Safefill Refill Price - Is it worth it?
I'm just trying to work out if it's worth making the switch. What does it cost to fill per litre?
The cylinders do seem quite pricey.
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Is it worth it? Depends on usage and where you pitch. I am away for 4 months of the year. Always on EHU. I carry two 3.9kg calor propane and use no more than about one and a half and so 6kg. Costs me £24 a year and therefore for me a non starter.
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We have 1, do some rallies with no EHU so use gas for everything, for us very good value can refill a bottle for between £8 & £9.
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Hi
Quite simple really, if you do a fair bit of off grid camping, using gas as a power source then you will soon get your money back compared to calor prices. If you only use sites with hook up don't bother.
As others will agree, if you do rallies etc or just off grid, a refillable lpg bottle and a decent sized solar panel can easily see a weeks camping or more.
JK
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It's worth it for me too - and helps give far more choice of where I pitch up. CC sites do a great job but they are not really my thing since I much prefer wide open spaces. I could only get the biggest Safefill at the time I got mine but that's fine as it is ages before it runs low - with the advantage that you can see the level too.
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Going abroad for long trips refillable means you are not always worrying about the calor cylinders running out. In the UK meets rallies and THSs are easy and cheap. Today the price per litre was 60.1 p. To fill an 11 kg bottle that is £13.22. Compare this to the price of a 6kg light. If you use a lot of gas it soon pays for itself. As already said not any use for people who always use EHU.
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Easy makes a good point. For us non EHUers, it's a no brainer- it is so much cheaper than Calor! It's flexible and I don't have to give Gas back to Calor to ensure I have full cylinders. The more you use the more you save and the cost of the cylinder comes back to you in saved fees. The more folk clammering to fill Safefill cylinders the more likely it will be that garages will see the light and realise that this is a genuine and stable revenue stream.
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Another saving is if you are with the other club - £4 a night off pitch fees if you don't use EHU. Last year I thought the gas was running low on one of their sites - and paid for hook up for the last night - I felt rather foolish when I got home and found I had misread the cylinder! I will be double checking with a torch next time before I panic!
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As the others say it depends on your use of gas. As we are usually on a hook up we use very little gas and like Easy T the figures do not stack up for us. It is pricey to get started and cheap after that and I am afraid all I can say is check your gas usage and do the arithmatic. Basically you need to use a lot of gas to make it work for you.
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I always use EHU but it still made sense for me to buy one. The reasons combined were that at cold times I used the gas to supplement the electric heating. I also have a gas BBQ and use the oven a lot. However the tipping point was when we started going to France and needed to take a full cylinder which meant exchanging part used calor cylinders which was expensive. The added benefit is that I only now carry the one cylinder which due to size never runs out on site and therefore I carry less weight and have more storage in the front locker. I'm completely sold on them.
the only thing to consider is that a lot of garages now have plastic "necks" fitted to the filling pump handles which make it extremely difficult to refil. An adapter will be available for sale apparently by the end of Feb but will add £20 to the cost so factor that in
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Hi, New member, new to caravanning and first ever post so please be gentle. I have done a search to see if these questions have been raised before but only this thread came up but apologies if I am in the wrong department.
We are about to pick up our very first caravan after selling our house and are going to tour wherever we want to for hopefully the next few years, health permitting. This will mainly be in Europe but also UK. My questions are
1. I understand that Safefill cylinders containing car type LPG is a mix of Propane and Butane. Not yet having an owners manual, will this gas run alde heating in our caravan?
2. Is it a good idea taking at least 1 safefill cylinder with us so that if we run low after a few months at least we can put it in the back of the car and nip to the lopcal garage and fill it up? I know there are EHUs (look at me using the terminology
) but just in case of an emergency.3. Would the garage owners/employees have a moan about us filling a portable gas cylinder rather than a fixed one in a car for instance?
4. If the previous questions all come out aspositive answers, would we need to buy the continental adaptors in the UK before leaving or are they readily available in the countries we would be refilling in?
Thanks I advance
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That's definitely worth looking into Pippah. I will be visiting the C&CC stand at the show to find out more. I have stayed loyal to the CC for all these years but they are stuck in a thought pattern where it has to be EHU or nothing- They are not seeing the whole picture and being inclusive for all members.
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3. A map showing filling points is on the Safefill website.
Merve, I realise you like to extoll the merits of Safefill cylinders but one of my concerns would the very very few filling stations in Europe that are shown on Safefills' own map?
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Many of us are members of both clubs Merve - I only joined the C&CC after a visit to their stand about 6 years ago. But it does give more choices and I have found lots of their sites that have non-EHU pitches with that substantial saving. There is no way I use £4 of gas a day! And the THS (temp hol sites) are very handy.
I meant to ask at Yorkshire Caravans, Bawtry if they fill Safefill but forgot in the end! I asked my new LPG (house heating) supplier about getting my tank equipped and the answer is a rather expensive operation so a NO! Tank has to have something inside it - plus the filling nozzle so not worth me doing.
