Gamechanger? Refillable LPG in your motorhome is a must in Europe.

Gamechanger? Refillable LPG in your motorhome is a must in Europe.

You ready? I’m never gonna be ready for this after three years of full-time motorhome living and we think the battery may have exploded. We have learned a few things Does it look like I know what I’m doing? I’ve hit the first snag. So we got our lights!

I just want to point oiut this was not my idea looking at this I’m surprised anything works We just lost it! I definately learned a lesson there work faster don’t be distracted there must be more Try again later! Welcome back to our channel! Usually we make travel vlogs

Of our full time motorhome adventures around Europe. And we still do! You will find new travel vlogs every Monday on this channel. so, remember to subscribe! This is the first episode in a new series which we will be posting every week in between our regular vlogs. This will be a short format video

Less than 10 minutes! Start the clock! No, don’t start the clock yet. This is the first video. In which we discuss aspects Of which we receive questions all the time. We’ll be talking about things like planning, navigation security technical aspects such as electronics, off-grid living what cameras we use to film our videos

Lifestyle aspects such as travel fatigue, working on the road fitness As well as practical aspects such as insurance, medical, banking and even something as simple as receiving a package on the road. So if you have any questions that you’d like us to answer, you can drop us an email.

You can always find us at wewillnomad.com or leave us a comment down below. Our first topic for this new series is… LPG! More specifically, refillable LPG. Quick scene change. The wind was getting serious outside so we came inside. It’s a little easier. So let’s kick off with question number one, the most important.

Do you need refillable LPG? You need to find out or see what do you use LPG for. In our case, we use our LPG most importantly to run our fridge. We use it for water heating as well as our van heating, air heating and then of course for cooking. Cooking, yes.

And obviously when it’s cold, we use more for heating and actually a lot less in the summer. We use about double the amount of LPG in winter predominantly because of the heating. You can run a little calculator, you can determine exactly how much gas per day you use

And that will give you an idea how long you can go with the gas you have. Secondly, you need to ask yourself, where are you travelling? Are you going to be going on long trips away from your home country or your base? Are you going to be travelling for continuous

Lengths of time, long periods through various different countries? And how critical is it if you do run out of LPG? Because if you don’t know, as you travel across Europe, almost every country has got different bottles, different connections possibly and also even different regulators.

So it’s not just a case of swapping a bottle out and in some countries it’s actually quite hard to get a bottle. You need to register to get the bottle. What exactly is refillable gas? Well, in a nutshell, it allows you to refill your

Gas from a service point like a fuel station rather than exchanging your bottles. How do you do that? You take your existing exchangeable bottles and you’ll replace that with either a bottle that looks the same, but you can actually refill it or you put an underslung tank in your vehicle,

Which is the ideal because normally you get higher capacity, low weight and you open up some storage space in your gas locker. The only tricky part there is finding a suitable space underneath your vehicle. So all of these systems share a commonality in that they have a safety system,

So they cannot be overfilled accidentally. It’s got a cutoff switch. Some systems will also have a combined inlet and outlet. So to be able to refill, you have to flip a valve. The system we have and prefer is the one where the system has a separate inlet and it usually

Goes to an external filling point. It just makes life so much simpler. And that external filling point is really the key. So of course, one of the biggest factors is what exactly does it cost to change to a refillable LPG system? It seems very expensive to have that initial outlay.

We’ll get back to the advantages and whether it’s worth it. It depends on the size and the type of the bottles. You get composite bottles, aluminium bottles, lightweight steel bottles and even steel bottles. You get 6kg up to 11kg and if you go to the underslung tank, it’s whole different story.

If you do it semi-yourself, you can do it for like 200 euros probably. If you have it done by a fitter and you go for like a gas-low system, maybe upwards of 700 euros and higher. Depending on where you are, you’ll require installation certification to do your annual review of your vehicle.

If you don’t make any changes to the vehicle and you actually just swap the bottles, you can actually temporarily swap them out again for the review. So it’s not a real problem. It’s a big cost saving if you only go a single bottle. We’ve got an 11kg single bottle and we decided

Not to put a second bottle and there are advantages. What are those advantages I ask you? Well, in my opinion, number one is convenience. It’s not always about the cost saving. Convenience is a massive issue. Suddenly you are able to self-service refilling in most cases. We’ll get to this now.

24 hours a day in most countries with really fairly easy availability of gas. Also, you don’t need to wait until you’re out of gas to exchange a bottle without losing or just throwing away gas. You can top up that refillable bottle at any point knowing that you’re nice and full.

