Filling gas bottles

[nicknorman]

What if I took the gas bottle into a Tardis and went back in time 100 years, then filled the bottles repeatedly for the next 100 years, gave the bottle back to Calor the day after I hired it. Would that be theft?

 

Well I suppose it would be if I died of old age during that hundred years of pre-time. Curses, another argument lost.

[Paul C]

But if I start a hire agreement with Calor, I get a bottle. Once I use up the gas in it, I can (pay and) swap it with another bottle. If I keep doing that for 15 years, Calor is still 1 bottle down and I'm 1 bottle up. The same occurs if I kept bottle #1 and filled it myself. Its hard to see how Calor are worse off with respect to the number of bottles they have if I swap them, vs the number of bottles they have if I keep the same one. BY HIRING A BOTTLE, I'm depriving them of a bottle anyway, so the argument that filling your own ---> permanetly deprive simply doesn't stack up.

 

IF YOU HAVE A HIRE AGREEMENT FOR SOMETHING, YOU CAN'T BE DONE FOR THE THEFT OF THAT SOMETHING.

[peterboat]

 

All of that doesn't appear to change what was said about it not taking off as a fuel for vehicles though. (The post of mine which you included in the ones you posted)

 

It had the potential to but just doesn't seem to have done. And there are definitely fewer outlets near to where I live, there were never a huge number but I can think of at least two forecourts a few years ago that sold LPG local to me (say within 10 miles) neither of which sell it today. A quick check of the map link posted earlier shows they haven't been replaced, but we have lost a few forecourts over recent years anyway.

 

I suspect the retailers just don't think they are worth the additional hassle, especially if they think they are going to have the extra hassle of dealing with people wanting to fill their gas bottles using systems of debatable safety standards like refill systems with no over fill protection. (Like the one featured in the original post)

 

It is also worth a mention that if like us you are a regular traveller on Euro tunnel you are not allowed to travel if your vehicle is powered by LPG (Even though you can travel if you have LPG properly stowed in cylinders in your caravan or motor home).

Not all retailers are on the map Martin you have to be a member of UK LPG and lots of people wont pay to do that [its expensive] Nobody really knows haow many vehicles have been converted as neither of mine are registered as such [its not against the law] so nobody knows how successful it has been. My local station goes through a lot of gas which seems to be increasing and at 46 p a litre long may it continue. I cant understand why vehicles arnt allowed in the euro tunnel if on LPG as the tanks are safer than calor ones who knows?

[Guest]

Not all retailers are on the map Martin you have to be a member of UK LPG and lots of people wont pay to do that [its expensive] Nobody really knows haow many vehicles have been converted as neither of mine are registered as such [its not against the law] so nobody knows how successful it has been. My local station goes through a lot of gas which seems to be increasing and at 46 p a litre long may it continue. I cant understand why vehicles arnt allowed in the euro tunnel if on LPG as the tanks are safer than calor ones who knows?

 

To do with the quantity involved I think.

 

as for availability - I know for a fact that none in my locality sell it when two used to. I don't need to look on a map to tell me this because I have looked.

 

As for uptake - there doesn't appear to be any actual reliable figures avaiable.

 

The trade association are forecasting 'robust growth' in lpg uptake to 2050, but then they would wouldn't they

Edited August 15, 2016 by MJG

[mayalld]

But if I start a hire agreement with Calor, I get a bottle. Once I use up the gas in it, I can (pay and) swap it with another bottle. If I keep doing that for 15 years, Calor is still 1 bottle down and I'm 1 bottle up. The same occurs if I kept bottle #1 and filled it myself. Its hard to see how Calor are worse off with respect to the number of bottles they have if I swap them, vs the number of bottles they have if I keep the same one. BY HIRING A BOTTLE, I'm depriving them of a bottle anyway, so the argument that filling your own ---> permanetly deprive simply doesn't stack up.

 

IF YOU HAVE A HIRE AGREEMENT FOR SOMETHING, YOU CAN'T BE DONE FOR THE THEFT OF THAT SOMETHING.

 

Yes you can. The law is VERY clear on that.

 

You hired the bottle for MUTUAL convenience. You get a bottle, they get the revenue from filling it. During the term of the hire, whilst you physically have the bottle, both you and Calor are "using" the bottle.

 

Once you start filling the bottle yourself, you have prevented Calor from using their bottle.

 

Whilst Calor may not pursue the theft angle, others who find their containers stolen do.

 

Think Bread trays, or from my former employer;

 

 

Very handy general purpose cage. Cleaners love to use them, but they belong to Royal Mail.

