To be really independent with a motorhome you need a sufficiently large gas volume. If you are traveling across Europe you cannot just take two gas bottles with you. Because gas connectors are different in each European country.
The German standard are grey steel bottles, that you can purchase in sizes 5kg or 11 kg. You can exchange those bottles easily on camp sites, gas stations and DIY stores. These steel bottles are already quite heavy themselves. A weight that you need to add on top of the 5/11 kg of gas. For example, the steel bottle size 11kg weights already 13kg itself. An alternative are aluminium bottles that weight for 11kg size only 5.5kg. However, the supply network for exchanging aluminium bottles is not as dense as the steel bottle network. You can search for suppliers on www.alugas.de.
Both variants can be connected without any adapter and can be exchanged and filled in Germany.
Filling German gas bottles without an adapter
The German gas bottles can also be exchanged / refilled in Austria, Belgium, Czech Republic, Denmark, Greece, Hungary, Norway (partly), Poland, Slovenia and the Netherlands.
Filling German gas bottles with an Euro adapter
It is a good idea to invest into an Euro adapter set. With the help of these adapters it is possible to refill German gas bottles also in Croatia, Estonia, Finland (only those bottles that have an Epsilon flag), Ireland, Italy, Latvia and Lithuania.
Filling local bottles with an Euro adapter
In France, you can refill only local gas bottles. You can rent those and connect them with an adapter from the Euro adapter set.
Filling local bottles with a local adapter
In the UK you have to use the gas bottles from Calorgas including the respective adapter.
In Iceland you also need a local gas bottle but on top of that you need a rubber ring to connect the gas bottle. Fortunately, you get the rubber ring for free when you get a gas bottle.
In Finland, Norway and Sweden you can rent gas bottles including the local adapter from AGA.
In Portugal and Spain you can rent gas bottles including the local adapter from Repsol or Cepsa gas stations.
In Switzerland you can rent Swiss gas bottles including a pressure controller.
You find further information on gas supply in Europe at the website Caravaning.
We think it is really strange that the European Union has a regulation on how big a banana should be and which slope it should have – but there is no common infrastructure on utilities like electricity or gas.
Very good comments and I fully support to frustration and recommendation.
I have similar experiancies living and moving between EU countries.
Hi! Thank you, very insightful post! Do you happen to have more detailed information on where to fill or rent gas bottles in Finland?
Hi Jule, as we only traveled with refillable gas bottles and never where in Finland, we did not researched where to rent or exchange gas bottles in the Nordics. But in almost any country we traveled, gas bottles were available at fuel stations and hardware stores.
Hi ! If you don’t mind going against the rules, there are two-three places I have found online, which will refill your cylinder of any standard. One is next to Murcia (gasbottlerefill.com), another us a station somewhere along the border with Portugal near villa real de San Antonio. Haven’t checked either of these, but found a camping site near La Manga, in a town called San Javier. Cost only 20 Eur to refill in early 2024. The name is Camper Park La Ribera. they will only refill if the bottle is empty, and they have all necessary adapters.
Thanks Oleg. Super helpful