Where to fill up Gaslow/Gas-it?

[Den]

I’ve been using the calor gas centre in Worcester for years with our Gaslow.

I do have an external filler and I’ve never been refused there or any service station on the motorway system or in France.

[michaelmorris]

breakaleg - 2018-03-08 2:46 PM

 

A quick internet search shows the following in Worcester

Sherritt Street

New Road

Spring Lane Malvern

Strensham services M5 North

And Upton Warren

 

Pete

Hi Pete

So far I've checked out three of the above and two of them only sell gas in cylinders and the other was demolished 5 or 6 years ago.

Whilst I have now found out a few places that do sell autogas, the wider point is that a simple Google search and many of the specialist lpg websites seem to be hopelessly out of date.

[StuartO]

michaelmorris - 2018-03-09 11:12 PM...... Whilst I have now found out a few places that do sell autogas, the wider point is that a simple Google search and many of the specialist lpg websites seem to be hopelessly out of date.

Autogas does seem to have become less widely available in UK during the past couple of years, partly because of defensive moves by Calor, which has banned it's depots from allowing motorhome refills to favour their rental sales, and partly because some petrol station companies have taken the easy way out by banning motorhome refills from their autogas pumps rather than train their staff to spot cowboy installations which might be dangerous.  Morrisons supermarket stations too.  I have also been refused a refill in France at a garage for that reason, although that is not as common as in UK.

 

Fortunately other companies are not being so negative and the remedy when you are touring is to keep your eyes out for an opportunity to top up with LPG as you travel rather than leave it until the last minute.  You are inevitably going to be refilling with diesel far more often than with LPG when you are touring, so just keep your eyes open as you go.

 

There will also be options to refill with LPG somewhere in your relatively local area - in my case it's now about 20 miles away, either north west or south east, but I can choose to do so when I'm coming home or setting off without much of a detour, so while it's not ideal to have no autogas just round the corner where I usually fill with diesel, it's manageable.

 

So you are correct in your observation that autogas refills are not always to hand, especially in UK, so you have to look out for them.  Likewise the on line information about where you can refill with LPG is often out of date.  If making best use of what is available is too much trouble for you and you prefer to continue using rental bottles, that's your choice.  Personally I still find refillables extremely convenient, especially for touring abroad.

 

[Derek Uzzell]

The amount of autogas bought by motorcaravanners to fuel their vehicles’ gas-fuelled appliances will be tiny compared to the use of autogas to fuel vehicles’ motors (which, of course, is what autogas is intended for).

 

The original attraction of autogas in the UK was that it was taxed less than petrol and diesel.

 

http://www.drivelpg.co.uk/about-autogas/what-are-the-benefits/

 

This encouraged motor manufacturers to market bi-fuel (petrol/LPG) vehicles and for existing petrol-fuelled vehicles to be converted to be able to run on LPG. But (as far as I’m aware) it’s been quite a few years since new bi-fuel cars were obtainable and the focus on ‘green-ness' and economy has moved to using electricity as a fuel.

 

In the same way that many smaller petrol stations have closed down, the network of autogas outlets has contracted as it’s no longer financially worthwhile them offering that fuel.

 

If Michael were going to have a refillable-bottle system professionally installed, he’d need to choose an installer. And if the installer were reasonably local, they should be able to advise Michael about autogas availability in the vicinity.

 

Historically, four autogas outlets have been within a 10-mile radius of where I live and I think they are all still ‘live’.

 

GOOGLE-ing can only go so far and on-line information can be wildly out of date - but that’s just one of the joys of the internet.

[Den]

The Calor centre at Sherriff street are definitely ok with refillable tanks with an exterior filler. Don’t go and open a door to refill.

 

Strensham services North bound still have gas and again they are ok unless you open a door to refill.

[paul2]

Hi

May be asking the calor centre was the wrong thing to do, I will try them again when I need to refill (without asking)

Paul

[bolero boy]

paul2 - 2018-03-06 9:03 PM

 

hallii - 2018-03-06 8:22

 

There are several in Worcester, you will have no problem finding them once you start to look, most Shell stations seem to know where the nearest LPG is from a Shell station of course!