[lesrollins]

Nothing wrong with filling your own bottles. Keep it in the back of the car a 13kg holds about 25 litres that's what it says on my adapter anyway. Costs about £15 a bottle. We use a bottle every 3 to 4 months for cooking. Now I have converted the genny from petrol to gas I will be using a lot more gas. Gas is about 56p a litre so a lot cheaper than petrol

[ditchcrawler]

You clearly don't understand the laws of physics ( although on the basis of this thread we could decide to amend the laws of physics to suit our own peculiar viewpoints)

 

There is no risk whatsoever of an overfilled bottle exploding anymore than an normally filled one. What there is is a risk of release of gas if the over pressure thing goes, although the greater issue is liquid gas getting into the regulator and or pipe work, think that was mentioned at the start of this thread but I lost the will to live and cba going to look.....

Which in turn will be dumped into your gas locker at a much higher rate than a leak that the vent is made to handle, after that its just looking for a source of ignition. Liquid gas fires are not pretty and I have no wish to be near one.

You clearly don't understand the laws of physics ( although on the basis of this thread we could decide to amend the laws of physics to suit our own peculiar viewpoints)

I can assure you I do

[Paul C]

Which in turn will be dumped into your gas locker at a much higher rate than a leak that the vent is made to handle, after that its just looking for a source of ignition. Liquid gas fires are not pretty and I have no wish to be near one.

I can assure you I do

 

Why is it suddenly dumped into the gas locker at such a great rate, when it remained in the bottle during filling at the LPG station and when transported (probably in the boot of a car) back to the boat? Also what is a "liquid gas" fire - its either a liquid or a gas, right? And why would liquid be involved after the bottle vents gas, why does it liquefy once its out of the bottle?

Edited August 15, 2016 by Paul C

[mayalld]

 

Why is it suddenly dumped into the gas locker at such a great rate, when it remained in the bottle during filling at the LPG station and when transported (probably in the boot of a car) back to the boat? Also what is a "liquid gas" fire - its either a liquid or a gas, right? And why would liquid be involved after the bottle vents gas, why does it liquefy once its out of the bottle?

 

Because, lacking expansion space, it will blow the safety valve, and empty in seconds

[MtB]

Would you please all make sure that when your over filled cylinder explodes in the summer heat you are not moored near me.

 

Point of order M'lud. Calor gas bottles are designed not to explode.

 

To stop them exploding, there is a red plastic disc that works as a pressure relief valve so if a bottle gets either hot or the pressure inside rises too high, or a combination of both, the disc pops out and the gas is released to atmosphere over about 45 seconds.

 

No explosion happens. A monster great flame thrower perhaps, but its not an explosion.

Oops. Just seen I missed about three pages of stuff saying the same!

[mayalld]

Nothing wrong with filling your own bottles. Keep it in the back of the car a 13kg holds about 25 litres that's what it says on my adapter anyway. Costs about £15 a bottle.

 

So, your logic says that its OK to substitute "about what it says on a made in china adaptor" for the carefully measured fill that Calor employs on the grounds that it's cheaper, to say nothing of freeloading on a bottle that Calor paid to manufacture.

 

Your blasé attitude to a safety critical issue does you no credit.

 

Clearly, when it all goes wrong, and a innocent bystander is killed, there is every chance that you will avoid a conviction for gross negligence manslaughter by virtue of your own simultaneous expiry.

[Chewbacka]

You clearly don't understand the laws of physics ( although on the basis of this thread we could decide to amend the laws of physics to suit our own peculiar viewpoints)

 

There is no risk whatsoever of an overfilled bottle exploding anymore than an normally filled one. What there is is a risk of release of gas if the over pressure thing goes, although the greater issue is liquid gas getting into the regulator and or pipe work, think that was mentioned at the start of this thread but I lost the will to live and cba going to look.....

If a bottle is filled such that there is little if any gas at the top, ie it is full of liquid propane then when it gets hot the liquid will expand and being a liquid can not be constrained. If there was not a safety release valve the bottle would be stretched and after a few cycles it would split. But there is a safety release valve which is why the bottle does not fail.

 

But if liquid gas is released it will boil and expand. From my memory of A level chemistry, 44g of liquid propane will become 22Litres of propane gas. Which when mixed with air to an explosive mixture would make a gas cloud of about 300Litres which will take some time to dissipate away from your gas locker.

So there is an indirect explosion risk with a grossly overfilled bottle.

