GASLOW........and the credit cruch kid.

tresrikay

Guest
Just been replying to the fridge problem thread and with the fear of repeating myself thought I would offer a few sobering facts.
We had a Gaslow system Fitted last year, to increase wild camping options and as a boat owner for 14 years, filling Mr Calor's pocket. I wanted to save money.
I am thoroughly satisfied with the system, though expensive to rig up from new, the chickens are finally coming home to roost.
Since I last filled the tanks to go to the Hebrides, the system had been serving the fridge, a 150 ltr tech tower with freezer and an oven, plus the hob and the hot water system. We ate out once in 19 days so every meal was cooked on the van. the water was on, mornings for 2 showers and evenings for washing up and evening ablutions.
Today I refilled the tanks 23ltrs @ .55p ltr £12.65. I am informed that a litre of gas is 1/2 a kilo so that is near as damnit 12 kilo's, now I don't Know what Calor are extorting, sorry charging for gas these days but I bet I am paying about half their charge.
If you are thinking of getting on board then do so, you can fill up when you like and all over Europe, (a set of adaptors is included) and......... you never have to lift another gas bottle:):);) and if you think ...oh well I always use hook up when on site, do the math.
most sites charge £2.00 - £2.50 for a hook up so for 19 nights that would be £38 - £47.50 for electric compared to £12.50........I know you have to factor in the initial charge of the system but as time goes on this begins to deminish whilst hook up charges will increase, some already at £3 per night.
So I am happy with my choice and just glad I did it before the fuel rip off began.:rolleyes:
 
Last edited:
Hi Rick we are the same, had Gaslow about 18 months now one of the best things we did. We are the same with electric if we can get away without it we will, we have 2 x 85ah batteries and most of the time we never stay anywhere more than 3 days, we were on a site a few weeks ago and when you say you dont want electric they cant believe it, not at £3 a night anyway I would do better put the money to another leisure battery, but some people wont even stay anywhere if there is no ELECTRIC!:D We have just been to Cambridgeshire for 4 days and last Friday I could not believe we had people cutting their Grass all day I felt like getting the Gennie out, but it was quite on Saturday untill we sat down to watch TV and about 8 oclock
at night someone decided to start cutting his grass! I have a tractor mower and always wonderd why its got lights on it.
Regards Bob.

Sorry gone off topic RANT OVER::eek:
 
Gas prices will go up !

Gasdistrubuters here in Belgium announce an increase of prices with minimum 20% for gas this autumn. Reason should be: gasprices follow crude fuelprices with a delay of 6 months. :confused::eek::mad:
Why ????? or another rip off ?
 
tresrikay said:
Just been replying to the fridge problem thread and with the fear of repeating myself thought I would offer a few sobering facts.
We had a Gaslow system Fitted last year, to increase wild camping options and as a boat owner for 14 years, filling Mr Calor's pocket. I wanted to save money.
I am thoroughly satisfied with the system, though expensive to rig up from new, the chickens are finally coming home to roost.
Since I last filled the tanks to go to the Hebrides, the system had been serving the fridge, a 150 ltr tech tower with freezer and an oven, plus the hob and the hot water system. We ate out once in 19 days so every meal was cooked on the van. the water was on, mornings for 2 showers and evenings for washing up and evening ablutions.
Today I refilled the tanks 23ltrs @ .55p ltr £12.65. I am informed that a litre of gas is 1/2 a kilo so that is near as damnit 12 kilo's, now I don't Know what Calor are extorting, sorry charging for gas these days but I bet I am paying about half their charge.
If you are thinking of getting on board then do so, you can fill up when you like and all over Europe, (a set of adaptors is included) and......... you never have to lift another gas bottle:):);) and if you think ...oh well I always use hook up when on site, do the math.
most sites charge £2.00 - £2.50 for a hook up so for 19 nights that would be £38 - £47.50 for electric compared to £12.50........I know you have to factor in the initial charge of the system but as time goes on this begins to deminish whilst hook up charges will increase, some already at £3 per night.
So I am happy with my choice and just glad I did it before the fuel rip off began.:rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Sounds good to me, where do you put the tanks:confused: in where the old bottles go.What would the initial cost be.
 
If you are of sound mind, able to read and understand what you are reading, able to follow simple instructions and want to save money on gas, then consider using a propane bottle with an adapter (approx 34quid from ebay) Refill from any LPG station.
 
wildman said:
If you are of sound mind, able to read and understand what you are reading, able to follow simple instructions and want to save money on gas, then consider using a propane bottle with an adapter (approx 34quid from ebay) Refill from any LPG station.
Click to expand...

A good example of an oxymoron?
 
wildman said:
If you are of sound mind, able to read and understand what you are reading, able to follow simple instructions and want to save money on gas, then consider using a propane bottle with an adapter (approx 34quid from ebay) Refill from any LPG station.
Click to expand...

Sorry to p***s on your chips wildman but those adaptors are an al queda plot, and I just hope I never pitch next to someone using them, as I wish to live a little longer yet. The gaslow system has an automatic cut off valve for when the bottles are 80% full because if you fill a gas bottle with even a minute amount more then the l.p.g will not have enough space to gassify so l.p.g liquid will be forced to your applaince and then expand to 80 times its mass to gas and all around you as well as you will be history. Ebay are well out of order selling such a piece of kit. You may know the dangers but your average Walter (had bailey caravans all my life) Whistandanicebickywithmytetleys. would be well out of his depth.:(
 
cipro said:
Sounds good to me, where do you put the tanks:confused: in where the old bottles go.What would the initial cost be.
Click to expand...

