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Gas monitoring on refillable tank


Thurlestone

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I have an aluminium refillable cylinder and find the monitor attached to it is rather vague regarding the amount remaining. I have looked at the Truma gauge used at the side of the tank and the one fitted to the base. Have members used either of these devices with success.
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Just to clarify - do you have a bottle or a tank? What make? How vague is the reading you get - as long as you know it's getting to time to start looking for a re-fill station, that may be good enough. Depends on your usage and capacity - we last about 2 weeks between fills.

 

I've used a Mopeka sensor, fixes to the underside of the bottle by magnet (so steel bottle). Connected to app on my mobile. Eventually gave up on it as 1) Worked fine mostly, but sometimes gave empty reading for no good reason - big pants as I thought I had a leak first time it happened: 2) battery didn't last long and was a huge job replacing it as I had to disconnect the filling port screwed to the cabinet wall; 3) realised the gauge on the top of my GasIt bottle was accurate enough to tell me when to re-fill.

 

Hope this helps a bit.

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We have used both a refillable tank (under chassis mounted) and refillable bottles (two) in the usual gas bottle locker, on different vans, and both were very simple to manage.

 

Having 'vanned for a number of years we knew roughly how much gas we used per day depending on season and climate and were able to top up the larger tank after so many days when it was roughly half full.

 

Refillable bottles was similarly simple - when one ran out we switched over to the full 'un and refilled the empty.

 

No need for guages or anything fancy - just experience - and no risk of runnimg out as long as we were dilligent!!

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I assume that Thurlestone's 'tank' is actually an "Alugas" user-refillable cylinder. (Shown in this Practical Motorhome article)

 

https://www.practicalmotorhome.com/advice/how-to-fit-refillable-aluminium-gas-bottles

 

Truma currently offers two types of gas-cylinder level checker .

 

1: The "Gas Level Control" that has a sensor-unit beneath the cylinder and displays on a phone.

 

https://www.autoleisure.co.uk/brands/truma-gas-level-control?gclid=EAIaIQobChMI1JCF3InU9QIVRuztCh2BcwGoEAQYAyABEgKIJfD_BwE

 

2: The "LevelCheck" that is a pen-type device placed against the side of the gas cylinder.

 

https://www.truma.com/int/en/products/truma-caravan-rv-gas-fittings/truma-levelcheck

 

As both Truma adverts warn, the Gas Level Control and the LevelCheck are NOT suitable for use with plastic gas cylinders, gas tanks, butane cylinders (Campingaz) or refillable gas cylinders. The reason that they won't work properly with metal user-refillable gas cylinders is because the valve and level-gauge mechanisms inside that type of cylinder will interfere with any sort of 'external' gas-level checking device.

 

Recent Alugas user-refillable cylinders have a central 'multivalve' similar to that used on Gaslow R67 cylinders, and the level-gauge of such valves is accurate from full to near-enough empty. However earlier Alugas cylinders (like the ones shown in the PM article) had a different arrangement and my understanding is that (as with the original Gaslow cylinders) the level-gauge was significantly less accurate and did not cover the complete full-to-empty contents range. There's no satisfactory way to address the limitations of an 'old tech' cylinder's level-gauge - it's an unavoidable characteristic of that type of cylinder.

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