Gas tank & shipping

The shipping companies ACL/Grimaldi informed the service provider Seabridge at a meeting on 20 May 2019 that with immediate effect motor homes with gas containers will no longer be shipped if the gas containers have not been rinsed out. More about it in this post Gas Container & Shipping.

VALID FOR 48 HOURS

To prove that the gas containers have been flushed out and that there is no risk of explosion from the containers, a certificate of freedom from gas must be presented when the vehicle is delivered to the port. Condition: the certificate of freedom from gas must not be older than 48 hours and must be recognised by the shipping company. This period of time refers to the date of issue of the certificate until the date of delivery of the vehicle, evidenced by the date stamp at the port.

Gas tank & shipping

At the time this new regulation was introduced, we were about to ship our vehicle from Hamburg to Halifax. So where can you find a company that rinses gas tanks professionally and the certificate of freedom from gas is also recognized? We spent a weekend trying to find such a company. We couldn’t find one in Hamburg. But a little further south – in Salzgitter. This is an ideal geographical location, because anyone who ships his vehicle from Hamburg or Bremerhaven and comes from the south is exactly at the junction to these two shipping ports.

COSTS OF GAS TANK FLUSHING

Flushing out gas containers is expensive. The expensive and time-consuming part is the burning of residual gas in the containers. So if you want to save money, you should carry as little gas as possible in the gas tanks or gas bottles. This means either not filling up at all or simply burning gas generously. Is especially funny in midsummer with 38 degrees inside temperature. 🙂 🙂

If you are wondering how expensive the rinsing is, here is a small sample calculation:

11Kg gas tank bottle with remaining gas of maybe 1/4 filling needs about 1.5 hours for burning. Filling with nitrogen (purging), measurement control and filling in the gas exemption certificate takes about 30 minutes. Total costs about 260 Euro.

ADDRESS FOR RINSING GAS CONTAINERS IN SALZGITTER

And here the address of a competent and recognized company:

PA Propan & Ammoniak Anlange GmbH
Erzwäsche 51
38229 Salzgitter
Telefon: +49 5341 876880
Website: www.pa-salzgitter.de

RETURN JOURNEY TO EUROPE

The gas containers must also be flushed out for the return journey to Europe. Currently we only know of one address in Nova Scotia, Canada. As soon as we have more information and addresses, we will publish them as well.

Kontakt in Nova Scotia, Kanada
Holiday’s RV Repair
50 Rowlings Avenue
Musquodobit, N.S.
B0J 2L0
Phone: +1 902-889-2500
Website: www.holidaysrvrepair.com

We finally arrived in Canada and so did our vehicle. How we could release the Duro you can read here.