Refillable gas cylinders/ normal pre filled

[AndrewJo]

We have just visited a dealer & picked up a leaflet on the gaslow refillable propane gas system We propose to travel across Europe next year on a gap year It seems on first inspection to be a good idea Not having the worry on exchanging bottles regulators & adaptors & cost of changing what seems to be un obtainable Calor refills as soon as we get across the channel Therefore can anyone advise us new comers the benefits Or pitfalls to fitting the system In addition, what benefit is there in using Butane over propane if propane is more readily available at garages across Europe? I know on advidly reading the forum for the past 2 years it is the best place to get unbiased opinions Thank you in advance for spending your time to reply Andrew & Jo Hutchings (Excited first time motor home owners)

[david lloyd]

Hi andrew and jo - and welcome to the wonderful world of motorhoming. You will find over time that there are as many diverse opinions on just how to use your motorhome, what equipent to use etc as there are motorhome layouts! - but....that's not a bad thing, as what is good for one is not necessarily good for another. We are awaiting delivery of our next motorhome and will be fitting refillable gas cylinders too. It may be the Gaslow ones but we live fairly close to Autogas 2000 at Thirsk in N. Yorks and I quite like his 'Carabottle' system (www.autogas2000.co.uk I think is the website) but they are more expensive than the Gaslow ones. However, his fitting (inc parts) is much more reasonable. I have spoken to him a couple of times and he is prepared to fit the Gaslow cylinders (if I get them) using his fittings. As soon as the new vehicle is here I will take it over to see him - mainly to check that the larger size cylinders will fit in the locker with all the other pipes etc) and make a decision then. The reasons we are going down this route is partly for the availability but also for the convenience of filling up etc. We have had two american motorhomes with fixed gas tanks and really miss them but prefer to have refillable bottles so that, when the day comes to change motorhome again, we can simpoly swap them over to a new one. Good luck, david

[enodreven]

Hi, We have just fitted a 11kg Gaslow bottle with a manual changeover valve and an external filling point i also decided to keep 1 of my 6kg propane bottles connected also, which i am glad that i did as when we were traveling a few weeks ago one of the LPG filling stations that i was going to use was closed and it was getting very cold, but i was happy that if the Gaslow had run out at least i had the 6kg calor which i could replace at the CC site, as it happened it was OK and i refilled the following morning. On the up side the Gaslow costs about half the price or less to refill and with the 2 european adaptors that you can purchase hopefully i should be able to re-fill nearly everywhere ?? and by the way the 11kg lasted about 3-4 weeks during the winter using the Trauma Gas heating and cooking with Gas which i think was quite good. as for Propane against Butane, the main differnce is that Propane will work at very low temps and Butane won't so i would go for Propane all the time (Red Bottles) as for the gaslow i beleive that the LPG on the forecourts is mainly Propane but i have been told that they do mix it with Butane but as i understand it will still work at very low temps ? So i would suggest that if you intend using it full time it would be worth changing to Propane if you are staying in the UK, and if you are going to Europe then i would go for one of the fixed systems Gaslow etc, as the problems with changing bottles and regulators/connectors etc is a mine field I wish you well Brian

[Mel E]

Do also look at the MTH Autogas system which is also fairly widely available. The cylinders are Swedish and, having examined both, in my view, better built with a better shut-off system. But that's just my view! The MTH cylinders also have a built in gauge which uses a float inside the cylinder to give a genuine measure of how full they are (be aware that no system that measures pressure can do this - they will always show full as long as there is any liquid gas in the cylinder since the pressure does not drop until the liquid has all been vapourised). MTH advertise in MMM and are at most shows. Including fitting and the fittings, they were actually cheaper than Gaslow this time last year.

[enodreven]

Hi, Andrew & Jo Just one other point you do need to take into account the actual weigh of these bottles when chosing the size ? refer to the MH manufactures guides as to what size bottles they have allowed/recommended as if you go larger than they suggest you will proberbly need to deducted this extra weight from the user payload ?? stated by the manufacturer??

