Local Gas System

cfham · May 09, 2007 10:48 am

Hey all,

Currently building in Sydney and gas company has said no to installing gas in my area. I was wondering if anybody had experience with installing local gas tanks to run a gas stove top in the kitchen.

I have seen it done on a number of homes I inspected when I was going to buy and was wondering if its economic to do this. Haven't spoken to any gas contrators yet...

CFHAM

renomart · May 09, 2007 11:31 am

Yes you can do it though you will have to see if the cooktop manufacturer will provide gas jets for bottled gas (most do).

As for economics, you will have to get some installation quotes to work this out.

I ditched gas in favour of magnetic induction cooking. It is far cheaper, more efficient and quicker than gas. A lot of professional chefs are moving to induction.

Strumer · May 09, 2007 12:48 pm

For what it's worth, when I was living in Germany in a tiny flat, I had an old natural gas stove converted (re jetted) to LPG by a local plumber and ran it off a 14kg cylinder, like you use on a BBQ, hidden a few cabinets away.

The stove was in an island and this format enabled us to shift the entire island out of the way once we had finished cooking when we had large dinners with lots of guests.

Of course, I don't know if this would even be legal in Australia (I don't know if it was legal in Germany although the landlord didn't seem to mind...), but it does open the mind to some of your possibilities.

Cheers,

Earl

Yak_Chat · May 09, 2007 3:40 pm

This is pretty common in the Adelaide Hills where there is no natural gas.

I've had a house and a cafe using LPG for our stoves.
The house had 2 x 45kg LPG bottles (about 40cm diameter) that were outside the house with a regulator etc then a pipe to the stove inside that was fixed in place.
The bottles had a changeover valve, so if you ran out, you flicked over to the other bottle and got it refilled by the delivery truck or you could take it to the mitre 10 if you liked,

The cafe had a 100kg bottle (1200mm diameter 5 foot high) and the LPG truck used to come to us to refill it and it had a gauge on the top to indicate how full it was.
Great fun to run out of LPG in the middle of service :shock:

Been there done that!

In the house we used to use about 1 x bottle of gas a year which was a family of 3 adults using it for a 4 burner stove and oven.

If you want to run heating etc off it, then go for the bigger bottle and keep and eye on it.
All the gas companies have trucks running around filing LPG in most towns.

The bottle MUST be outside. !!!!!!!

It's compulsary to do so on boats and caravans, houses would be no different.
LPG is heavier than air, and a leak in a house could mean a subfloor area would fill with gas and well you can add the rest up yourself?
Boom Boom :shock:

Say no more - Literally.
Steve

stonecutter1309 · May 09, 2007 6:23 pm

My parents have bottle gas - they live in Sydney - the natural gas line stops about 10m from their house!

The bottle is on street level - it's a steep block that slopes down and their kitchen is one level below street level.

The truck comes around every so often to top up the bottle - they've never run out - use it for stove top only (I think the oven is electric).

cfham · May 10, 2007 1:11 pm

Thanks all, sounds like it's a possibility. Will post when/if I get it done.