Filling propane bottles

johnabbott893 said:
Urban Myth!

Any heavy duty LPG cylinder, such as the calor gas ones, are capable of containing either propane or butane.
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Indeed Calor swop them around - I have a 14Kg red propane cylinder outside with patches of top paint missing, showing Calor (15kg butane) blue underneath. Not the first time I have noticed a respray and label job on their cylinders.

Going back to earlier posts, the problem with camping gaz is the expence, certaily in UK the most expensive way to buy gas other than the small tins. The largest size is a small cylinder that doesn't last very long - about one week of cooking for 7 people living on board full time (charter yacht use). Longer with less use of course.
 
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mattonthesea said:
Question: is it reasonable sensible to keep these two and add in a propane regulator; then obtain a (refillable?) propane cylinder for the Carribean section? I am working a tight time and very tight budget!
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Don't see any problem with this - I have inherited a collection of regulators on my boat, and am about to swop from camping gaz to Calor propane.

Do check the operating manual for your cooker etc. though. Most appliances seem to be rated for either propane or butane but you may have to change a setting on the burners to get the correct air / gas mix.
 
Petronella said:
I think this picture has been posted previously on this forum. It shows the 'bottle to bottle' approach in action.
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My son used camping gaz bottles in his business but found getting them refilled expensive. He then refilled his own, using the same technique. However, this is a slow process as the gas goes up the same tubing that the liquid comes down. So he modified a couple of bottles by brazing schrader valves into the top. The bottle could then be vented as the liquid flowed down, took about 30 seconds to refill the bottle.
 
that brazed valve solves the 'vent' problem I asked about, thanks, Vyv.

But any issues with the tiny rubber seal in the valve core ? Are they happy in a propane/butane atmosphere ?
 
sarabande said:
before I create an LPG explosion that wipes out my village (no, that idea is tempting :) [irony one] ), a followup question please.

I have various propane and butane bottles, large and small, empty and full. I don't collect them, they just occur in my life.

Firstly, I am not going to be so daring as to decant propane into butane, or t'other way round. The snag to me seems to be the regulator. I'd thought of these devices as being a sort of one-way valve. The use of (new) orange tube means that I need a regulator on each bottle to be able to use the orange tubing, so...

...setting up the donor and recipient bottles as suggested, can I "just" join the regulators together with orange tube, and control the flow with the tap on each cylinder ?

Can the process really be as mechanically simple as that, or do I need to make up flanged unions with various threads, L and R hand, and an 8mm spigot for the tubing ?
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Just make up spigots with threaded nuts/male or female as the case may be, use the orange HIGH pressure hose and away you go, its not like trying to move liquid from hi to lo pressure, the pressures equalise and then the liquid trickles through. IIRC Nigel Calder dwells on it a little bit in one of his books.
Stu
 
skipper_stu said:
Just make up spigots with threaded nuts/male or female as the case may be, use the orange HIGH pressure hose and away you go, its not like trying to move liquid from hi to lo pressure, the pressures equalise and then the liquid trickles through. IIRC Nigel Calder dwells on it a little bit in one of his books.
Stu
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An alternative is to buy the fittings from Gaslow. Now that bulkhead regulators are fitted to all caravans and motorhomes it is normal to connect HP hoses from the bottle to them. Gaslow, and no doubt others, market the connectors and many caravan shops sell them.
 
We've decanted a few times now and, to date, I'm still here.

dratsea said:
Can speed it up by having the donor bottle upside down, higher and in the sun with the receiving bottle in shade
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It makes a huge difference if the receiving bottle is cooler than the full bottle. We tend to wrap the receiving bottle in damp towels to "refrigerate" for a couple of hours before starting.
 
For a good & cheap UK supplier for gas bottle fittings & hoses google "BES".

When using off the shelf gas fittings for refilling ensure that blow back valves are removed. As mentioned by others, pressure regulators must not be used during refilling.

So far I have refilled Camping Gaz 907 cylinders & find that it seems to take 30-40min.
 
Australia and most of Asia uses the same bottles as the US. They can be filled at service stations and camping stores from big bottles located outdoors. Unless the attendant is keen, this is usually self service. The procedure is to connect the 2 bottles - it doesn't seem to matter whether bottles are higher or lower or inverted. Open the bleed screw on the receiving bottle and wait until liquid starts coming from the bleed screw. Then close the screw and the bottle taps and disconnect the bottles. The bleed screw is generally in the side of the brass tap which screws into the bottle. There is a hole in the bottle handle so that a screwdriver can reach the bleed screw. The bottle will not fill unless the bleed screw is open because the gas/air mixture in the receiving bottle is not sufficiently compressed by the pressure in the sending bottle to make space for the liquid gas.

