Gas bottle refilling abroad

[dgadee]

I have usually, with a lot of effort, been able to get Calor gas bottles refilled at Spanish/Italian/Greek bottling plants. Sometimes it has not been possible to find somewhere with a suitable adapter.

I hope that I have solved this problem by first getting a POL to KLF male to male fitting. This fits UK propane bottles and the KLF end is German. Being in Greece, a German size is not much help. However, GOK do a Euro set which has a female KLF fitting and the other end suits other European countries. The D2 suits Greece. Bought from Amazon.

I've been at this gas bottle filling stuff for 5 years now. I originally thought it would be a problem travelling from one country to another and getting new bottles for each country (especially if an address has to be supplied/different parts of a country have different bottles, etc.). I now think perhaps that would have been easier or cheaper. Who knows.

 

[sailaboutvic]

I been filling my own bottles for some time now ,
I keep four 907 and once I get low on my last bottle I get a local bottle for the day and top them up , returning the bottle toget my deposit back .
this is the cheapest way I found .

 

[dgadee]

I been filling my own bottles for some time now ,
I keep four 907 and once I get low on my last bottle I get a local bottle for the day and top them up , returning the bottle toget my deposit back .
this is the cheapest way I found .

Where are you? Not sure which countries are hard to rent bottles, but that seems like a decent path. Although we have 6kg bottles and the 907s would be empty in no time at all.

By the way, the parts I mentioned can be got from DNAutogasparts.

 

[sailaboutvic]

Where are you? Not sure which countries are hard to rent bottles, but that seems like a decent path. Although we have 6kg bottles and the 907s would be empty in no time at all.

By the way, the parts I mentioned can be got from DNAutogasparts.

We was filling bottles in Sicily , France and Tunisia , no problem asking shop to let us have a bottle for the day and we paid a high deposit.
we now back in north Europe . Last year we got a bottle in the Netherlands.
this year a manage to get a empty propane bottle in the UK , filled all four bottles before I left .

 

[Roberto]

I filled bottles as sailaboutvic said in many places: give a deposit to take the full local bottle, fill your own bottles then return it. Sometimes there is some gas leftover in the donor bottle which makes the lender happy

 

[dgadee]

I filled bottles as sailaboutvic said in many places: give a deposit to take the full local bottle, fill your own bottles then return it. Sometimes there is some gas leftover in the donor bottle which makes the lender happy

What adaptor bits did you have?

 

[Roberto]

What adaptor bits did you have?

I have the open tap for the 907 (or the Butagaz cube) which can be connected to a few different high pressure hose lengths:
1. one ends with an inverted thread (usual 10-12kg bottles), the one I use the most. I can also fit a second 907 open tap (in some places in Africa they have big 6kg "Boubagaz" bottles with the same thread as Campingaz).
2. another one takes the open-tap for local bottles if available, one has to ask locally "I would like to use your gas bottle for soldering" to find the adaptor.
3. A third one is simply a cut hose, but never had to use it


edit
there are two pieces in each high pressure hose as every piece is only (at least here) available with one inverted thread connector on one end and a regular thread connector on the other end--> the two regular thread female ends are joined by a normal male-male connector.

The 907 receiving bottle is in the water, when it reaches neutral buoyancy it will be filled with the correct amount of gas.

last picture, a local open tap fitting to draw gas from a local bottle

 

[BobnLesley]

Besides free flow adaptors I would (based on experience) advocate a small spring balance; if you know what the empty bottle weighs and the weight of gas sadi bottle holds, a spring balance reduces the risk of overfilling.
If at any time you struggle to obtain a suitable free-flow fitting for a bottle, you can easily make one from a regulator: take a power drill and a bit slightly smaller than the internal diameter of the regulator and drill it out from both ends to chew-up the internals, shake out any small/loose bits before first use - once you can blow through it, it's free flow.

 

[dgadee]

Good thinking on the regulator fix!