[Paul C]

If a bottle is filled such that there is little if any gas at the top, ie it is full of liquid propane then when it gets hot the liquid will expand and being a liquid can not be constrained. If there was not a safety release valve the bottle would be stretched and after a few cycles it would split. But there is a safety release valve which is why the bottle does not fail.

 

But if liquid gas is released it will boil and expand. From my memory of A level chemistry, 44g of liquid propane will become 22Litres of propane gas. Which when mixed with air to an explosive mixture would make a gas cloud of about 300Litres which will take some time to dissipate away from your gas locker.

So there is an indirect explosion risk with a grossly overfilled bottle.

 

True, but the rate of expansion means that there isn't an instantaneous release of a large amount of gas, or liquid, at any one time. There would be a gradual seepage of a much smaller rate of gas, which would dissipate into the environment and the combustible mixture area would be very small - it would soon dissipate into a too low concentration of propane to combust, in the open air.

 

In addition, the 80% fill guideline is a guideline calculated with a safety margin, based on a worse case scenario (of filling while really cold, then the bottle being in a very hot environment). Yes, a dodgy fill to over 80% would erode this safety margin but it would need to be quite a bit over, to actually realise the danger of the bottle venting gas or liquid.

 

There is definitely a danger with an overfilled bottle, but the level of danger seems to be grossly exaggerated by a number of posters on here, which is somewhat irrational.

[mayalld]

 

True, but the rate of expansion means that there isn't an instantaneous release of a large amount of gas, or liquid, at any one time. There would be a gradual seepage of a much smaller rate of gas, which would dissipate into the environment and the combustible mixture area would be very small - it would soon dissipate into a too low concentration of propane to combust, in the open air.

 

In addition, the 80% fill guideline is a guideline calculated with a safety margin, based on a worse case scenario (of filling while really cold, then the bottle being in a very hot environment). Yes, a dodgy fill to over 80% would erode this safety margin but it would need to be quite a bit over, to actually realise the danger of the bottle venting gas or liquid.

 

There is definitely a danger with an overfilled bottle, but the level of danger seems to be grossly exaggerated by a number of posters on here, which is somewhat irrational.

 

13kgs of propane would be released into the gas locker over the course of 45 seconds. As that starts to dissipate, there would be a considerable risk that the "front" where the explosive mixture is found will reach a source of ignition.

[Alan de Enfield]

A few years ago (5 or 6) a farm Feed merchant, who sells calor had a fire which in turn "set off" his stock of gas cylinders.

 

We are about 1.5 miles away (across open fields) and the pressure wave broke and removed several of our roof tiles.

Bottles were shooting up into the air in excess of 300 feet

Bottles were landing in the surrounding fields up to half a mile away.

One bottle fired off horizontally, went along the road and thru' the side of a car - and - out of the other side.

One bottle dropped down vertically after its 'explosion' and went straight thru the floor of a pick up truck.

 

The road was closed for more than 12 hours until the fire died out - the Fire Brigade would not go within half-a-mile of it (understandably)

 

Irrespective of the 'theft' situation, having experienced what can happen I do not want to be anywhere near anyone who has self filled gas-cylinders using a dodgy adapter from ebay.

 

It should be made illegal !!!!

[mayalld]

A few years ago (5 or 6) a farm Feed merchant, who sells calor had a fire which in turn "set off" his stock of gas cylinders.

 

We are about 1.5 miles away (across open fields) and the pressure wave broke and removed several of our roof tiles.

Bottles were shooting up into the air in excess of 300 feet

Bottles were landing in the surrounding fields up to half a mile away.

One bottle fired off horizontally, went along the road and thru' the side of a car - and - out of the other side.

One bottle dropped down vertically after its 'explosion' and went straight thru the floor of a pick up truck.

 

The road was closed for more than 12 hours until the fire died out - the Fire Brigade would not go within half-a-mile of it (understandably)

 

Irrespective of the 'theft' situation, having experienced what can happen I do not want to be anywhere near anyone who has self filled gas-cylinders using a dodgy adapter from ebay.

 

It should be made illegal !!!!

 

It is illegal, but there is no shortage of idiots willing to do it anyway.

[Chewbacka]

A few years ago (5 or 6) a farm Feed merchant, who sells calor had a fire which in turn "set off" his stock of gas cylinders.

 

We are about 1.5 miles away (across open fields) and the pressure wave broke and removed several of our roof tiles.

Bottles were shooting up into the air in excess of 300 feet

Bottles were landing in the surrounding fields up to half a mile away.

One bottle fired off horizontally, went along the road and thru' the side of a car - and - out of the other side.