Visit http://www.gaslow.co.uk/pages/home.htm .It costs about £380 for the whole kit, 2 bottles, all stainless steel hoses, auto changeover vave, worldwide adaptors and filler valve. should be easy to fit yourself, wish I had done as the fitting added far too much and I could have done it in a morning.
 
I have fitted Gaslow and am delighted. I did not fit the auto changeover valve as I wanted to no when a cylinder is empty. Not sure that the guages are very accurate and if it autochanges and both are empty, then "its cold".

Never thought of offsetting the cost of a hookup against the use of gas and it make a lot of sense. The only problem I foresee is that my heating is blow air with no possibility of a convector type heater. When the batteries run down, 2 X 110A/h then I would need to run my small generator.

Next thought is solar panel to constantly (????) top up batteries
 
I've had a Gaslow for 18 months & it's the best thing since frozen chips :cool:
I've only had one regulator failure in that time & it was replaced under warranty. This was due to the plasticizer leaching out of the rubber hoses.

Question: Does the current Gaslow kit come with stainless braided lines from the bottles to the regulator instead of the rubber ones ?

Dave.
 
Hi *****.

I'm not a chemist but my understanding is that the two gasses are homogenised. IE from our perspective irrevocably mixed & not able to evaporate off preferentially. This results in the temperature required for evaporation being slightly higher the larger the percentage of butane.

But the scenario whereby the butane is left separated in the bottom of the bottle cannot occur.

D.
 
Davesport said:
Hi *****.

I'm not a chemist but my understanding is that the two gasses are homogenised. IE from our perspective irrevocably mixed & not able to evaporate off preferentially. This results in the temperature required for evaporation being slightly higher the larger the percentage of butane.

But the scenario whereby the butane is left separated in the bottom of the bottle cannot occur.

D.
Click to expand...

My understanding is quite the opposite of this since you are drawing a gas off the top of the bottle and that at temperatures below zero C, the butane will not evaporate.


In an LPG powered car engine, the gas is drawn off as a liquid (and will be a mixture of propane and butane) and then either direct injected into the engine or evaporated using radiator water to get the temperature up enough to make sure the butane evaporates.

The two applications are quite different.
 
My Twopennorth

Our Hymer s660 came with a 60 liter gas tank fitted [ thanks previous owner :D ] under the body,.
Very easy to fill or check levels
Plus 85w solar panel and 2 x 110 amp leisure batteries.
2 weeks up around Scotland [ does it EVER get warm up there ] cost us £12.00 in gas when we refilled back in Devon. that was 2 weeks cooking, oven as well as Hymer hob, blown air heating and Hot water.
Last year in our previous motorhome, same trip cost £40 in gas:( and batteries needed engine run every 3 days if we were stationary.
One big advantage, is the now redundant gas locker holds ALL my tools and motorcycle gear ....
I may have access to another 50 ? liter tank :rolleyes:
It was going to be fitted to our previous Motorhome, but the arrival of the Hymer negated it
 
Tropical Scotland

Well firstly define 'warm'.
If you lived up here all year you would notice the difference between summer and winter :D
I think it must be to do with blood thickness - I have noticed that if in England we are wandering about in t-shirts while the natives are in winter coats :p
Seriously we have had some lovely weather this year - if you discount this month which has been nothing but rain. The changing point seemed to have been when we bought our van :mad:
 
Gaslow

Greetings,

We have just had Gaslow installed on our new motorhome, have not had chance to use it yet, but the main reasons for this choice was: 1) convenience of filling up with gas before every trip to ensure the tanks are always full, 2) availability of autogas abroad negating the need to carry spare or foreign bottles, 3) having health problems it is so convenient not to have to ask other people to change the cylinders each time, 4) the lower cost of a fill up.

OK it will take a few years to recover the initial cost but the above advantages far outweigh this.

I have had the new bottles fitted, without the collars (these will go into some motorhome gas lockers where the older type would not) these new bottles also have a built in fuel gauge which give an indication of the true level once they are down to half full.
 
***** said:
Thanks for the answers Guys, however the questions have still not been answered.:confused:
I realize about all of the advantages and that is not the issue at all:cool:
Has anybody direct experience with regard to filling in a warm country and then using the same gas in a cold country in freezing conditions???:confused:
Click to expand...

Not heard of any problems on that score yet but having only filled my bottles here and having used the gas first thing in the morning at - 10c without a problem then I assume it should be good for well below that. I know many Ski types have refillable bottles and they must be o.k for them. Might be worth an email to Gaslow as they seem extremely helpfull.
 
Tony Lee said:
A good example of an oxymoron?
Click to expand...
Sorry Tony, fail to see the contradiction in terms, I thought I was being very precise about what I was saying. 80% or less fill is no problem filling from empty following simple instructions, no problem. Or were you just trying to be funny. I may well be a propane moron but am not an oxymoron. Get a life.
 
Gas Low

Hi Everyone,
I've been 'lurking' for a while in the wings, but never posted before. I was inspired by the 'Gas low' post, as we too had it fitted about a year ago. Once we had filled it once, and got over the fear of the hissing, we have found it to be so much chea
per than Calor,and as you say, no humping of gas cylinders in and out of out deep lockers.

We will be heading for Shepton Mallett the weekend after next, and wonder if anyone knows of any quiet places we can stop-over between Coventry & Shepton Mallet. with our 7.25 length motorhome.

Kind regards to all, and please keep up the intersting posts.


.
 
LPG in Spain?

I agree with the economics of a refillable system and had the Gaslow system fitted to our new Rapido. We are headed to Spain, via France, for the winter :) and have heard that LPG is not so readily available there. Any help on websites listing LPG stations in France and Spain greatfully recieved.

Cheers
 
You must log in or register to reply here.

Users who viewed this discussion (Total:0)

Back
Top