[Clive]

Please also see my words on bulk gas tanks in the March MMM page 207. MTH Autogas provided the parts and the most helpfull advice. My tank (as all supplied by MTH) is made by Europe’s biggest manufacturer of tanks STAKO in Poland. Stako tanks are Powder Coated to provide very good environmental protection. The fittings and gague are mated to the tanks by GMS in Holland. http://www.stako.pl/index.htm http://www.gms.nl/ If you plan to spend lots of time in sub zero temperatures then you need to be aware that LPG in mainland Europe is a blend of propane and butane. At low temperatures the butane stops evaporating. This means that the propane content evaporates and comes out as gas OK but next time you fill up on the continent with a blend the percentage of propane in your tank gets less each time as the butane remains behind as a liquid. However return to warmer climbs and any gas is OK. In the UK LPG is 100% propane anyway. We don,t do much camping in sub zero temperatures and one UK fill up will last us a couple of months in France anyway. So for us a bulk tank was the safest and most convienient. Genuine in cab fuel gauge, no change over valve required, and the tank is properly bolted in place. Plus we have a spare locker. Fill up anywhere at less than half the cost of Calor bottles. I considered one of the re-fillable gas bottle systems mentioned in this thread, they still require a change over system, they still occupy a usefull locker and they remain secured in place with a thin strap. Knowing how much gas you have is not easy. I did have some concerns about the lightest non metalic gas bottles in a side impact motor accident. You must make up your own mind after listening to all the advice first. Talk to Gaslow direct and MTH direct for sure. Enjoy your motorhome. Clive

[Wills Wagon]

Three other points: 1. The locker on our Autotrail holds two 13kg cylinders but using a TB Turbo refillable cylinder (holds 26 litres) and checking the contents gauge should allow you to dispense with one cylinder it also keeps the weight down. Carrying two cylinders is like having two diesel tanks in-case one runs out! 2. I would recommend an external filler point because before I had it fitted I had a loose filler hose and Shell Garages in this country wouldnt let me fill up. With an external filler point the garage doesnt know whether it is a fixed tank or cylinder. But of course I didnt have any problems in France with the hose system. 3. Gaslows filler-hose is stainless steel with a 15 year life whereas the TB Turbo rubber hose has to be replaced every 5 years. Hose fittings are interchangeable between Gaslow and TB Turbo. And you should buy the two continental fittings as well.

[Double]

My wife and I have just returned from a 3 month tour of Portugal and before we went we posed more or less the same query as yours on the old MMM forum about whether to go for refillable gas cylinders for continental travel. The replies received led me to installing a refillable cylinder (a Gaslow). What a godsend it has been! On the way out in early March we were snowbound in France and had the gas heater on constantly for some days. The autogas (known as GPL) filling stations are plentiful in France and it was a simple matter of replacing the gas used. The filling facilities are just as numerous in Portugal and we had several 'top-ups' there. As I had a full Calor Gas 6kg propane bottle I opted to keep this along side the Gaslow until I had emptied it. It is still in its full state as the topping-up of the Gaslow cylinder was so easy. You can download from the internet locations of LPG refulling staions on the continent. Unfortunately, I cannot at the moment lay my hands on the web site we used. John Lewis

[Derek Uzzell]

I already have a refillable gas bottle and I was considering buying another second-hand one I saw for sale recently. When I asked the vendor why he was selling this bottle he gave me two reasons. The first was that, during an extended trip to Norway, he had found it impossible to obtain autogas - fortunately it was summer and he had a back-up Calor bottle that he managed to eke out for the duration of his visit. So, if you opt for an 'all autogas' system it would be wise to assess your needs before venturing into countries like Norway where bottle/tank refilling seems to be difficult/impossible. The second reason he gave for selling the bottle was more concerning because there is seemingly no way to guard against it. He told me he had regularly refilled his bottle at a convenient local UK service-station but, on the last occasion, whatever went in wasn't LPG! He said the fluid that the pump had dispensed was virtually non-flammable, viscous and oily, and took ages to evaporate. It wouldn't vaporise (no pressure showing on his regulator's gauge) and, when I suggested it might simply be water, denied this as he had experimented by mixing the liquid with water and it continually separated. The conclusion was that he had been unlucky enough to visit the service-station when its autogas tank was almost empty and he had picked up the muck in LPG that had gravitated to the bottom of the tank. (Presumably these are the 'oily residues' that Truma say are leading to problems with regulators and gas-fuelled appliances and that I recently read (in a French publication) are a normal spin-off of LPG production irrespective of whether the gas be butane, propane or autogas.) Anyway, the result of this unfortunate experience was that he had lost confidence in the refillable-bottle concept and had returned to using exchangeable bottles, switching to 'foreign' bottles when he was forced to. I've no technical knowledge of service-station autogas systems so I've no idea of the statistical risk of a motorcaravanner picking up contaminated LPG from them. However, it does need remembering that autogas is intended for 'autos' and not to fuel leisure-vehicles' domestic appliances. While it's most improbable that a car would have run on the fluid I've mentioned above, it's perfectly possible a car's LPG fuelling-system would tolerate a degree of contamination in the gas that a motorhome's regulator or appliance wouldn't. It's worth adding that Truma's contention that contaminated gas is damaging leisure-vehicle regulators and appliances will be based on the premise that the owners of the leisure-vehicles are employing exchange-only gas bottles. So, if you choose autogas it seems that you may end up with duff gas in your bottle and, if you choose ready-bottled Calor, Flogas (whatever) you may be in exactly the same boat. I'm now working on how to install a wood-burning Aga in my Hobby!

