It's Gas Again !

[La Guerriere]

So we have a new cooker to replace the ancient thingy which had a little side cupboard to take the butane bottle.

New cooker is range size, so suddenly nowhere to put the bottle. The ideal place is the Other Side of the Wall outside the kitchen where there is a an outhouse (ex chicken shed) which now serves as the garden store. This weekend I made a nice hole with a very very long SDS drill kindly supplied by Mr Screwfix.

Now if I put me bottles in there, will it stay warm (!) enough to continue to use butane or will I need to go over to propane ?

We are in Normandy, it doesn't very often go below freezing but I understand that propane tends to bung up somewhere between 0-4 degs C. But is storing propane in the chicken shed acceptable (exploding chickens etc) ?

All ideas welcome

 

 

[fulcrum]

I have recently chaged my shower boiler over to Propane from Butane because of storing bottles outside and it works much better. So go for it, but do get the correct Propane regulator.

[BJSLIV]

You have a bit of a problem because Butane needs to be kept above freezing to work properly but Propane bottles must by law be kept outside the building.

 

[powerdesal]

1. House in Normandy

2. Range type cooker

3. Butane used

4. Bottles outside, no shed, no cover.

5. February 2006, recorded temperature (at 0930) was -8.5 degC

6. Cooker worked perfectly

Conclusion, no problem.

[Ford Anglia]

My neighbour uses butane, both her two bottles are outside, in Southern Haute Vienne,.

Lowest temperature I've recorded is -13 degrees C, and her cooker worked fine.

Nothing to STOP you going to propane, though. Get the correct regulator, make sure the cooker is jetted for it, and away you go. So long as the chicken shed is ventilated, you'll be fine. DO get an isolator for inside though........

 

 

[La Guerriere]

Well blow me down. Looks as though I can stick with butane without freezing up, no matter what the theory says ! Thanks guys.

[BIG MAC]

Noted you ventilated the wall with one of Mr Screwfixes finest.

Please ensure that you duct the pipe through another rigid one or you could have problems later.

[Alane]

Don't get too confident. While staying in our caravan while converting the barn a few years ago in October the temperature dropped to -4 overnight and the butane most definitely did stop gassing off. These were 4.5kg cylinders rather than the larger ones normally used so ours would have cooled more rapidly. We had to resort to warming one bottle up inside while using the other one to run the heater until it cooled and stopped working and then swapping over.

[Ford Anglia]

My neighbour's cylinders are 13kg, and kept almost touching the house wall. I wonder of this keeps them warm enough to keep working?