Filling gas bottle from home supply

Yes it is possible but highly illegal and possibly quite dangerous

LPG yes Town supply gas No

Ian

The household supply is natural gas, if you are connected. This requires high compression pressure to liquify it. The LP Gas tanks are not designed for this pressure.

If the house is on Bottled gas I have heard of people doing it but it wouldn't be worth the possible risks involved.

You would need the decanting cylinder to have the pickup close to the bottom, so as to dispense liquid.

Very simple, obviously there are some risks with gas so maybe do it in a breezy area.
Get a hose made up so you can connect the two bottles. Turn the feeder bottle upside down, open up the valves and crack the flat blade screw on the empty bottle to allow air out as liquid goes in. As it fills you can feel the previously empty bottle fill up (weight) and when its full the liquid will shoot out the screw so be ready to do it up.
Also the gas is extremely cold so gloves are required.

It seems a pity that you would consider your live to be worth so little as to want to save a dollar by messing around with a products which can be very dangerous.

Take your bottle to a refilling station or go to a Swap n Go.

Think of the people who have to pick up the pieces.

Kevin J

To all the people who answered my question above without the usual lectures, i say thank you.

Thanks
Cisco

The short answer is NO!!! Dont even try it.. LPG is used in bottles and what you get from your home supply is natural gas.. Natural gas does not liquify easily and you wont get any volume in the bottle, it will be vapour and not liquid and also , things that are designed to run on LPG have different size jets to natural Gas appliances.. There is no point to try what you are talking about... Michael

Cisco, is he still your friend?? Technically he is right, you can fill your lpg bottle with natural gas from the house...but it wont be anything more than a bomb. Have a go at this...open the valve and light it....at first it will flame, then it will gulp, and when the mix of gas and air becomes acceptable, it will rock your suburb.
Lighten up, you should be happy im telling you how dangerous it is without judging you....
Andrew

Bottling CNG is well understood technology - many NSW Govt buses run on CNG - compressed natural gas.

When they let a recent contract for more buses, they bought Diesel buses - even though they are worse polluters than CNG (do as I say, not as I do).

They chose diesel because the CNG compressors at the Bus Depots are very expensive to install and maintain and the gas mains would have to updated to supply sufficient gas flow.

Hi Cisco,

Without getting into any emotional discussion, here are the facts:

The gases are very different. Natural gas is around 90% methane, 6% ethane, with traces of around 1% of butane and even less propane.

LPG as used in cars and bbq's consists of basically all butane and/or propane, the mixture depending on usage and/or climatic conditions where it is to be used.

To convert an appliance to operate from one gas to the other is usually quite simple, but would require re-jetting and setting correct delivery gas pressure at the very least.

The biggest problem in filling bottles from a home supply is that you need enormous (compared to LPG) pressures to liquefy and also need much more substantial cylinder construction.

There are such things as natural gas filling stations which use a high compression type compressor and is used to fill vehicle tanks. Many buses run on LNG (liquified natural gas).

To summarise though. Your ordinary LPG gas cylinder can not be filled from a natural gas supply.

Cheers
Gerry

Gerry, The buses use CNG (high pressure gas). LNG (liquid) is really only seen in those big tankers with the three spheres in/on their hulls. The enormous refrigeration plants on the North West Shelf cool the NG enough to liquify it to send to Japan for power generation. By the way, those spheres have 12" thick aluminium walls.
No one domestically uses LNG.

filling your own LPG bottles works out about $12 for 9kg. We order a liquid fill bottle for work and have hose.

Hi Ciscocat

Not sure whether you have your answer yet. From my bit - the main issue with filling up a portable gas bottle from your household outlet that comes from the street is the household outlet runs at only 4psi - low pressure gas. Thus all appliances on this have large jets to allow sufficient gas through. There has been discussions on auto web sites about installing gas compressors in home garages to fill your car gas tank. It is possible and I have read a forum where someone was doing it but like others say, very dangerous. Similar rules are in place for petrol whereby you are not allowed to fill a container with more than 200litres or store more than 200 litres at home. People do all the time but it is against the law.

Portable gas bottles have liquid gas in them stored at high pressure and then regulated out with very fine jets. The gas you use in cars is the same stuff as you will notice at service stations that top up gas bottles will sometimes just have a line running from their big above ground tank.

If you live where there was no street gas and have large gas bottles outside that provide gas to cooker or hotwater system then that could be different. I have not tried that one but have heard of people decanting to portable camping bottles. The problem is decanting the liquid not the gas. This would entail turning a big grey home tank upside down while it is full - just a dumb and dangerous thing to do.

For the few dollars you might save compare it to the rest of your life not being there. Just do like the rest of us and get shafted for a tiny gas bottle at the local swop and go.

Bob.