I put it in my truck, as I have done for years if not decades. I put it in lying down and chocked it to prevent it from rolling then I got ready to drive off.
Then the sales droid stopped me.
"You're not leaving here with a cylinder lying down."
"Why not?"
"It's illegal, there's a mandatory fine of £2000 if the police see a cylinder lying down like that."
So I ignored him. He got quite agitated about this.
Now, I've been using the same 13kg propane cylinders for a long time. I've never heard of this "law" before. Also I've used forklift trucks powered by the same 13Kg cylinders. They are always installed lying down. I've never seen an installation with a vertical cylinder.
So was this the usual Dr Drivel brown-coated warehouseman bullshit?
"Carriage of LPG Cylinders by Road"
5.4 Loading and Storage. Care must be taken in the methods of loading and storage to ensure no additional hazard is created. Cylinders should be conveyed in an upright condition and secured to prevent undue movement.
- Lots of people the regs *don't* apply to, and I rather doubt the sweeney are about to swoop down upon you and scream "Your'd goin dahn!"
I recently bought a portable gas fire via the Calor website and plowed all through the site and read a screed about cylinder safety and not once did I see anything about only carrying them upright ..Does that mean delivery drivers can't carry them up stairs ( as they do ) on their shoulders ? Don't see anything here either
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There is this
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that only applies to the carriage in connection with someone's work
Calorgas delivery bod spouted regulations drivers must confirm to, regurgitated verbatim by sales droid ignorant of the actual wording? The legal "should" vs "must" would need to be checked.
There is an argument for carrying gas cylinders vertical, restrained, in a passenger car. #1 - 13kg cylinder unrestrained has mass In a frontal impact of 60G deceleration the cylinder would exert a
750kg load on rear split seats, probably bursting through. #'2 - 13kg cylinder horizontally in a trunk sits in a crumple zone During a rear impact crush damage could impinge on a horizontally positioned valve, but not on a vertically positioned valve
However a gas cylinder 1) has a rather substantial metalwork around the valve area and 2) is typically not transported with a "regulator tree" stickout out the top and 3) carrying LPG is not the same as carrying acetylene (which does get upset if left horizontal).
LPG is an inhalation risk for occupants, but most cars vent the trunk low down via negative pressure when in motion. LPG is a risk if exposed to prolonged fire, but long before the LPG tank goes up you are dead from fumes, the petrol tank has probably gone up, the tyres are blowing out - ie, LPG is more a risk for firemen & increased nearby property damage.
There is a reason why gas cylinder carrier trucks have them vertical in chained off pens - so rear impact doesn't shear valves plus acetylene risk.
The real risk in passenger cars is carrying anything heavy unrestrained in a trunk/boot - it can burst through if a heavy frontal impact. For an extreme example not long ago a flatbed carrying a 4x4 on a motorway crashed - with the result the 4x4 crushed through the flatbed cab. For a lesser example carrying a door which extends from the rear of the drivers seat to the rear bumper into the crumple zone isn't a brilliant idea if you get rear ended; better to pay for delivery :-)
No it`s correct.The liquid draw off bottles for a foklift have an L shaped tube inside them which goes to the bottom of the cylinder.They also have an arrow painted on the bottom showing the position of the tube so the bottle can be fitted correctly.
On the bumper, no problem, but no monocoque will transmit those forces and much of it's absorbed by crumpling before it reaches the insides: either accidental (60G squashes road cars) or deliberate (F1 tubs might transmit this, but they're designed so that their extremities have crumpled deliberately first).
It's bollocks. He's applying the ADR rules, when you (as a small load) are exempted from them. It's not about being "domestic" or "retail packaged", it's about load volume. (In practice, "domestic" falls within that anyway).
If they do apply, you must also carry haz diamonds, extinguisher, high- viz and wheel chocks!
ADR doesn't (in practice) apply to non-HGVs carrying purely LPG. The rules are mostly focussed on toxic or corrosive products. There are a complicated set of rules for assesing the naughtiness of a load, weighted by content class, number of cylinders etc. In practice this means that anything toxic in more than a couple of cylinders is ADR- scope, anything that's purely flammable _isn't_, unless you have so much of it on board that you'd need a truck to carry it all.