 

Hi

Please tell me where, I'm always looking when i go passed filling station and not seen any in Worcester

 

Paul

According to www.mylpg.eu The Calor centre in Worcester has LPG and has 61 confirmations, the last one being 5/3/2018...so someone is buying it...

If you look at the map view on this site, there are very many LPG sites in Worcester, I've not checked them for confirmations but it's easy for you to do.

I'm lucky, I have an LPG station on the start of my routes east or south....I have now found one for trips sout west....I can also use my local countrywide station if needed.

However, we also find gas easy to find in Spain and France...which is the great benefit for us of the system.

[Den]

Hi Paul

I just turn up with bottled open so has not to open any doors and hit the button with minimum fuss.

I then go in and pay cash and disappear just as quick.

[michaelmorris]

The Calor Centre in Sheriff Street confirmed to me that they only allow refilling of tanks that are permanently fixed to the motorhome, not cylinders (such as those made by Gaslow and Gas-it), even if they have a permanent fill point on the outside of the vehicle! So from what you are saying it looks they say one thing and do another.

 

Unfortunately the Countrywide in Bromsgrove is closing and it is my understanding that the Countrywide group has been going through a pretty rough patch over the last few years.

 

I suppose my concern is that the network of LPG fill points in the UK seems to be shrinking and I have some concerns that I could shell out on an expensive refillable gas system only to find that in 3-5 years the network supporting it has shrunk to the level where getting hold of gas starts becoming a real issue.

 

[Derek Uzzell]

michaelmorris - 2018-03-17 2:02 PM

 

...Unfortunately the Countrywide in Bromsgrove is closing and it is my understanding that the Countrywide group has been going through a pretty rough patch over the last few years...

 

 

Country Farmers is in administration

 

https://www.fginsight.com/news/top-stories/countrywide-farmers-enters-administration-after-sale-falls-through-54995

 

but Countrywide LPG is a separate entity.

 

Countrywide LPG was recently acquired by Flogas Consumer Ltd, but this acquisition is being (or has been) investigated by the Competition and Markets Authority.

 

I was sent a ‘circular’ e-mail about my Countywide LPG account saying “It’s business as usual” and (as I’d previously asked what the position was) I also got a follow-up e-mail confirming that nothing had changed as far as my account was concerned.

 

As I understand it, all Countrywide retail stores will cease trading. But I’m not sure whether this might impact on a Countrywide LPG ‘autogas’ outlet adjacent to a store (as I think may be the case with Bromsgrove).

 

If you plan to be motorcaravanning abroad regularly over the next several years using your present motorhome, you need to ask yourself what alternative strategy you will adopt regarding gas usage if you don’t ‘go refillable’.

 

At present you can happily stick with exchange gas-bottles (eg. Calor) while touring in the UK, and you should be easily able to last out during a 3-week holiday in France in Brittany in June this year if you start out with two full Calor 6kg canisters and use a modicum of commonsense. But if you go abroad regularly and/or for longer periods, the ‘use Calor’ approach becomes increasingly questionable, partiicularly if (as I understand is the case) your motorhome cannot accommodate a French gas bottle.

[mgnbuk]

"I suppose my concern is that the network of LPG fill points in the UK seems to be shrinking and I have some concerns that I could shell out on an expensive refillable gas system only to find that in 3-5 years the network supporting it has shrunk to the level where getting hold of gas starts becoming a real issue. "

 

I think the doomsday scenario you suggest is unlikely to happen. Wherabouts you are in the country may play a part, but LPG cars are still about (popular with private hire vehicles around here) & still being converted - they need filling up far more regularly than a motorhome habitation tank. In my bit of West Yorkshire, all the LPG stations I used to use when I ran an LPG converted car 5 years ago are still selling LPG today - 3 Shell filling stations, 1 Total, 1 Texaco, & two independants within a 7 mile radius of home or work. It is still advertised at Shell filling stations on the A1 & M11 & at the BP filling station entering Dover from the A20.