We don't have the new style US bottles yet but I imagine they are coming.
 
Calor Fittings

Hi, all

Clearly this thread is a little bit old but I'm hoping I can get some help here. Does anyone know where you can buy Calor fittings to allow you to refill their bottles. I have searched online but I haven't been able to find a single one.

I thought since you all travel worldwide with your tanks you might have come across somewhere where they can be bought. Sometimes you just have to have your own fittings because you're not guaranteed to find a refiller with the appropriate fittings.

Thanks in advance for any help.
 
After having read as many threads about this subject as I could find I still have questions, I've probably missed the relevant bits to me !:confused:

We have 2, 4.5 kg calor bottles with butane in them currently(We were considering whether to change this to 7kg bottles ?) and are travelling down to Med from UK in May. As camping Gaz is also butane does that mean that we can use both bottle types, refilling the calor bottle wherever possible, buying camping gaz refills when we can't get the calor bottle refilled.

I am presuming that we will need a different connector at the regulator to use the two bottle types but is this the only difference?

I appreciate from all the other posts that no 'solution' is perfect or foolproof, expense vs. ease of supply etc but trying to make a decision before we leave and actually 'do it' as thought it may be easier to source connectors etc at home.
 
You can use propane or butane in most appliances. The only real difference is that butane can freeze. The regulators are also labelled differently but seen to work with OK either gas.
As to the bottles, getting your own filled is difficult because such facilities are few and far between.
European countries each have their own bottles and they are rarely interchangeable after crossing borders. French bottles are available from all supermarkets but require a returnable deposit (keep the certificate as proof of deposit). The connectors are different from the UK but are reasonably cheap from the supermarkets. Belgian bottles use the same connectors. Cannot remember what the Italian and Greek connectors were.
I do remember abandoning any empty bottles after arriving at each new country as they were just so much scrap metal.
Hope this helps.
 
The likelihood of being able to get your Calor bottles refilled is infinitesimally small, unless you decant yourself or find another who will do it for you. You will not be able to buy the fittings officially, as Calor frown on the practice of someone else filling their bottles, but Gaslow sell every fitting you can imagine that you would need to convert/bodge up.

If your intention is to move from country to country at fairly short intervals you would be better off converting to Camping Gaz now. It is available almost everywhere in the Med and, with the possible exception of France, is far cheaper than in UK. If you intend going to e.g. France for some time you would be better buying the local bottle, regulator and gas when you get there.

Once you have a regulated gas you only need the orange hose to connect it to the boat's supply.
 
>based in the UK we switched to the red Calor Gas propane cylinders.
In the canaries, they would only offer to sell an 11kg bottle of propane.

We had a US one and Calor dealers refused to fill it. I suspect it's Calor wanting to sell/rent cylinders.

>European boats are NOT alowed to have Propane on them only butane

Not true. We used Propane there as did many others.

>In the canaries, they would only offer to sell an 11kg bottle of propane.

That's odd we filled with Calor in Gran Canaria.

By the way most stoves can take both Propane and Butane (with different regulators) but some can't. It's worth checking.
 
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If you have survived the various suggestions for re-filling/transferring etc and make it as far as the Algarve do ensure your propane bottles are full.

There is a minor crisis here in Lagos as the one and only supplier/re-filler of propane has been closed down. The nearest is Villa Real - on the Spanish border.

Oh, yes, don't think about taking your bottles to be filled there as transporting them in a car is illegal and punishable by having your eyes filled with molten lead.
 
As electricity is free in most marinas we now use a 2 ring electric table top cooker sitting on top of the gas stove in harbour and only use gas for the oven. We also use an electric kettle and toaster and so our gas usage is very low so paying for gas is not a real problem. Here in Portugal Modelo/Continente sell Camping Gaz refils for around 10 euros though the exchange process is not that simple as you have to check in the old cylinder at customer services them collect a full one from the shelves and take it with the ticket from customer services to the till and hope the checkout operators knows what to do. If they don't checkout can take a while.
 
decanting hoses

http://www.bes.co.uk/products/067.asp

click on the above to buy various hose for LPG gas , i have just bought a 35" hose with male propane connectors either end to transfer from one cylinder to another , the delivery from the company is very fast it i ordered in morning it was at my house the following morning , :)
 
In places where the world cruisers pass through I have had my Calor bottles filled [ both types ] I never enquired as to what was in them but the Flavel and currently the Force 10 burns it without complaint.

When I drop them off I see a variety of bottles.

France the French islands and the USA were and are the exceptions.

Camping gas or a local bottle only if French.

In the USA the bottle had to have a current test and use a US std thread. However in one or two places I did find a back street supplier with adaptors.
 
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