As to the verticality, then safety of small loads is (usually) about how best to chock it. Unless I'm driving a pickup with a front frame, I can tie down a cylinder far more safely if it's horizontal and transverse. I don't carry them longitudinally because they can't be tied, nor would I carry a tall cylinder vertically if I couldn't brace it against a good frame.
Obviously acetylene or other dissolved gases can be its own problem. I usually carry acetylene horizontally too, but give it a day vertical afterwards (and placard the cylinder!) before even thinking about drawing gas from it. I don't even drive a Portapak around - although people do do this for jobbing (and always do this vertically), it's too much jiggling about to make me happy about using one afterwards for a couple of hours.
- Run that car into another vehicle at 35mph with offset impact.
- Chest deceleration is say 38G, older cars 45-59G
Go visit NHTSA crash site for typical crash data.
Now run the car into a tree - you just have 1 crumple zone and the object does not move. Something like a Sierra at 56mph puts the tree in the backseat and the G load on the driver is simply fantastic. A renault does vastly better, but the problem is the G load on the chest is still beyond that survivable (despite the vehicle coming off much better).
Now.
- Place a cylinder loose in the trunk of a car
- Run that car at 50mph into a stationary car (at lights, crossing).
- Rear impacting car will slow to about 28mph.
- Front impacted car will accelerate to 28mph over 4ft.
- Loose cylinder will hit the back split seats at 22mph.
On some cars on heavy frontal impact the car rotates upwards which can help very heavy objects to not just burst through the seats but through the luggage cover of a hatchback. In this scenario the objects lose less momentum and can impact the back of front seat passengers (or their headrests) harder.
The problem with car impacts is the crumple zone decelerates the car
*before* the occupants are decelerated. That is because they are not tightly harnessed in - and why we try to achieve that by seat-belt pre- tensioners (they are actually to take the slack out of the cable, particularly re belt submarining risk). Likewise we use an airbag to reduce chest G load, but they have a finite speed limit (used to be
32mph, might be better as airbags improved although USA are a compromise as they must accommodate unbelted passengers).
So whilst the car may have crumpled, unrestrained objects inside receive NO such benefit: they are still travelling at whatever speed the vehicle was. Even pelvic & chest restrained objects like humans still have the head flying forward and indeed the firewall moving backward hitting the feet (typical femur loads are 533-900lbs, some older cars could reach 1200-1450lbs which will result in fractures). A typical firewall ingress is about 6-8-12" - this is why many cars have breakway pedals so entrapment does not occur. A few makers are developing footwell airbags (Merc), a few (Jag) tried the "Pro-Con- Tec" mass-pulling-on-cable to pull your feet backwards earlier in an impact before they are hit by the firewall moving inwards.
Stick a child unrestrained on a back seat.
- Hit a stationary car at 30mph (that gives you TWO crumple zones).
- Child will hit the headrests or windscreen, impact will exceed 60G and is commonly fatal.
An adult unrestrained in a back seat.
- Car hits 40mph into concrete wall.
- Adult will hit the back of the front seats.
- Sufficient chest injury to rupture the Aorta.
Completely restrained (like a racing harness) so the crumple zones work and the chest can withstand 120-180G. Merely restrained in a passenger seat-belt and the limit is generally
60G. Unrestrained and a head hitting a steering wheel will experience far beyond fatal G levels.
Ford should be getting close to implementing their 4-point harness for passenger cars, it requires much stronger seat technology but retains the "free movement" of inertia reel belts unlike a racing harness. It will not perform as well as a racing harness because you do not decelerate the split second the car hits something - only some time later and this is the "lost" time. Pre-tensioners reduce this "lost" time and reduce submarining under the belt.
Vertical G, well, if you are in a crashing helicopter - lie down because in the seated position you can only withstand 15G before the major organs rupture (particularly the spleen rips its ligaments). If you lie down the G you can tolerate is far greater. Problem is a crashing helicopter doesn't give much room to lie down usually :-)
With any big object in a car - simply restrain it.
13kg gas cylinder, document fire safe, few 100lb bags of sand. It comes down to size - how easy a heavy object could slip through split- fold rear seats (because they do deform and "burst").
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