Come talk to me of regulators and gas bottles...

[Lovecat]

So far we've camped with an ancient camping gaz bleuet (thing you clip onto the top of a camping gaz teensy blue bottle) and last year when we started to go away for more than a weekend we also got one of those 1-ring things in a case that you stick an aerosol can of butane into.

I have been looking at one of those double burners with grill (do they work? Can you get decent toast off one? Or is it as bad as those prop-up-precariously toasting thingies that I understand are utterly useless?) and I'm tempted, but am put off by all this talk of regulators and big bottles of gas/propane/butane (I can't hear the word propane without thinking of King of The Hill "Ah sell Pro-pane and Pro-pane accessories").

How does it work? Do you buy the gas on site/en-route? Our car is packed enough, I don't want to buy a dirty great bottle to have to carry around with us...

And regulators... what the hell are regulators? And hoses? How do you fit them? How does it all work? How do you regulate the gas?

I've gone dizzy thinking about it... would you recommend I just stick to my two separate thingies or does a double all in one have any advantages?

:)

Well hello there

Am enjoying this vodka btw

So the BIG advantage of getting a stove and a big bottle of gas is cost. The bigger your receptacle the cheaper your gas it. It is an exponential curve really how expensive the little bottles of gas are compared to the big ones.

Having two burners is quite nice. But one burner and a hay box and you could do much the same meals (so boil pasta/rice on single burners and stick in hay box, then cook whatever on the burner again).

Regulator screws into gas bottle. Hose fits onto regulator with screwy clamp thing (I forget the technical term), hose goes into stove with another clamp. Tis all very straight forward and once you have done it a few times it no-problemo.

Main downside is space. Gas bottle and stove take up a fair old whack of room in the car.

Oh and your first purchase of a gas bottle is quite £££ after that though you are just buying the gas, you just exchange an empty bottle for a full one at the campsite (if they sell them), camping shop, garage whatever.

Apols for typos/missing words. It's this dishwasher vodka see

No idea about toast.

I have an almost religious fanaticism against toast whilst camping. It is not RIGHT. That way be Caravans.....

I keep reading that as dishwater vodka. A different experience altogether, I should imagine...:o

I agree re. toast, but DH/DD demand it. Given that DH would rather be in a hotel, I have to try what I can to persuade him camping is just as good if not better than the hotel experience....

you give in to their toast demands!

Oh Lovecat.

Next you'll be telling me you have an ambi-pure plug in in the bell.

We don't have EHU - it disrupts the lines of the Bell....:o

We have toast. It goes with the morning fry up. We also use the grill to toast garlic bread cheese slices which the dcs insist on

Actually I could do with garlic bread geese right now. Bring me some forthwith slubber

We have a double burner stove and gas bottle and we never use it. I prefer to use my cadac safari chef and a Campingaz bluet instead.

So if you live near me then you can have my gas bottle, hose and regulator.

Toast made in the grill of the CampngGaz double burner stove is fine. You cna't make many slices at once, but it is much better than those ridiculous balancing things. A Diablo toastie maker makes great toasties on a stove, too. OUr CampingGaz double stove boils water much much faster than the one ring / aerosol cannister stove. YOu can get gas cylinders of differnt sizes, we have one which is like this a 2.27kg camping Gaz cylinder, and each refill lasts ages and ages. Two years, at least. It measures about 25cms high to the top of it's curved top, and about 23cms diameter.
You can get one which is more squat like this and in fact i wish we had the smaller one. I might swap. Mine was much cheaper than on that site.

Campingaz bottles are apparantly harder to come by and more expensive in this country than Calor, but I get the refills from our ordinary high st DIY / builders merchants with no trouble.

The regulator pertains to the gas - so for that stove, with a campingaz butane bottle like ours you need a campingaz regulator. The supplier of the gas should sell the right regulator. Most of the cost is the deposit on the bottle, which when empty you exchange for a full one, and then, I suppose, you can return the bottle for your deposit if you want.

IME the 'aerosol' gas runs out v quickly, is cheap if bought in cheap multi-deals in places like Halfords, but adds up if you have to buy individual cans at campsite shops.