LPG Pump - Pump from red bottle into vehicle/boat fuel tank

[SimonYorkshire]

Been using my LPG pump to refuel from bottled gas.



No need to visit a forecourt to refuel, most of us can have gas delivered to our door in red bottles, no need for a 240v mains power suppy because it runs from a car battery.

Very handy for if/when forecourts don't have any stock of LPG, or distance to nearest forecourt (or marina) that sells LPG is too far, or price of LPG at forecourts / marinas is too high. Sometimes gas suppliers ration the amount of gas they'll sell to forecourts to prioritise home gas users. By buying gas from a local bottled gas supplier I effectively became a more prioritised home gas user and will never be without a supply of LPG.

Gas in red bottles is propane and all LPG/autogas sold at UK forecourts is propane, so it's the same stuff I put in the tank whether it comes from a red bottle or a forecourt.

Will also be very useful for running my boat engine on LPG even if the nearest marina that sells LPG is 10 miles across a choppy bay.. because I'll be able to take the pump when I use the boat and refuel from red bottles wherever I am. Could also refuel the LPG tank on my campervan from a red bottle wherever I am.

The pump does allow me to pump over 90 litres of LPG into a vehicle tank at home in 30 minutes (there are 92.1 litres of LPG in a 47kg red gas bottle) but the ability to 'fill up' without leaving home is perhaps the only similarlity between running an LPG vehicle and running an EV and I don't want this thread to turn into a debate about the pros and cons of LPG or EVs. Please no chat about how / why I should buy an EV vehicle or EV boat instead of having a car and boat that run on LPG. And yes I am aware about road duty etc thanks. And yes this is legal. And yes the pump is well thought out and works well.

Edited by SimonYorkshire on Wednesday 13th March 12:32

[SimonYorkshire]

It can and often does seem to work out cheaper than refuelling from forecourts, this depends on the price you can buy bottled gas for in your area.

There are plenty forecourts in my area but Morrisons have gone up in price to 99.7p per litre.

I pay £79.50 for a 47kg bottled delivered to my home. There are 92.1 litres of LPG in a 47kg bottle so this works out at 86.3p per litre, which is 13.4p per litre cheaper than Morrisons forecourt price.

I know people who also bought the pump who are getting 47kg red bottles delivered for £70, which works out at 76p per litre, a saving of 23.7p per litre over Morrisons forecourt price. Or cheaper if you take into account I never have to go out of my way to pass Morrisons to refuel.

Some people pay more for a 47kg red bottle than me.

Best to shop around your local gas suppliers to find the cheapest quotes but also make sure you mention you expect to use quite a lot of gas and haggle the price. Don't take their first quote as set in stone, do 'play them off against each other' e.g. 'The other firm said they'll sell me gas in botles for £X can you match that price?'.

Edited by SimonYorkshire on Saturday 16th March 17:49

[SimonYorkshire]

Gerradi said:

Am I wrong in thinking thats avoiding Customs & Excise tax?
x https://obr.uk/forecasts-in-depth/tax-by-tax-spend...
the rate on liquefied petroleum gas is 28.88 pence per kilogram

Edited by Gerradi on Saturday 16th March 18:05

I did mention road duty (customs and excise tax). It is legal to refuel a fuel tank that fuels the engine on a vehicle from a red bottle if whoever does so pays the road duty on it. A vehicle like a camper van may have an LPG tank that doesn't fuel the engine (is used for e.g. heating / cooking) in which case duty would not need to be paid on that gas legally. Road duty would not need to be paid if refuelling a boat fuel tank.

The gas in red propane bottles is identical (and chemically identical) to autogas sold at forecourts, and most people who run LPG vehicles know this. So maybe others who refuel vehicle engine fuel tanks with LPG from red bottles won't pay duty on it (or sometimes wont pay duty on it)... I would advise people to pay duty to stay legal but individuals will make their own choices. The road duty on LPG is around 14.7p per litre.

[SimonYorkshire]

Pistom said:

Rather than cylinders, is there any reason you can't have a tank installed in your garden and get home delivery?

That's about 50p/litre at the moment.

That is correct...

Yes you can have a bulk tank installed. And yes it can work out cheaper than gas in bottles or forecourts. But not everyone has somewhere to site a bulk tank and a bulk tank will have a much higher setup cost.The setup cost for what I have written about (filling from bottles) is only the cost of the deposit / surcharge on the bottle of around £50 (which is reimbursed to you should you let the gas company collect their empty bottle and not have them deliver a full bottle). Versus the cost of a bulk tank (either second hand or taking the more expensive route of having a new tank fitted on some sort of contract terms). It's unlikely I'd recommend having a new bulk tank on contract from one of the big players such as Calor or Flogas because their prices and contract terms are usually verging on rip-off prices... But if you can buy a second hand tank and have an independent gas supplier refil it you'd be more likely to get gas at lower cost. Still higher setup cost than the £50 bottle surcharge (effectively free setup because the surcharge is reimbursed when you've done using the bottle).

