Refilling Gaz or other ordinary cylinders at the petrol station

KAL

KAL

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Does anyone know whether it's possible to get hold of a suitable adaptor that would allow the refilling of an ordinary butane cylinder at the autogas refilling points in a petrol station?

If such adapters are available, would the station allow it?

Anyone any knowledge or experience of such?

All hypothetical of course...:eek:
 
Auto gas is not butane is it ? Is it not a mixture of butane and propane or is it just propane ?

Id not think the filling station would allow you to fill ordinary bottles with some Heath Robinson lash up although I believe there may be special bottles designed to be filled, (without exceeding 80%)

One day perhaps filling bottles will become as routine as filling a petrol can
 
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Is Autogas less expensive than Calor, then? I'd expect the opposite, since Autogas presumably has some (albeit reduced at the moment) road fuel tax levied on it which Calor won't.

Pete
 
This is the only recognised system that I know of. A search on the web will give you lots of ideas for filling small propane/butane bottles from large ones. Adapters are available from the likes of BES and it works out cheaper than buying refills but there are safety concerns.
 
prv said:
Is Autogas less expensive than Calor, then? I'd expect the opposite, since Autogas presumably has some (albeit reduced at the moment) road fuel tax levied on it which Calor won't.

Pete
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Since we are talking about filling cylinders the price of liquid butane and liquid propane is about £1.9 per litre based on the refil prices for 7 or 6 kg Calor cylinders

Autogas is I think around 73p/litre.
 
My camper carries two 13 kg gas bottles, one installed in the vehicle for refiling with Autogas, which I believe to be propane, the other is a Calor propane bottle. It is considerably cheaper to refill with Autogas than to exchange the Calor bottle, by a factor of about 1:2. Our refillable bottle is the Gaslow one linked by Alahol2.

I believe it to be illegal to fill a bottle on a forecourt unless it is installed in the vehicle as a fixture. I know people who do it, as there is rarely any supervision.
 
KAL said:
Does anyone know whether it's possible to get hold of a suitable adaptor that would allow the refilling of an ordinary butane cylinder at the autogas refilling points in a petrol station?

If such adapters are available, would the station allow it?

Anyone any knowledge or experience of such?

All hypothetical of course...:eek:
Click to expand...

Leaving aside the issue of pipes and connectors which I'm sure you can get off E bay, themore serious problem is the gas level. To allow for expansion and to avoid the risk of liquid gas coming through the regulator you need to fill to 80% max of the volume of the cylinder. In my gas powered car this is done by an 80% valve that shuts off the flow at this level, and the same in the gasflow cylinders. When I refill a camping gas bottle at home from a bigger cylinder, I use an accurate set of scales to make sure I dont exceed this level. This isnt just and elfnsafety nonsense - it actually does matter.

So even if you can find adapters, dont do it from the autogas pump. decant from a big Calor instead, and weigh carefully.
 
Filling to 80%

I am intrigued by this. I can imagine that no-one wants unexpanded, liquid gas coming through to a cooker or other device (which might happen if a 100% fill were achieved), and I can see that some headspace is needed in the bottle to allow for a reasonable amount of gas to evaporate from liquid and be held as 'store' before the On/Off tap, but any other reasons ? Especially operational ones related to H&S ?
 
You need some ullage to allow for heat expansion.

If a cold bottle with a vapour space above the liquid warms up, the liquid expands and the pressure rises, you have a vapour space at higher pressure.

If a cold bottle full of liquid warms up the liquid expands but it's nowhere to go so the bottle ruptures. You can't compress liquids.
 
sarabande said:
Filling to 80%

I am intrigued by this. I can imagine that no-one wants unexpanded, liquid gas coming through to a cooker or other device (which might happen if a 100% fill were achieved), and I can see that some headspace is needed in the bottle to allow for a reasonable amount of gas to evaporate from liquid and be held as 'store' before the On/Off tap, but any other reasons ? Especially operational ones related to H&S ?
Click to expand...

The 80% is a presumably a random safety factor?
The liquid is not going to expand by anything like 25% is it?
I expect you need a bit of space for the gas to boil off into, if you draw a lot of gas.
It could be a bit like a kettle boiling, the liquid level rises due to bubbles in the bulk of it.
More likely to happen in an LPG vehicle, where the gas drawn off could be 100bhp worth, not 5kW of cooker's worth.