[smifee]

i consider an external filling point to be essential. on a french MH forum there is a post about french filling stations refusing to allow refillable cylinders to be filled. last year i had 6 weeks in italy. i'd read that LPG pumps were few & far between way down south. not so now. there were several shiny new LPG ONLY stations down there. spain seems to be the black spot but i'm told it's improving. in portugal they'll fill anything. mike

[David Dwight]

Hi Guys, I am considering going over to refillabel gas cylinder. But can anyone tell me what the difference in calorific value between Butane and Propane. We changed over to Propane last winter because of the obvious reason of cylinders not working properly, although we have never had any problems in the past using Butane in the winter. We are convinced that Propane gives off less heat than Butane. I gather from the other comments that Autogas has mixture of both gasses, so I presume that the calorific value will be slightly higher, if Propane has a lower value. David

[Derek Uzzell]

Smifee: Nothing novel about the refilling of gas-bottles being forbidden at French service-stations as I remember there being notices to that effect at several I've visited over the years. However, this prohibition has related historically to exchangeable bottles. I think it likely that refusal mainly arises at smaller 'manned' service stations when the owner of a refillable bottle seeks refilling advice/assistance from the attendant who won't know or care that the bottle has been designed to be refilled. As I emphasised once on this forum, these containers are user-refillable, not 3rd-party-refillable, and people feeling unable, or not intending, to carry out the refilling process themselves should think twice about 'going refillable'. As refilling exchangeable gas-bottles is seriously frowned on in France it's also not a good idea to 'flaunt' what one is doing (eg. extracting a removable refillable bottle from one's motorhome and carrying it across the forecourt to the LPG pump). Certainly I've never encountered any objections when I've refilled my own gas-bottle in France, but I've always done it discreetly and deliberately avoided service-stations with attended pumps. The introduction in France of Borel's Homegaz system may produce greater awareness of refillable bottles at French service stations, although Homegaz's considerable price is bound to deter camping-caristes from choosing it. An external filling point obviously simplifies the refilling process provided that it can be reached easily from the LPG pump. The potential downside for motorhomes is that the filling point will invariably be located close to the vehicle's gas-locker that is usually mounted some way from the motorhome's front or rear, and (in my experience) this can cause difficulties at service stations where the LPG pump is awkward to access or only approachable from one side. Swings and roundabouts I suppose... David: A GOOGLE search indicates that (at 60 degrees F) propane has a lower calorific value by volume than butane (2516 BTU/cuft against 3280 BTU/cuft) and a higher calorific value by weight (21591 BTU/lb against 21221 BTU/lb). John Wickersham's "The Motorcaravan Manual" summarises the situation by saying that butane "has a higher calorific value than propane which means it is a more efficient heat producer" and (as confirmation) I note that Alde's data for their Compact 3000 heater show that, using propane, the appliance has a maximum output of 5.2kW at a consumption of 380g/h, whereas, using butane, maximum output is 6.0kW at 430g/h. The composition of autogas can vary radically according to the country it's sold in, and may also alter according to the time of year (ie. in a 'cold winter' country that has autogas as a butane/propane mix, there will normally be less butane in the mixture in winter than summer). There's a list of EU countries and the related autogas composition in the forum thread "autogas/low temperatures/feedback" beginning 6 January 2006.