Edited by SimonYorkshire on Saturday 16th March 20:26

[SimonYorkshire]

Oops, in my last post I forgot to include the cost of the pump. The pumps I'm talking about are £375 + £7 shipping.

So that is a setup cost on top of the average £50 surcharge for the bottle. I know I've said it before but the surcharge is reimbursed if/when you tell the gas supplier you no longer want to keep one of their bottles.

But you would need a pump with a bulk tank setup anyway. This pump would also work with a bulk tank setup, so even if you switched from refuelling from bottled gas to refuelling with gas from a bulk tank you could still use this pump. Most pumps used with bulk tanks cost £thousands of pounds not £375, so even if you switched from filling from red bottles to filling from a bulk tank this pump would still be a very good buy.

[SimonYorkshire]

This pump can do more than just pump from bottle to vehicle. Due to its design (with quick fit interchangeable ends on the input and output lines) it can also pump from bottle to bottle, etc. To pump from bottle to bottle you just need a different output end fitting (the pump is supplied with input end fitting that connects to a bottle and output end fitting that connects to a vehicle LPG filling point). Various types of end fitting are available and very inexpensive.

I know some people who have static caravans have bought a pump. Their idea is that they will drive from home (where they could refuel from a bottle using the pump), arrive at their static caravan (which probably has 2 red bottles) and refuel from one of the red bottles at the static caravan.

I know some people who have boats who have bought the pump. On some boats the engine runs on LPG. Other boats carry a red gas bottle to run the cooker and/or heating. The pump allows refuelling of the boat engine LPG fuel tank and the boat red bottle. The output line can even be extended so for example a big red bottle could remain on land / on a jetty, while the boat is still in the water, and the pump will pump gas from wherever the source bottle is to the boat.

Edited by SimonYorkshire on Saturday 16th March 21:08

[SimonYorkshire]

DaveCWK said:

I had no idea little electric pumps were available like that for LPG - any links/details on the spec/fittings?
Do you have to refuel with the calor bottle upside down so you pull liquid?

You do have to have the bottle upside down to get all the gas out of it because the pump pumps liquid.

Send me an email and I'll reply to tell you where to get one..

[SimonYorkshire]

OutInTheShed said:

In other news, you can run some diesel engines on heating oil.
Or Red Diesel. Or veg oil.
It's the same crime as running an LPG car on non-road LPG.

If you want to transfer LPG from one tank to another, you don't need a pump if you can have the donor tank warmer than the recipient.
Lots of people refilling Camping Gaz cylinders this way.

There are problems with the heating the tank method which make the method unreliable and unworkable. Warmed gas flows from one tank to the other and is still warm in the other tank so the other tank is soon at the same pressure and no gas flows. A vehicle LPG setup has 2 x one way valves between the fill port and the tank, one on the tank itself, one at the filiing point. These valves take a few psi to open and unless they are open no gas will flow anyway. The idea is to be able to pump all the gas from a bottle to a vehicle tank because nobody wants to return a bottle that is still partly full of gas for obvious reasons, but you'll never be able to transfer all the gas out of a bottle into a vehicle tank using the temperature difference method, you might eventually manage say 70% but slowly. The pump reliably pumps all the gas from a bottle to a vehicle tank.

If you want to transfer a bit of gas from one bottle to another, then since bottles don't have one way valves you could just decant by holding the full tank upside down over the lower tank, eventually it will fill the lower tank, but not as quickly as using a pump.

[SimonYorkshire]

OutInTheShed said:

It's normal to try to transfer the LPG as liquid rather than gas.
With the temperature difference method, the normal problem is avoiding over filling the recipient tank.

The pressure to open the non return valves would be a problem though.
Also does it make a difference that Autogas is a mix of propane and butane, whereas most people refilling cylinders are just talking about Butane?.

Quite a lot of people with campervans and boats have moved towards running their cookers and sometimes heaters from Autogas using refillable cylinders, because Camping Gaz is absurdly expensive per litre and Calor have been shapeless at providing ia reliable supply of smaller cylinders which are cheaper than camping gaz but still several £ per litre.

Is it OK to run an LPG car on pure propane or butane?

