Difference Between Propane and Butane gas bottles?

[htmark98]

I've been given 2 gas bottles of Butane, now can i use this on my patio heater and BBQ, the patio heater says only Propane. Havent got my bbq manual handy yet.

Anyone know if this is safe?

[Roger Mills (aka Set Square)]

As long as you use a proper butane regulator, it's not inherently unsafe. You will need to make sure that the regulator can deliver an adequate flow rate - one designed for a caravan may be marginal. How well it works will depend, to some extent, on the ambient temperature in which you operate it. As with caravans, butane doesn't work anything like as well as propane in the winter because it won't vapourise at low temperatures. If you're thinking of using now, forget it - but if you only want to use it on cool summer evenings, it will probably be ok.

[Lobster]

No, at least not without a different regulator (that's normally the bit which sits on the gas cylinder, and drops the pressure from cylinder pressure to the low pressure used by the appliance.

David

[htmark98]

Do you know if i could exchange these bottles for Propane ones?

[Andy Hall]

There is normally a rental/deposit for the cylinder and then you get refills.

If you take the cylinder to somewhere that sells that brand of gas, they may give you something back on an empty, but not otherwise.

[Frank Erskine]

Why not just wear an extra jumper and help to save the ozone layer?

[Chris Bacon]

A little while ago, I returned a couple of gas bottles that I had noticed abandoned. Calor were giving £5 per returned bottle to charity. I don't know whether they still are, their web site will say. N.B. Calor will only take back their bottles, if they're a differend "make", they'll have to go back to whoevers they are.

[John Stumbles]

Because wearing any number of jumpers, whether or not you use a patio heater (running on propane and/or butane) is not likely to make much difference to the ozone layer.

It might have some effect on global warming though ...

[Andy Hall]

You'd need a lot of patio heaters to do that :-)

[Nigel Molesworth]

Take them to your dealer and swap them.

[Andy Dingley]

In this weather, butane won't vapourise well enough outdoors to be useful.

To get it to work at all, you might use the same regulator but you'll need a different fitting to the cylinder. Propane fittings are female (bottle side) butane fittings are male (old) or bayonet (most of them). Converters are rare, and most smaller regulators have their fittings integral, so it's usual to swap the regulator on the hose.

As to adjustment of the the carburation, then this is the normal problem of adjusting to avoid CO output. For crude burners (excess air supply) this is a very insensitive adjustment. For an indoor heater it's more criticial.

Gas bottle renters only want their own brand back (although the chains of ownership are complicated now and so they may also take some other brands that are now part of the same chain). Council dumps will take bottles if you want rid. They also sell "empties" for a couple of quid, which is much cheaper than buying a brand new cylinder and paying a deposit on it.

[Guy King]

The message from Chris Bacon contains these words:

They make excellent chimineas. Cut a door and a smoke-hole, weld on a few feet of steel pipe and some legs...

[Dave Fawthrop]

|Do you know if i could exchange these bottles for Propane ones?

Some places do, and some places don't. IME Calor Agents never.

[htmark98]

Thanks everyone, they are not for not but summer time. From May onwards.

They are both Flogas so might see who my local stockists are and go from there, it's gonna cost me more money for a butane connection.

Thanks anyway.

[Andy Burns]

And a safe method for doing that is?

[dennis]

You should be fine if you remove the valve and fill the cylinder with water to ensure all the gas has been dispersed. (Do this outside or you may get wet floors.)

Then use a hacksaw or an angle grinder.

Emptying the cylinder is the biggest problem if you don't have anything that burns gas.

[Guy King]

The message from Andy Burns contains these words:

Empty the cylinder, remove the valve, fill with water, empty the water and then do whatever you like. Last time I did anything to a cylinder I cut it with a grinder.

[Newshound]

Not sure I agree. I converted a camping cooker once from butane to propane (or perhaps the other way round) by changing the jets, but this didn't have a regulator. To a first approximation I would expect propane and butane to burn OK at the same pressure in a patio heater, although it does depend a bit on the jet and burner design. Suck it and see. It's not going to explode on you. If the regulator thread fits on the butane bottle the consequences can't be that bad. The CO level might be a bit different with the wrong gas but this won't matter as long as it is on a patio, surely? Someone tell me I am wrong. (the Dennis@home and Guy King threads that show in my reader seem to belong to a different posting)

[Roger Mills (aka Set Square)]

That would have been a high pressure cooker, designed to run straight off a bottle. Patio heaters are designed to run at 37 mB, using a regulator.

Butane regulators are a slightly different pressure (I forget what it is -

35?) - but caravan appliances will run happily on either, so I imagine that a patio heater will work ok on butane as long as the regulator can deliver sufficient flow to keep up with the 10kW (or whatever) consumption. As I said in an earlier post, butane is pretty useless this time of year, but ok for the summer.