I have seen dodgy characters filling cylinders on a forecourt.
 
filling up at petrol station

In New Zeland you can take your gas bottle to any petrol station and they will put in however much you want ,just like we do with petrol.i have often wondered why we cant do the same(much bigger population)kieron
 
Been to Australia 5 times and used a camper van, in all the states over there, most surprised to find I had to refill my bottles from a large bottle on the forecourt, the small bottles we had were vented by undoing a screw on the valve, then turning on the big bottle and waiting until the small bottle spewed liquid out. I was not carrying matches or a lighter during this operation.
 
KAL said:
Does anyone know whether it's possible to get hold of a suitable adaptor that would allow the refilling of an ordinary butane cylinder at the autogas refilling points in a petrol station?

If such adapters are available, would the station allow it?
Click to expand...

NO! :eek:

And if by any chance the staff did authorise the LPG dispenser they'd be for the high jump and no mistake

There are good reasons, it's not petty silly rules (for once)

1. Autogas isn't a like for like replacement for either Butane or Propane
2. The forecourt dispensers are designed for filling vehicle LPG tanks, not bottles
3. The use of non-standard adaptors between the standard vehicle connector and bottles introduces a risk of leaks, potentially catastrophic*
4. It would be illegal under the terms of the site licence

* There have been a spate of problems with adaptors to convert from the standard fitting used in the UK to the one often used in Eastern Europe as it is.
 
Thanks Brigantia, but motorhome users with Gaslow installations tell me that they can fill at many Autogas sites & even have a ministry letter to say that they don't need to pay the full tax rate, provided the fuel is NOT used for propulsion.

Looks like another case of confusing & wrongly applied laws! How rare - not!
 
Outwith the UK its often the case that bottles are refilled locally rather than exchanged.
For anyone who believes the calor gas exchange system is better I have had in recent years when buying 19kg propane a cylinder that had clearly been on a fishing boat on deck.
Calor had fitted a new valve and resprayed despite the fact the support ring around the bottom was little more than rust.
On another occasion damaged taper which would only seal with help of gastight.
Last but not least several bottles half full of water!
Oh and try to find a number or contact to complain to!
 
Searush said:
Thanks Brigantia, but motorhome users with Gaslow installations tell me that they can fill at many Autogas sites & even have a ministry letter to say that they don't need to pay the full tax rate, provided the fuel is NOT used for propulsion.

Looks like another case of confusing & wrongly applied laws! How rare - not!
Click to expand...

I think (and I will try and remember to check on this in the bible at work tonight) I'm right in saying that the Gaslow installations in question include a standard UK type filling point and do not use standard Butane / Propane systems but use a custom made and appropriately certified refillable cylinder (or in other words, a tank ;))

So it's not actually a situation where people are trying to connect an adaptor to the LPG delivery hose to try and fill Calor or Campingaz bottles - although I'd have sympathy for any customer service assistant who struggled to work out the difference on a busy forecourt whilst trying to deal with a queue of customers all wanting a skinny latte, a tuna melt pannini oh and 10, no 20, Benson ... no actually I'll have 10 Lambert ... and can I have an extra shot too (always just AFTER you've rung the transaction into the till) etc.

(As an aside, we also have no means of NOT charging the full duty, it would be up to the customer to reclaim it from the exciseman. Other outlets may be able to do this though)

To what extent this is a case of over-regulation I'm not entirely sure ... LPG isn't something to mess about with in quantity (the blast radius if a delivery tanker went boom whilst delivering to us would wipe out us, the Little Chef next door, McAlpines crane yard, an entire HGV repair depot, the local Driving Test Centre and probably take part of the roof of Tescos 200 yards away as well). Overfilling a bottle on the forecourt wouldn't be quite so dramatic but could still be pretty spectacular
 
philip_stevens said:
This site - http://www.wisegeek.com/what-is-the-difference-between-propane-and-butane.htm - gives the difference between butane, propane and autogas.
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Ah, OK. Thanks for that link. As already established in other threads, definitely NOT a good idea to refill butane cylinders with propane.

Great success (hypothetically) with Alahol's suggestions and VicS's BES part numbers. Really easy and works out at approx £4 per camping gaz 907 refill based on £19.99 for a 13 kg butane cylinder.

Gratitude to the forum community for clearing up the autogas query, and for the 907 refill-enabling advice.:)
 
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