 

Finding gas abroad has been easier than the UK - LPG cars are more popular & gas is readily available in Belgium, Luxemburg, Germany & the Czech Republic (not sure about France, as I rarely go there). Not so easily in Austria & I have not tried Italy (though believe it is popular with cars there - I understand that Fiat offer "offical" conversions through dealers).

 

As for "expensive", a 6kg bottle & remote fill kit is around £204 delivered from Hamilton Gas Products (who supplied mine, which I installed myself). A different hose from the cylinder may be required as well. With a 10 year life, that is under £25 a year - not really that expensive in the greater scheme of motorhome operating expenses ?. The cylinder can be transferred to another van if you choose to change vans (negotiated as part of the deal when I changed vans) or sold on separately to recoup some of the initial outlay. I have been running on a single 11kg cylinder for 5 years now, have had no problems filling up UK or abroad & would not want to go back to the hassle of swapping exchange cylinders (and attendant worry of running out when abroad).

 

You seem to be looking for excuses not to go refillable, rather than considering the postive advantages ?

 

Nigel B

 

 

[flicka]

I asked a friend if he has any difficulties finding lpg sources.

His answer was that a call to a "local" Taxi company has generally revealed where & whuch is the lowest price.

 

Also I would think that if supply was a problem, companies like Autosleeper would not fit refillable tanks as standard.

 

Afterthought:- as Autosleeper fit as standard, do they have a lpg sales outlet or know of any close at Broadway ???

 

[Tracker]

My own experience is that if you are only ever going to be in the UK then it would take a long time to recoup the refillabe gas cost savings, but if the weight of carrying and refitting an exchange bottle is an issue for you then refillable might be worth considering.

 

If you only short holiday abroad, and particularly if you use sites, then if you can carry enough Calor to last it probably is not worth the cost of buying the bottle, hoses, filler, adapters needed to make a system work.

 

Only if you spend a lot of time abroad and would run out of UK exchange gas does refillable make real sense.

 

At the end of the day it is a personal choice - simples!

[Derek Uzzell]

Michael is planning a 2-3 week tour of Brittany in June crossing via the Brittany Ferries Pymouth-Roscoff route and, while in France, he would like to mix stays at campsites and aires, plus some ‘wildcamping’. There’s no guarantee he will take his motorhome abroad again for a while afterwards.

 

I’ve attached a photo of a 2003 Elddis Autoquest 200 like Michael’s and it will be apparent from the gas-locker door’s size that large gas-bottles cannot be accommodated. Currently Michael carries two Calorlite 6kg propane bottles.

 

Ler’s assume that Micheal leaves Plymouth with two full Calorlite bottles in his motorhome’s gas-locker. (How to end up with two full gas bottles in June - and what it costs to do so - is something he’d need to think about.)

 

Two Calorlite 6kg bottles equate to around 24 litres of gas and this should be sufficient for Michael’s trip unless his gas usage is profligate - and gas usage is to a large extent under his control. The more campsites he stays at (where 230V can be used to power the fridge and water/air heating) the lower gas usage will be: the more he stays at aires or wildcamps (where gas will be needed for the fridge and heating) the higher the gas usage. And eating out rather than cooking in the motorhome will reduce gas usage.

 

If no French gas-bottle will fit in the Elddis’s gas-locker, the only realistic alternative if the two Calor bottles ran out while abroad would be to obtain a Campingaz canister, and that’s ‘doable’. But it’s not as if Michael would be running through both bottles and then be compelled to react - he would know when the first bottle ran out how long this had taken and what he had been doing, and then he should easily be able to estimate whether the second bottle should last until he got home. At the moment Micharel seems prepared to let unquantified gas-usage abroad control his holiday, whereas he can control the gas-usage by how he holidays.

