule.
Moriarty – 2502 U.S. Route 66 W, Moriarty, NM 87035 – (505) 407-2260
Mountainair – 711 West Broadway, Mountainair, NM 87036 – (505) 847-1136
Pecos – 274 Glorieta Hwy, Pecos, NM 87552 – (505) 757-0977