One bottle dropped down vertically after its 'explosion' and went straight thru the floor of a pick up truck.

 

The road was closed for more than 12 hours until the fire died out - the Fire Brigade would not go within half-a-mile of it (understandably)

 

Irrespective of the 'theft' situation, having experienced what can happen I do not want to be anywhere near anyone who has self filled gas-cylinders using a dodgy adapter from ebay.

 

It should be made illegal !!!!

I agree bottles are dangerous in a fire, but this is not really a good example of overfilling as probably his bottles were all correctly filled.

However an overfilled bottle is potentially dangerous and in no way am I downplaying the risks and suggesting it is ok to self fill or overfill.

 

13kgs of propane would be released into the gas locker over the course of 45 seconds. As that starts to dissipate, there would be a considerable risk that the "front" where the explosive mixture is found will reach a source of ignition.

That would depend as to whether the overpressure release closes when the pressure has dropped to a safe level or if it is a bursting disk and effectively opens the bottle to atmosphere. I am not sure what they have on a calor bottle.

[Guest]

I haven't seen any comment yet about how an overfilled bottle can wreck the regulator on a boat etc, and cause safety issues. Certainly used to happen at a company I worked for who hired out industrial propane heaters.

[RLWP]

I haven't seen any comment yet about how an overfilled bottle can wreck the regulator on a boat etc, and cause safety issues. Certainly used to happen at a company I worked for who hired out industrial propane heaters.

 

By passing a slug of liquid fuel straight through the regulator?

 

Richard

[nicknorman]

I haven't seen any comment yet about how an overfilled bottle can wreck the regulator on a boat etc, and cause safety issues. Certainly used to happen at a company I worked for who hired out industrial propane heaters.

 

Overfilling lots of things can create safety issues. If I overfill my wine glass and get red wine on the carpet, that is definitely an issue for my personal safety. But the obvious answer is to not overfill it. I don't see that this is an argument against refilling cylinders, it is just an argument against refilling cylinders incompetently. At a garage, you are not filling from an unmetered source. You start with an empty cylinder and put in the appropriate volume of liquid (depending on cylinder size) and job done, safely.

 

Alternatively if you fill it with a mixture of LPG, weapons grade plutonium, an old bottle of TNT and some sherbet, well anything might happen!

[Paul C]

The obvious thing to do is to fill it with custard - if it did happen to explode, unlikely as it would seem, it would not be disasterous, merely comical.

[Guest]

Overfilling lots of things can create safety issues. If I overfill my wine glass and get red wine on the carpet, that is definitely an issue for my personal safety. But the obvious answer is to not overfill it. I don't see that this is an argument against refilling cylinders, it is just an argument against refilling cylinders incompetently. At a garage, you are not filling from an unmetered source. You start with an empty cylinder and put in the appropriate volume of liquid (depending on cylinder size) and job done, safely.

 

Alternatively if you fill it with a mixture of LPG, weapons grade plutonium, an old bottle of TNT and some sherbet, well anything might happen!

Never filled one at a garage, but the company we dealt with used to weigh the bottle as it was filled.

[nicknorman]

Never filled one at a garage, but the company we dealt with used to weigh the bottle as it was filled.

Obviously the nominal cylinder capacity is defined in kg but it is not hard to convert that to volume. The thermal coefficient of expansion of liquid LPG is well within the safety margin of the gas space of a nominally full cylinder at any temperatures one is likely to encounter (and the LPG will be stored underground thus at a fairly steady temperature.).

[Guest]

Obviously the nominal cylinder capacity is defined in kg but it is not hard to convert that to volume. The thermal coefficient of expansion of liquid LPG is well within the safety margin of the gas space of a nominally full cylinder at any temperatures one is likely to encounter (and the LPG will be stored underground thus at a fairly steady temperature.).

You haven't accounted for "stupid" though I accept it should be within the capabilities of most people. I remain to be convinced that these cheapo refilling kits can prevent overfilling, but maybe they can. I do know that one cowboy gas firm we dealt with used to overfill the gas bottles regularly; this ruined a few of our heaters! We soon went back to Air Products/Calor.

[Tacet]

The fact that it was hired to you isn't material. You were hired agas bottle for specific purposes, and you are now going beyond those purposes. You are treating the gas bottle as if you own it, because you have overridden the rights of the owner.

 

 

 

The current Calor hire agreement says the cylinders may only be used for the storage of gas.

 

If you go beyond this purpose, is it automatically theft or does it depend on other factors?