 

In another forum thread Michael said "We use our motorhome for extended stays of up to 10 days and for touring around for several weeks, staying on sites for 1 to 3 nights.” Based on that information I would have thought that Michael (who is definitely not a motorhome ’newbie') should have a very good idea of how much gas he normally uses and how long his two Calorlite bottles should last. The UK and France are not different planets, and there’s no reason to think that gas-usage in France would be higher than in the UK if the type of motorcaravanning being done in both countries were similar.

 

For Michael’s planned trip, if I had a pair of full 6kg gas bottles at the beginning and wished to economise financially, I would not bother with a refillable bottle. I’d just be careful in the first half of the holiday about how much aires/wildcamping I did in order to keep gas-usage down and, if it became plain that plenty of gas would be left for the trip’s second half, opt to use fewer campsites then.

[StuartO]

Tracker - 2018-03-19 5:48 AM.....  Only if you spend a lot of time abroad and would run out of UK exchange gas does refillable make real sense......

 

I think that's correct, providing that in the sentence you substitute "economic" for "real" and have a locker big enough for the gas you will consume during the foreign duration of the holidays you choose to have.

 

Last year we spent 7 weeks abroad and had we started with two 11kg rental bottles, we would have completed the holiday without running out, even though I chose to refill twice to top up and then to return home full.

 

People who buy lower-budget, older MHs presumably have tighter budgets for consumables too, so economic considerations may well hold sway over the convenience of having even one refillable.  Given the frequency of having to refuel with diesel when you are touring, you could probably  manage in France with just one 6kg refillable if you took the trouble to refill frequently.

 

[ColinM50]

Derek makes a very valid point on how to guarantee he has two full bottles when he leaves UK. He'd obviously know the spare bottle is full since it's new and never been used, but how do you know, or control, how much is in the bottle being used? Of course you could weigh it and work it out from there, but let's say you worked out it's half full, then what do you do? Spend £24 on a new refill bottle and waste the half full? Or buy a whole new third bottle as spare and leave the half full one at home? Or something else? Maybe bung the new full third bottle in a locker? BTW is it OK to lay one down that's not being used?

 

Of course the "dangerous" option is to buy a filling kit for your Calor cylinder and decant one into the other keeping an eye on the weight to ensure you stick to the correct fill limits, but that's opening a whole new can of worms

[michaelmorris]

Derek summarises are proposed trip quite well, However, I'm looking at a Gaslow-type system as an option with longer term concerns as the initial outlay is quite high. Hence I need to look at how doable it would be for options such as staying on sites in the UK with no hook up in the autumn and spring as well as our planned trip to France..

[Tracker]

I used active gas management and although it can be seen as pedantic or paranoid it worked for us and we never ran out of gas.

 

Very simply, I recorded the days of use that each bottle had and whilst there was variation in duration according to season it gave me a pretty good idea of how long it would last.

 

As we never used sites or EHU that made the calculations that much easier and more consistent!

 

Before we had a refillable I used 3 x 6kg Calor bottles and with careful management I always made sure we went abroad with two full bottles.

 

There was the odd occasion we took all three if on a long trip and by exchanging the part bottle for a new one I considered the giving away to Calor of some gas a price worth paying for the lack of gas anxiety brought about by carrying three full bottles.

[Derek Uzzell]

This 2015 document may be of interest

 

http://www.bcga.co.uk/assets/publications/L1.pdf

 

As far as carrying a DISCONNECTED gas-bottle (full or empty) in a motorhome is concerned, I believe there is no UK regulation preventing the bottle being carried horizontally. As is advised on the link it is far from ideal to carry a bottle with gas in it in an ‘open' unventilated area (eg. in a motorhome’s seat box or in a toilet compartment) but there’s no UK regulation forbidding this. Plainly it’s vital that, wherever the bottle is carried, it cannot become a lethal missile in the event of an accident.

 

In Michael’s shoes I’d be considering getting my hands on a couple of full 6kg propane bottles from a non-Calor supplier (eg. a building-trade Flogas agent) as my experience is that they are often less fussy about imposing the cost of a rental agreement. Or see if a local recycling centre is prepared to ‘donate’ redundant bottles that can then be exchanged for full ones. One way or another I’ve always managed to avoid paying the rental-agreement charge and I still have some surplus Calor and Campingaz canisters.

