lpg bottle

Bunnings, they do not check or never have when I have changed over.

Which was the out of date one? The one you left or the one you got?
Cheers,
Peter
OKA196 motorhome

They need to check the date when refilling but swap & go type's don't need to , i think most don't check ??
Q did they refuse you ?

I took an LPG 9kg cylinder into Bunnings last week and it had an expiry date of 03/08.
Replaced with a full "Swap'n'Go" bottle for $26 (no checking of date stamp) and noticed the replacement bottle had an original expiry date of 02/08, so the "new" legal bottle was older than the one I took in.
Swap'n'Go is owned and maintained by Elgas and there is no restriction mentioned on their website for expired bottles, apart from the fact that only 9kg and 4.5kg bottles are supported.
It was a no brainer for me.

For many years I bought my own bottles and I preferred to have float style gauges to indicate gas level. The cost of refilling these (9kg) bottles was $19-$22, depending on where I went.
At the end of their expiry date you needed to either have the bottle tested and recertified, (similar cost to new bottle) or disposed of and a new bottle purchased anyway.
I have two situations where I use LPG.
Two 9kg bottles on my van with a changeover lever so that when one bottle is empty you simply change over to the full one and recharge (or swap) the empty at some convenient time.
Two 9kg bottles for my outdoor heater and BBQ at home. If the BBQ bottle exhausts it's gas supply, I take the one out of the heater (used rarely) then refill the empty at some convenient time.
So I didn't "need" a visual gauge to tell me when a bottle needed refilling and the gauges only gave an approximate level only.
So I am now more than happy to use Swap'n'Go bottles, (which you actually own) and with outlets everywhere across the Country. The only "problem" I see is that it would be nigh on impossible to have a Swap'n'Go recharged at a refill outlet as the original expiry date stamped on the bottle is more than likely well out of date. Obviously, Elgas check (test?) empty bottles before refilling so all should be OK there.

I have one other expired bottle (from the BBQ/Heater group) which was a similar age to the other I exchanged for a Swap'n'Go and I will also take that into Bunnings for another Swap'n'Go bottle as another spare.

So, I have been converted folks!

Swap N Go hydrostat all out of date cylinders before they repaint them grey.
Any of their refilled bottles are therefore in date again. They should have been re-stamped to reflect this but...

Pretty simple really...........I take note of when my old knocked about bottle is almost out of date, (and gas), take it into the "B place" and as the young staff member reaches in to get a refilled, but plain looking bottle, I go "no not that one. Get the shiny one at the back".
Chances of getting a reasonable new one are good! Guess it wont work so well now I've blown my little secret.........Lol.

Bit off topic maybe I have an old (like 45 years) Primus stove with a fitting for the Primus internal valve cylinders. The bottles are hard to buy except the small ones.

I have a few bottles and had one out of code and empty and thought about replacing it with newer type and using an adapter etc ... but turned out to be much cheaper to get it tested.

In 10 years I probably won't be needing it much.

Cheers

Interesting to read another iteration of this. Our local Canberra (Phillip) Home Timber and Hardware store will not accept out of date cylinders for 'swap and go' and actually checked the date, the last time I went anyway. They use Supaswap which is part of Supagas. They also refused to supply more than one cylinder unless I had a ute.

lpg bottle.went to another servo today,found a bottle,12 months old,swapped mine over ,it was only 7 years old,checked other bottles there ,some were 15 years old,had a sticker on them ,said they had been checked,out in the bush you would not be able to get these bottles refilled ,if they were 10 years old or more ,speaking from experience

The swap-n-go bottles are all rechecked AND stamped.
They are usually not stamped in the same location. Often stamped on the rim on the base of the LPG cylinder.
Do people honestly think that LPG companies would be stupid or silly enough to put untested LPG bottles back into service.
The conspiracy, BS and ignorance you see posted on forums at times is alarming.
Why not phone the LPG company and ask them rather than getting ill informed to wrong information posted by people that are clueless to the industry operation.

I prefer to keep my own bottles. In our setup our gas useage is minimal. We have two 4 kg bottles and have always been able to find a filling station to refill the empty one before the other one runs out. It's cheaper that way and we don't end up with an unfillable expired bottle.

Readers might find the article at this link to be helpful, so as to avoid speculation. It comes from the ELGAS website. ELGAS supply Stop’N’Go. See --Gas Bottle Testing Facts - By ELGAS
This a lengthy article but it is worth reading it all. Note that just as one would expect for consumer pressure vessels of the kind used for BBQ's, caravans, camping, etc, a date-expired Gas Bottle MUST have a new date stamp placed on it SOMEWHERE, indicating the Gas Bottle has been properly inspected and tested by an authorised person, before the bottle is refilled and sent back into circulation. The original date may still be visible.
Non-compliance by self-filling an expired Gas Bottle does not get around the requirement -- this simply exposes the non-compliant person to liabilities should an incident occur.
Where no such renewal stamp can be found on an exchanged Gas Bottle, the Gas Bottle should be refused and the distributor informed of the reason and requested to attach a "Do Not Use" label. One would hope that Shop Assistants are aware of these requirements -- but that is not always the case.