Free template

Tank dip chart

The chart taped inside every office, generated from your own tank. Enter the internal diameter and length once and every millimetre computes.

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Excel .xlsx, no email and no sign-up. Every derived cell is a real formula rather than a number somebody typed.

Download tank dip chart

  • Dip chart — 0 to 3,000 mm in 10 mm steps, litres computed by circular segment
  • A litres-per-10mm column, because the rise is not linear and that is the point
  • Rows past your diameter blank themselves rather than repeating the full tank

The format is argued for in dip to litres, and why it is not linear.

A dip chart is only ever right for one tank

Which is why the ones you can download as a PDF are useless to almost everybody who finds them, and why outlets end up interpolating by eye between two rows of a photocopy made for a tank that was replaced.

Enter the internal diameter and the internal length once, and all three hundred rows compute. Internal, not the shell — a steel tank's wall is several millimetres, and using the outside measurement overstates every figure on the chart.

The column that shows why a chart is needed at all

Litres do not rise linearly with the rod, and the third column makes that visible instead of something you are told. It shows what the next 10 mm is worth, and near the middle of a horizontal tank that is roughly twice what the same 10 mm is worth near the bottom.

A quarter of the diameter holds under a fifth of the volume. Anybody reading a chart as though the two were proportional — or interpolating across a wide gap between rows — is producing a stock figure with an error that changes size depending on how full the tank is, which is the hardest kind to notice.

  • The computed full capacity is there to check against the tank's plate. They will not match exactly, because a plate figure is usually the rated capacity and deliberately under the geometric one, but a large gap means a dimension is wrong.
  • Rows past your diameter blank themselves, because a chart that keeps printing the same number is one somebody will eventually read the wrong row of.

This is geometry, not a calibration certificate

A tank that is not level, or that has been repaired, will not match its own arithmetic. Use this to work, and settle a dispute with the calibrated chart.

Questions about the tank dip chart

Where do I get the internal diameter?

From the tank's documentation if you have it. If you only have the outside measurement, subtract twice the wall thickness — using the outside figure inflates every litre on the chart by a few per cent, consistently and invisibly.

My computed capacity does not match the tank's plate. Which is right?

Neither is necessarily wrong. A plate figure is usually the rated capacity, which is set deliberately below the geometric one. A small gap is expected; a large one means a dimension is wrong, and the diameter is the usual culprit.

Does this work for a vertical tank?

No — a vertical cylinder is linear and needs no chart, which is why this is built for the horizontal case. The dip to litres calculator handles both.

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