 

Topping up a part empty bottle via the decanting method certainly needs care (discussed here)

 

https://www.ukhillwalking.com/forums/off_belay/decanting_gas-457410

 

and there are adapters that would allow 'exchange bottles’ to be filled with autogas.

 

 

Although Michael has said that he believes a “Le Cube” container and a Calor 6kg bottle would not fit in his motorhome’s gas-locker, if the depth of the locker is above a Le Cube’s 28.2cm width, a Le Cube and a Calor 3.9kg bottle might go in, as the 3.9kg canister’s diameter is smaller than a 6kg’s. But one would need to commit to carrying a 3.9kg bottle instead of one of the 6kg bottles for that approach to be practicable.

[Tracker]

I am by nature a confirmed bodger, modyfier and pound saver but I draw the line before messing about with refilling or decanting gas.

I like to relax on holiday and there are enough things that can go wrong without adding to the list so for the sake of a few quid I consider that it just ain't worth it faffing about with gas.

[ColinM50]

Tracker - 2018-03-19 12:08 PM

 

I am by nature a confirmed bodger, modyfier and pound saver but I draw the line before messing about with refilling or decanting gas.

I [.

 

I posted on this very subject mid 2016 when we were pitched next to a chappie in Cornwall who worked delivering Calor cylinders. He told me that for years he'd refilled all his M/H bottles from one of the big builders type cylinders. Bought an adaptor on Ebay and never had an issue. But to be fair he was "in the trade" so presumably knew what he was doing

[michaelmorris]

Plainly it’s vital that, wherever the bottle is carried, it cannot become a lethal missile in the event of an accident.

 

This SO important.

An acquaintance of our's husband was driving his estate car with an unsecured calor gas bottle in the boot. He was involved in an accident. The cylinder flew up over the back seat and hit her husband (who was driving) in the head. He sustained life changing brain injuries.

[Tracker]

I always carried our spare bottle in a ventilated underbed locker with the cylinder tight against the front end, tightly turned off and with it's screw cap tightly in place, held in place by two strong modified seat belt straps bolted through the floor as I reckoned that oughta do it?

[StuartO]

ColinM50 - 2018-03-20 3:40 AM

Tracker - 2018-03-19 12:08 PMI am by nature a confirmed bodger, modyfier and pound saver but I draw the line before messing about with refilling or decanting gas. I [.

I posted on this very subject mid 2016 when we were pitched next to a chappie in Cornwall who worked delivering Calor cylinders. He told me that for years he'd refilled all his M/H bottles from one of the big builders type cylinders. Bought an adaptor on Ebay and never had an issue. But to be fair he was "in the trade" so presumably knew what he was doing

 

Years and years ago we had a yacht which could only take a single 6kg calor bottle (in a special locker which drained over the side so no leaking LPG could accunulate in the bilges) and I used to decant butane from a bigger bottle using a length of ¼" copper pipe on to each end of which a bottle connector had been silver-soldered.  I put the bigger bottle on the bench upside down and the small one on the floor and opened the bottle valves to let gravity take effect.  I didn't know anything about not filling bottles beyond 90%.

 

I never had any problems or frights but I wouldn't do it now!

 

[pepe63xnotuse]

Re;"Decanting"

 

I can understand the attraction/temptation/benefit of "decanting" from a larger cylinder at home, IF someone is restricted to using the likes of the small Campingaz cylinders or they use a standalone *Coleman gas stove for example(*which use their own "bottles" that are/were approx. 15 quid for 1/2 litre !)....but for motorhomes, that have a 2x6kg cylinder carrying capacity(and therefore room for a proper refillable if needs be), and that may be used abroad for few weeks at a time, then penny pinching "decanting" shouldn't be considered an option...:-S

 

..and if someone is going to be using that much gas, that repeated 20 quid refills become an issue, then they should've gone the "proper" refillable route anyway.