Just back from a Europe trip - I hired a motorhome for 2 weeks and got a full 15kg gas bottle with it. I was told these bottles are pretty much universal now and would be able to get a refill in France - of course I know different now.....
Anyway my question is - how long would you expect this to have lasted? We used the gas to heat water for washing and a shower almost every day. It ran the fridge when not on hookup. We used the heating maybe about 3 times for no more than 30 minutes (it was cold overnight in belgium and germany).
The cylinder ran out after 6 days. Is this reasonable in your experience?
Cheers - Gillian
No. It should last longer than that. Ours lasted over three weeks the last three weeks and there is still plenty left. If the bottle was easy to lift it wasn't full to start with.They are very heavy when full believe me.
Thanks for the reply - that was what I suspected - I didn't try to lift the bottle - the person doing the handover told me it was full. I'll know better next time. It really impacted on our holiday - there were lots of Aires I wanted to stay in but couldn't due to no hook up - the temperature was 25-35 degrees and we needed our cold drinks :)
Gillian
Quote: Originally posted by rogerangie on 17/6/2017
No. It should last longer than that. Ours lasted over three weeks the last three weeks and there is still plenty left. If the bottle was easy to lift it wasn't full to start with.They are very heavy when full believe me.
The bottles are only heavy because they are dense steel, the gas weighs very little.
15kg of gas in an aluminium bottle can be picked up as easily as an empty suitcase.
Shaking the bottle may give an idea of how full it is.
Quote: Originally posted by rogerangie on 17/6/2017
No. It should last longer than that. Ours lasted over three weeks the last three weeks and there is still plenty left. If the bottle was easy to lift it wasn't full to start with.They are very heavy when full believe me.
The bottles are only heavy because they are dense steel, the gas weighs very little.
15kg of gas in an aluminium bottle can be picked up as easily as an empty suitcase.
Shaking the bottle may give an idea of how full it is.
15KG is 33lbs which in old money is over 2 stone... must be a big suitcase.
Unlike water, 1kg of LPG does NOT equal 1L of LPG. This is because the density or specific gravity of LPG is less than water. where LPG is propane, 1kg of LPG has a volume of 1.96L. Conversely, 1L of LPG weighs 0.51kg.
Best way to check how much gas. Use a spring balance as used for weighing suitcases. Look on bottle empty weight will be stamped on it somewhere. Weigh bottle. Subtract empty weight gives you contents left.
The fridge was set to automatic. When we changed source I did check, so on hook up it diplayed the appropriate symbol and when the engine was running it displayed the battery symbol.
Cheers
We ran our fridge on gas all the time for the three weeks(except when travelling of course)as we find it much cheaper than electric. That is of course buying German gas at 15 euroes for 11 kg.
Earlier this year we did 16 nights with EHU and 5 nights on aires - we used gas for hot water and heating all the nights we were off grid (it was pretty chilly) and didn't skimp on the temperature because we have refillable gas so we don't need to worry about running out.
When we filled up we found we had used just under 7kg of gas in 21 days. We have since found that the fridge hasn't been working properly on gas....if it had been working properly then we'd have used an additional 1.35kg (the manual says our's uses 270g/24 hours).
So I think 6 days out of a 15kg bottle is pretty bad - either something was faulty or it can't have been full.