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Just looked a the Safefill site and cannot see anywhere in France/Spain/Portugal to have bottles refilled, how do users manage to do so?
The nearest supplier for refills to us at home is over an hour away, so we will probably not look at getting Safefill cylinders until these become more wide spread.
If we were to go down the route of refillable bottles I think we would have to go to something like Gaslow where it can be fitted with an external opening (can this be done with safefill) so we can refill at a fuel station.
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The Safefil approved refilling points are just places where Safefil have confirmed you can refil them and from my experience only include a small number of the total LPG filling stations in the UK.. Apparently a few years ago when Safefil started, there were some adapters being sold on EBay which allowed you to refil a normal non refillable cylinder from a LPG filling station, which is a highly dangerous practice as there is no auto cut off as is with the Safefil or Gaslow. As result, advice was issued to petrol stations that gas cylinders should not be refilled which was then taken to mean all cylinders by some refilling stations, and therefore there were some problem experienced by Safefil and others.
I have had a Safefil cylinder for four years now and I have never had any problem refilling mine and been in full view of the garage desks you can download LPG filling stations onto your Sat nav if you Google it
Re using abroad, , you just use normal LPG filling stations with the appropriate adapter and there seem to be more LPG stations in France than there are in the U.K. So I don't envisage you would have a problem. Not sure re Portugal.
you can't install the Safefil cylinder like Gaslow. The advantage of Safefil is that you don't have to take the caravan to fill it which for me would be a real pain as I just chuck it in the car and refil it when I'm going near the LPG station. You need to decide what works for you as clearly for some with the Gaslow system installed it works for them, but that does imply significant additional cost to have it fitted. Perhaps check if you have Gaslow installed, whether the cylimder can still be removed to refil?
how long are you intending to spend abroad, because the large Safefil cylinder carries a heck of a lot of gas? I have been in France for a month and I used about 1/6th of it with using the oven and BBQ. I use more in England when I use it to supplement the van heating but even so from a week in freezing temperatures I only used half of it. The other advantage is that I only ever take the one cylinder now so saving weight and space
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MDD10, many thanks for your helpful comments.
We tend to go away abroad for up to 3 months twice a year, plus we are hoping to try some THS and to start using Aires when abroad.
Having a refillable system would be useful during the shoulder months when touring abroad, it can be quite cold at nights and with only 4Kwh per day allowed on the Acsi scheme and some sites run the electric on a meter it can get a bit pricey.
Being able to run hot water and heating off gas for days would be more cost effective, where at the moment if we were to do that a 6kg bottle would only last 3 - 4 days at a cost of £23+ OH is busy looking at all the systems, including a fixed under slung tank, the safefill appears to be good for a caravan but a motorhome would probably go more for a fixed system like Gaslow/Gasit etc.
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I think if Ina motor home you will be moving fairly regularly so would agree that Gaslow may work better for you. Given the usage you are intending it will definitely be worth while and I. Sure you will not have a problem finding filling stations
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I installed our Gaslow system myself, it is very simple to do, full instructions are available from them.
You cannot remove the cylinder to refill it, you need to install either a filling point on the outside of the vehicle, or there is one that you can install in the gas locker. With the one in the locker, it may be possible to take out the whole system to refil, but it would not be ideal.
Some places may recuse filling if there is no fixed external point.
Ours is outside in the side of the van at the front where the gas locker is, so the pipework is all within the gas locker.
We fill at ordinary LPG pumps . You will not find many LPG pumps in Denmark, Switzerland or Austria, or the far north of Scotland, but elsewhere it is no problem.
Not sure about Ireland.
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Thanks Kj, I think that's what we are going to do, Phil will fit it and then get it checked by a qualified gas fitter, just need to sort out the best place to cut the hole through the body of the van. At one side of the gas locker is the bathroom so no good, the other side is the wardrobe with a cupboard underneath it again not ideal. Will need to do a bit more checking.
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Yes that's right the skirt, that might be an option although very low on a Bailey, the hose could then come up through the floor of the locker. Another is to put the filler point on the locker door right over on the right hand side, leave some slack in the hose for opening and secure the rest along the side wall where all the other bits and bobs are located. OH is going to have a word with someone tomorrow who sells and fits the system to see if he can get any info.
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If I remember correctly, Gaslow advise against having the filler point on an opening door if possible as it puts strain on the filler pipe. There is a part they recommend you use if you do fit in the door.
I would think routing the filler pipe through the wardrobe or cupboard below would not be too inconvenient.
If fitting a fixed external point is not possible then next best would be one inside the locker.
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Tammygirl
Why not ask your question the the Bailey Motorhome Owners Facebook group. Lots of people there have fitted the Gaslow system and I am sure you would get a lot of feedback.
David
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