So no more getting out in the middle of a night to swap bottles. When you stop for fuel, you fill up your gas. And also, one other added thing is we know with motorhomes, weight is always an issue. So swapping to a lighter bottle either or only

Carrying a single bottle instead of two because you need to be prepared for when you run out can be quite a significant weight saving. The cost per refill is relatively speaking quite a lot lower. So an 11kg bottle will give you about 22 litres. So to fill it up at an RPG station

In Europe is around €1 per litre. So it costs you around 20 odd euros. Now, if you go to countries like Italy and you do bottle exchanges, it’s almost the same price. But once again, it’s about the convenience. One option would be to get one refillable and keep one of your country, home

Country, keep it full as a backup. You guys in the United Kingdom do have fewer LPG refill options than the mainland Europe. So maybe that’s sort of what you call the combo system. We travelled for more than a year, I think, with that as a combo system.

And so we felt so comfortable with the fact that whenever you go past the LPG station, you can just fill up. And now we’ve got only the single bottle. Okay, let’s talk about disadvantages. We went to Morocco for two months. We couldn’t get refillable LPG. But that’s an outlier.

So we’re discarding that possibility to be travelling to a country with no refillable LPG. In fact, we did there. We just got a local bottle, problem solved. But we were there for long enough for it. If we were there for only a month, we probably would have made it through the month anyway.

The only other country in the most of Europe and neighbouring countries is Denmark, where there are very few LPG stations. So there it is nice to have a backup. But once again, if you’re only going there for three weeks, you should be perfectly fine. So the initial cost is quite high.

You have to figure out whether the convenience can be a trade off as it is. And the truth of the matter is that travelling long term by motorhome has enough other daily challenges that you don’t need to add unnecessary ones. That’s our opinion at least.

Just keep in mind is although the initial cost can be quite high, depending on the system, you might be able to take it with you if you get rid of your van and install it in your new van. Okay, so one thing to remember is you need

Adapters to be able to use the different fuel stations, LPG stations around Europe. Most countries got slightly different nozzles on their LPG guns. You buy a little set with four adapters, it covers you for everywhere. We filled in LPG almost everywhere in Europe so far, never had a problem.

We’ve been with Mali to 25 countries in and around Europe, and we’ve never had a problem with our refillable LPG system. The one country… Well, we don’t know just the one country, but some countries, and we specifically think of France, don’t have self-service… Well, it does have self-service LPG, but you

Can’t pay for the LPG with a machine. You have to pay in attendance for some bizarre reason, and there’s long lunchtime sometimes. So often you can get to a station, there’s just no LPG available because there’s no attendance for a certain period. So you just kind of make sure

That you don’t pick that time. To go and fill up with LPG. And then of course in Italy, there’s another little challenge. Yes, so the problem in Italy is the legislation that prohibits the use or the refilling of gas for… Domestic purposes. Internal services, yes.

Unless you actually have a certificate or part of the registration documents that that thing runs on LPG. So if you rock up at the station with your diesel van, they’re going to be like, “No.” In fact, there can be quite heavy fines imposed on service stations if they do transgress this.

So it’s not a problem to find refillable LPG in Italy, but often you will be shown the door. And that is predominantly on the main motorways and highways. We found that in smaller towns, smaller stations, they won’t have a problem with allowing you to fill with LPG.

So in Italy, you have to think that you might not come right at the first station, allow for a 50% refusal rate. Yeah, that’s high. I don’t think we’ve got a 50. Okay, let’s wrap this up. How do you monitor your gas levels, Andre? Because even though we’re not worried about

Running out, we always are worried about running out. So we have a Mopeka… We had a Mopeka gas sensor, which is a little sensor that you put at the bottom of your tank. Now this can be put on both the refillable systems or any ordinary gas bottle.

And it actually monitors the level and gives you a percentage of how full your LPG bottle is. Let’s wrap this up. I think we have over 10 minutes. In closing, for us, this has been one of our game changing… Game changing? Game changing. Game changing changes. We’ve made our Mopeca home.

And actually, we’ve got a game changing video somewhere. I’ll link to it. A few things we’ve changed in our motorhome, but we think it really makes a difference. And we hope that we steered you in some sort of direction here. We’ve got a lot more interesting topics to discuss in the upcoming videos.

So thanks for watching. If you’ve got any topics you’d like us to discuss, remember to pop them in the comments below. And also, if you’ve got comments on LPG, pro or against refillable LPG or your experiences. I will see you guys next time. Bye. Thanks for watching.

First episode of our new weekly series “Ten Minute Tips” – the name is a work in progress. 😁
We will be posting during the week between our regular travel vlogs.
We will address questions we regularly receive. Talking about route planning, navigation, gadgets, security, technical aspects such as electrics and off grid living. Lifestyle aspects such a travel fatigue, financial independence and fitness, as well as practical aspects like insurance, medical, banking or receiving post on the road!
If you have any questions, you can send us an email (find us at www.wewillnomad.com) or leave a comment!

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