Gas – Mini Explosion

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Day 1 at Corbury 2019 and the weather had been a little cooler than of late. The BBQ had been in full flow during the evening and a little later we’d had the heating on in the van. All on gas as we were off-grid.

Just as we were getting into bed, the fridge started beeping and reporting a gas failure. We turned on the heating again and there was a large bang. Folks sleeping in the tent on our place thought someone had set off a firework.

We switched the heating off and still the fridge was reporting a gas failure.

Next was to turn on the hob. A gas or gas / air mixture was coming out of the hob at very high pressure. This stopped after a few seconds, the pressure returning to normal and the hob lit correctly.

Power cycled the fridge and everything was working normally.

Tried the heating again the next day and all was in order, and that has been the case for the last week.

I wonder if we’ll ever figure out what happened. Did the regulator fail? Did some liquid propane escape from the bottle and maybe pass through the regulator? Did air somehow get mixed with the gas?

As an aside, we are using a Safefill refillable and the botlle was very full.

Finally, we noticed that the mini-explosion had blown apart the Alde flue vent. The damage can be seen in the two pictures below.

Flue vent after the bang
Old versus new…
Safefill Level – perhaps a bit high