Most of your points are not pump related but I'll answer them...

If you overfilled a bottle, simply use an appliance until it's no longer overfilled, or let some gas escape, or transfer some of its gas back into the bottle you filled it from.

Autogas in the UK is 100% propane, on the continent it may be a mix of propane and butane but if so they'll add sufficient butane to prevent lack of pressure in cold weather conditions (they'll change the mixture for time of year). Tank pressure is less important when you're drawing liquid gas than when you're drawing a vapour, if you draw vapour all the gas that you use has to boil (read evaporate) inside the tank, the evaporation has a cooling effect which reduces bottle pressure. When we draw autogas from a tank it's drawn as a liquid, the fuel doesn't evaporate inside the tank so we don't get the cooling effect of that (would be) evaporation and tank pressure remains relatively high. There is still some evaporation because as we draw liquid from the tank the internal volume of liquid decreases while headroom (vapour space) increases, and if the tank is going to stay at the same pressure some liquid boils to form the additional vapour needed to maintain pressure. We can draw gas from a tank/bottle 270 times faster in liquid form while retaining the same tank/bottle pressure compared to drawing vapour. For example we've all seen catering trucks with 'level gauges' stuck to the outside of 47kg propane bottles. The 'level gauge' works on the same principle as the old self adhesive fish tank temperature gauges but instead of having just one 'gauge' that changes colour to show the temperature there's an entire strip of them down the side of the bottle, you can see how full the bottle is when gas is being drawn off in vapour form because there's a change of temperature of the bottle between the headroom (vapour space) in the bottle and the liquid level, the change in temperature is due to the gas being drawn off as a vapour causing cooling evaporation inside the bottle. The same 'level gauge' wouldn't work if we were drawing liquid from the bottle instead of vapour because when we draw liquid we only get a tiny fraction of the cooling effect. The pump will pump the entire contents of a 47kg (92.1 litres) bottle in 30 minutes without the temperature of the bottle changing much. If we were to use that rate of gas take-off from the bottle in vapour form the entire bottle would be very cold and ice would form on its outside.

An LPG converted vehicle will run on propane, butane, or any mix of the two. There is a slight difference in stochiometric ratio (amount of air needed to fully burn an amount of fuel) which would be reflected by slight changes in fuel trim readings on the vehicle but only to the same kind of extent as running a vehicle on 'proper' 100% petrol which we can no longer buy or (say) E5 petrol, not enough difference to be a problem.

Yes some campervans, caravans, boats, etc, use autogas forecourt refillable bottles. They are equivalent to propane bottles because (as said) autogas in the UK is propane. But you can refil them on the continent regardless of any continental mix of propane and butane from forecourt pumps and an appliance will still work. Heh in fact in some areas of the world, e.g. in much of Africa, gas suppliers don't even differentiate between propane and butane. None of this blue/red/green bottle thing that we have in the UK going on, the colour of the bottle there probably only gives a bit of info on which gas company's bottle it is, the customer probably won't be told whether it's propane, butane, or a mix. A regulator designed for propane might have a slightly diffferent pressure output to a regulator designed for butane, for any size flame propane will give more heat but butane will last longer so there's some swings and roundabouts as to which makes most sense for an outdoors application, 100% propane or a mix containing at least some propane necessary in sub zero temperatures. A propane regulator will work with butane and vice/versa but it will usually have the output pressure for which it was designed. At any given temperature a bottle containing propane will have higher pressure than a bottle containing butane but the 'proper' bottles will all withstand the same pressure. It wouldn't be a good idea though to fill one of the small 'disposable' type butane canisters (or say a plastic butane cigarette lighter) with propane, because they probably won't take propane pressure at say 30degC.

It's a bit contradictory to say lots of campervans, caravans, boats, etc, now use forecourt refillable bottles (propane in the UK) then say most people who refill cylinders refill with butane. I'm sure there are plenty people with small campervans, tent campers, etc that refill very small butane canisters / bottles from bigger bottles using the decant method and/or heating method but (given 'self refillable at foreocourts bottles') there are obviously more people who refuel with propane, and obviously by weight or volume far more propane is 'self refilled' than butane.

The pump can pump propane, butane, or any mix. Would need the correct 'end fittings' to connect to the pump setup but they are available from the pump seller. The end fittings are designed to be quick fit 'snap on', it takes only a second to switch from one type of end fitting to another.

Edited by SimonYorkshire on Thursday 21st March 10:09

[SimonYorkshire]

OutInTheShed said:

There are a significant number of people using autogas in approved refillable bottles.
Personally I know more people who re-fill camping gaz bottles, but it's not something you necessarily want to shout about.
I have known people refill the 'approved refillable' bottles with butane from a big cylinder, because there wasn't an LPG forecourt handy.

