Posted: December 9, 2025
As winter sets in throughout Southern Maryland, keeping your home warm and safe is a top priority. For many homeowners in Prince George’s, Calvert, Anne Arundel Counties and surrounding areas, this means ensuring your propane tank is adequately filled. A run-out isn’t just an inconvenience; it can lead to a loss of heat on a freezing night, the extra expense of an emergency delivery and a legally required safety leak test.
This article will guide you on how to check your tank levels and explain how the team at Q-DOG Quality Discount Oil & Gas can handle the fuel tracking and delivery planning for you, ensuring you never have to worry about a run-out again.
Your propane tank gauge is typically located under the dome on top of the tank. It resembles a car’s speedometer, with numbers ranging from 5 to 95. These numbers represent the percentage of propane in the tank, not the exact number of gallons. For example, if you have a 250-gallon tank and the gauge reads 40, you have approximately 100 gallons of propane remaining.
You might notice your gauge reading changes even when you aren’t using propane. This is because propane is a liquid that expands when it’s warm and contracts when it’s cold. In fact, its volume changes nearly 17 times more than water with the same temperature shift.
Since the gauge uses a float to measure the volume of the liquid propane, a sudden drop in outdoor temperature can cause the gauge to show a lower percentage, even though the actual amount of propane in your tank hasn’t changed.
A common question we receive is why a tank is never filled to 100%. It is due to a crucial safety measure called the “80/20 Fill Rule,” which all responsible propane companies follow. We intentionally leave the top 20% of the tank empty to provide a safety cushion for the propane to expand on hot days. This extra space prevents dangerous pressure from building up inside the tank.
It’s important to note that you are only ever charged for the amount of propane we deliver into your tank, not for the empty space.
Managing your own propane supply can be stressful. Why not let the experts at Q-DOG handle it for you? Our FREE automatic delivery schedule is the simplest way to ensure your family stays warm all winter long without the risk of a run-out.
Many factors can affect our ability to make a delivery, including severe weather, road conditions or supply interruptions. When you’re on an automatic schedule, we can proactively manage these variables and plan accordingly to ensure you always have fuel. If you wait to call for each delivery, you run the risk of underestimating how much time we need to get to you, especially during peak demand.
With automatic delivery, you gain security, convenience and the confidence that your home’s comfort is in reliable hands. Plus, you pay no delivery fees when you’re on automatic delivery!
Request a propane delivery from Q-DOG today and experience the dog-gone good service that has kept Southern Maryland warm since 1945.
