Our propane tank holds 250 gallons, is fairly old, and looks pretty sad. We were hoping we wouldn’t have to buy a new propane tank, and luckily this tank looked way worse than it actually was. When we bought the house the tank still had about 70 gallons of propane in it, so we figured the tank wasn’t leaking. Just to be sure, though, we had a local propane company come out and pressure test it. The tank passed, so at the same time we replaced the pressure regulator and bought another 150 gallons of propane to carry us through the winter, and the propane company suggested we paint the tank to prevent any further rust.

Here’s the before picture:

The base coat of paint on the tank wasn’t too bad, so we used a wire bristle brush and light sandpaper to knock off the existing rust. We then rinsed the residue off and primed the tank with a layer of rust inhibitor. Our local regulations say the tank has to be painted a light color (basically white or silver), so we painted the tank with white exterior paint specifically designed for metal. Here’s the after picture:

The nice thing about owning our tank instead of renting it is that we can use whatever propane company is cheapest at the moment to fill it. Prices tend to vary more than I expected between companies, so being able to shop around will hopefully save us a little money.

This was a pretty small project, but it looks much better now and it was nice to have a project that I could actually finish in a weekend. I would have preferred to paint the tank a more subtle color, but apparently the propane companies won’t fill the tank if the color isn’t within regulations. Oh, well.