I know there are a significant number of people using autogas in approved refillable bottles, and I know that there are a significant number of people using autogas in permanently fitted (to the vehicle) 'vapour take off' LPG tanks (underslung or fitted inside etc)... because I have fitted them. In fact arguably my friend invented the first approved refillable bottle that has the same shape (so will fit in the same place) as a common gas bottle.

Personally I know more people who do the above than fill approved bottles or vapour take off tanks (still approved) but I'm sure some people who don't have a handy forecourt will refil from blue butane bottles like you've said. Refilling from blue butane bottles is no easier than filling from red propane bottles though, so there isn't much reason to favour blue bottles over red bottles.

Perhaps some of those people who you've said refuel from blue (or red) bottles would prefer a pump? Bottled gas is generally cheaper in bigger bottles than in smaller bottles but a big bottle will be more difficult to heat/decant, so the pump could be handy for those people? Definitely a lot less messing about and works consistently and reliably, as opposed to other methods that are more of a faff, more work, less consitent and less reliable.

Edited by SimonYorkshire on Thursday 21st March 12:44

[SimonYorkshire]

OutInTheShed said:

People who refill the likes of Camping Gaz bottles are mostly trying to save a few quid and get around the difficulties of getting hold of bottles when and where you want one. The adaptor pays for itself in the first refill.
All perfectly legal.

A £300 pump is only going to pay for itself with excise crime on a signifcant scale.

Lets define Camping Gaz bottles... You'll mean the relatively very small bottles.

There are people who want to fill much bigger (than Camping Gaz) motorhome leisure gas tanks (e.g. safe fill type or permanently fitted type), the decant method or heating the bottle method isn't going to work for them anywhere near as well as the pump. Road/excise duty is not a factor anymore than it would be for Camping Gaz bottles.

There are people who live some distance from the nearest decent priced forecourt that sells LPG, for them the ability to refuel at home from bottles could make the difference between running on petrol or running on LPG in which case they'd make significant savings if they pay road/excise duty.

There are people who's local forecourt sells gas at a higher price than cost in a bottle plus paying road/excise duty. The pump can save them money if they do pay road/excise duty on gas they buy in bottles.

There are people who have boats on moorings, they cannot easily be taken to an LPG refuelling forecourt. They could use the pump to refuel from a red bottle, or fill a tank on/in a different vehicle at a forecourt then use the pump to transfer LPG from the vehicle tank to the boat.

Motorhome users and campers could use the pump to pump gas from a part full bottle into another part full bottle. Without the ability to do this they sometimes have to decide which bottle(s) to take on a trip. E.g. Gas is running low in the bottle currently in use but it's evening and gas is required all night to run the heater, so the supply is switched to the full bottle to prevent the heater going off at 3am. Which means they may return home with 2 part full bottles. Which means next time they use the camper they have to decide whether to take the 2 part full bottles, or swap one of them for another full one (which one should they swap the fullest or the the one with only a little left in it?). The pump allows them to consolidate the gas from 2 part full bottles into one that's more full (or completely full) and perhaps still take a 2nd full bottle on the next trip.

All the above are legitimate and legal uses, the pump doesn't need to be used for road/excise duty evasion to be worth having in terms of convenience, usefullness, or to save money.

[SimonYorkshire]

If there are no none return valves anyone might be able to transfer gas from one bottle into another using the heat the tank or the decant method. But decant means holding one bottle over the other which is hardly more practical than the pump and heating bottles doesn't seem as safe or practical as the pump either. Heat the bottle method isn't likely to shift much gas from a relatively empty bottle to a relatively full one unless you crank the heat up a few notches but you're not supposed to heat bottles either.

Auto changeover systems are fitted on some campervans but are more common on static caravans and for home heating. In any case auto changeover systems can leave some gas remaining in a bottle in certain conditions.

Can be pessimistic re safety but you've mentioned other methods of transferring gas without mentioning safety concerns of those methods. Can be pessimistic re excise boys but there are plenty legitimate uses for the pump, including filling vehicle tanks from red bottles if duty is paid. If syphons were invented and sold for the first time in motorists shops tomorrow there might be some people telling us how unsafe they were, that we didn't really need one to transfer liquids/fuels from one bottle to another, that excise men and police would surely be calling at the motorists shops and their customers because the syphon might be used for pinching diesel from lorries or transferring fuel that didn't have duty paid on it into vehicle fuel tanks.