Gas Low for caravan !
Hi all,
Heres one for the "Boff's " , exchanging a 6 lite yesterday for a 6 standard at our local Calor depot
( Stoney Stanton ) had no problem. Then got to thinking of changing to Gas Low for the 'van, could anyone allow me to know if carrying 2 bottles ( and there is room in my locker for 2x13r's ) would we have to plumb in with a filler on the side of the 'van or take the bottles to a supplier and refill them ourselves.? What is the availability of filling stations?
Happy caravanning.
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Have you had a look at this thread here, quite a lot about refillable systems. I think Kj has a refillable system in his twin axle van so he might be able to help. You might also want to know about the accessibility of pumps whilst towing.
David
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Hi Indoors, We have Gaslow system fitted to our van a Bailey Unicorn 3 with a side lpg locker. Everything fitted neatly with the filling point mounted in the door of the lpg locker. His Lordship thought this would be cheap to replace at the time of changing the van. Or with Gaslow you could just fit a blanking plug on the filler. With regard to availability of filling stations, we personally have never had a problem, if you find the access restricted then just move onto the next one. We find that filling both cylinders up at the beginning of the season (February) we only top up once more during the summer break. Our policy is never let the second cylinder get down below 1/2 full. Having two 13kgs in your locker if it is a drawbar mounted locker would impact on hitch download, another option is a 13kg main cylinder coupled with a 6kg as backup.
BTW our system is fully plumbed in so don’t have to take bottles out to fill.
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I’ve got a safefil bottle which does us well. I would of thought that if you went the Gaslow route it might be more convenient to fit the system to the tow vehicle rather than the caravan. I would also check out this company https://www.gasit.co.uk/
The supply of LPG is patchy it may die out completely of become more popular if Diesel is penalised. Whether a refillable system is worth it depends on how much gas you use 6kg a year no. But if you saw the picture in the snow then we used between 7 and 9kg over 3 nights. At Calorlite prices that’s getting on for £40 so worth it absolutely.
Ps Shame this site doesn’t have a PM system like proper forums do
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Yes, we have 2 x 6kg gaslows fitted in the front locker, the bigger size was too big.
Ours is fixed, with external filling point in the side of the van with the pipe going directly into the locker.
You can also fit a filling point inside the locker, but we did not do this as we did not want any problems with being allowed to fill.
Gaslow now also market removable cylinders similar to Safefill.
I fitted the system myself, it was easy to do. We use quite a lot of gas, especially when on our long trips abroad, so the main point in fitting refillables was to be able to fill abroad.
We have not had any problem accessing the pumps to fill.
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i guess for a caravanner its the trade off between the portability of the Safefill cylinder but its potential for being refused a fill, and the 'guaranteed' fill of a fixed gaslow system but the potential access issues of having to get the caravan to the LPG pump.
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I would say any potential access issues are being overplayed. As I said, we have never had a problem.
In some fuel stations the LPG pump is right next to the other pumps, so no different to filling the car when towing, in others it sits separately with plenty of space around it.
The only problem we find is actually finding out where the LPG pump is as they are sometimes not well signed!
In that case I usually send OH to look before pulling too far in towards the pumps.
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underslung tanks (of many differing capacities) with proper fill points can be retro fitted to (pretty much) any MH and might be a better bet with vans (mainly uk) that have small gas lockers...2x6kg Gaslow are (virtually) twice the cost of a single 11kg bottle, especially with the extra hose required.
the benefits are cheaper gas, fill up in any country, fill at anytime, capacity can be far higher than locker bottles, gas locker can be turned into a decent 'wet' locker, another oft missing item...
kill many birds with one stone....
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The drawback is finding a filling point in this area, Q.
This site can be useful -
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looks like about 50 LPG stations in devon and cornwall, but finding one either local (as a go to) or on a major route out is the trick...and to fill when its convenient, not to wait until virtually empty.
im fairly fortunate in that there is one station a couple of miles away, although i dont make that much use of it....one on the eastery trunk road (a popular one for us) and now ive noticed Sainsbury in Taunton (nr M5 J25) are doing LPG, somthats the SW trips covered.
im currently researching a handy 'go to' site for our northerly trips...
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