Explore europe in a campervan

If you looking to buy refillable gas bottles, there are loads of Gaslow bargains to be had on eBay

The requirement - Gas is used to run the Propex blown air heating unit, the oven, grill and hob and 3-way fridge (which can also run on 12 or 240V electricity). From our research we expected to use as much as an 11kg bottle each 3 days, when the temperature was very cold. Because the usage could be high we wanted to carry 2 11kg cylinders. The gas type for winter motor-homing has to be propane as it has a freezing point of -40 degrees compared to butane which freezes at +8 degrees so would not be able to turn from liquid to gas.

The dilemma - In the UK you can pay a deposit for a Calor or Alta gas cylinder which you exchange and pay for a refill when empty. But when the first cylinder was empty we would not be in the UK and the cylinder brands and regulators are different in nearly every country. Also, we were advised that the heating system is likely to stop working before the gas bottle is totally empty so we could potentially be trading in a bottle with paid-for, but unused, gas inside.

The options - Option 1 - start with one Calor bottle then dump it when empty - losing the value of the bottle/deposit, then buy a French bottle and French regulator, then a Spanish one. We also intend to visit Portugal, Italy and the Netherlands so may need different arrangements in these countries too depending on consumption. The French bottle would have to be kept until our return on the way to the Netherlands. Coupled with the problem of having to trade bottles that may not be completely empty this option seemed complicated and inconvenient.

Option 2 - get refillable LPG bottles that can be topped up at petrol stations.

Research showed that LPG is fairly widely available in France, but less common in Spain, where the tax has only recently been reduced to enable use of LPG for domestic vehicles. It was also apparent that there is an issue with education around refillable bottles and many petrol stations will not allow bottles to be filled because of concerns over safety. There is no safety issue with bottles sold now - they have an 80% cut-off valve so they cannot be over-filled. Earlier refillable bottles did not have this safety feature and when you consider the fact that LPG expands in volume by up to 200% when turning from liquid to gas state, you can see how over-filling could be potentially very dangerous. This can be overcome by installing a remote filler kit so that the gas is pumped through a filler cap on the side of the van, just like regular fuel, so petrol station staff are not concerned by unusual behaviour!

The cost - 11kg refillable bottles can be bought direct from Gaslow for £77 each, the regulator costs £14 and the remote filler kit is £51. It’s fairly straight-forward to do the installation yourself, however we were concerned about cutting a hole in the van-wall for the filling kit - and definitely didn’t have tools suitable for the job. We decided to err on the side of caution and get the cylinders and filling kit installed professionally. This also meant the parts could be obtained and the job completed much more quickly.

The breakdown of the cost of installation is as follows -

Refillable cylinder no.1 £76.60
Refillable cylinder no.2 £76.60
Remote filling kit £51.06
Connection hose £37.45
30 mbar regulator £14.04
Euro adaptor £9.36 (different filling nozzle in European petrol stations)
French/Italian adaptor £12.98 (different nozzle again!)
Hose, caps, nozzle £18.13

In total the installation cost us £484 including £110 for labour. This was carried out within 4 days of first enquiry at Essanjay in Poole, Dorset. This was also the week before Christmas so was great service, including getting all the parts from Gaslow. Because the company are experienced fitters and motorhomers they anticipated our needs, ordering and supplying the adaptors needed for the countries we plan to visit and also supplying us with a ‘Campingaz’ adaptor so that we have a widely-available stand-by in case we ever do run out of gas totally. Campingaz bottles can be bought in most European countries.

A Problem - We had a teething problem, which wasn’t really down to the bottles but the configuration with our specific van. Previously there had been a problem with the Propex Heatsource 1600 blown-air heating unit, which we thought was due to a low level of gas in the butane bottle we had acquired when we purchased the van. After the refillable bottles had been installed and filled the heating still wasn’t working and the fault light still indicated flame failure, as it had before the change of gas supply. We took the unit straight to Propex, who are fortunately based close to home in Southampton. They were extremely helpful and checked it over while we waited. The heating unit functioned when on the bench, running on propane gas at 30 mbar pressure - the same conditions as when it’s in place in the van. As the model is designed to run, ideally, at 37 mbar they installed a larger jet to compensate by getting the gas in a little faster.

On reinstallation to the van at home the heating ran for a few minutes before cutting out, indicating flame failure again. Propex couldn’t shed any light on the problem over the phone, except to point out that, if powered at a high voltage, the motor may be running too fast and therefore the gas/air mixture may be too lean. As the 12V battery was on charge at home while we were getting the van ready for our trip this was a possibility. 12V batteries actually run at a voltage of up to 12.9V and over 13V when charging. If a leisure battery is only reading 12V it’s actually discharged. The newer models of Heatsource heaters have a voltage-regulated motor so overcome this issue. Propex offered to exchange our heater for this newer model, which we would have taken up as a last resort. We called Essanjay for some advice and Steve suggested we may be able to change the regulator. Gaslow systems are installed with a 30mbar regulator as standard - this is the standardised pressure for motorhome appliances manufactured now. We were unsure whether the system could be run at 37 mbar, but a call to Gaslow confirmed this was fine. The exchange was done right after the Christmas break, with no extra charge. The heating now works fine and we’re grateful to both Propex and Steve at Essanjay for their help.

When do we start saving?? - In our first 4 weeks in the Alps we spent €39 filling our LPG bottles. At an average price of 78 cents a litre that means we used 50 litres. 80% fill of one cylinder is 21 litres so that would have been the equivalent of 2 and a half bottles. Buying refills for 11kg bottles of propane would cost around £20, therefore 3 refills would have been £60 - IF we could have bought the same bottles over here in France. In reality we would have had to pay a deposit of €9 for a french bottle and around €18 for a French regulator. Looking at it that way we’ve made a saving of €68 already to offset against the cost of the installation. Just as important are the facts that we haven’t wasted any gas by having to exchange bottles when they’re not totally empty, and we haven’t had to specifically time a trip to buy gas when a bottle is empty.

To read about where and how to fill up LPG bottles click here

Gaslow on ebay

This entry was posted on Thursday, March 20th, 2008 at 12:23 pm and is filed under Campervan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.