How to Pick a LPG Gas Cooker

Cooking at sea might be risky but if you pick marine LPG appliances carefully and hire a professional marine gas safe engineer. LPG mostly find in either propane or butane form. LPG is much safer in use as compared to kerosene. It’s very easy to store LPG gas bottles and easily available.

LPG appliances are specially designed and installed carefully on boats with following features –

1. A specially designed gas bottle locker with proper ventilation and sealed.
2. The regulator will be mounted on the bulkhead within the locker, rather than screwed directly into the bottle. A pair of bottles can then be connected to it via a double manifold and high-pressure hose, enabling easy change-over from one bottle to the other.
3. A bubbler type leak detector (not shown on the sketch) to check daily the gas integrity of the installation.
4. A simple manual turn-off tap close to the boat cooker

Butane is used while travelling to freezing temperature and for long distance, travel propane is used as propane is available easily and worldwide.

Before buying an LPG gas cooker check its Safety, practicality and durability.

What to look for in boat cookers –

1. Flame Failure devices = It is necessary to check the flame failure device in the cooker before installing on a sailboat. Without them, gas would continue to flow and, being heavier than air, will accumulate in the bilge where the smallest spark – maybe even from static electricity – could ignite it and cause total destruction of the boat and its occupants.
2. Gimballing - This must be adequate for all angles of the heel on both tacks, and is largely dependent on where the cooker is located in the galley. On some boats, the cooker has the almost unlimited swing on one tack but collides with the outboard face of its recess on the other.

If the crash bar in front of the cooker is too close to it, the inboard swing can trap unwary fingers. I know; ours was; it did, twice – until I moved it.

The final length of the supply hose to gas cookers should be a flexible armoured hose to protect it from chafing or pinching when the cooker swings, and it should be possible to lock the gimbals to prevent the cooker from swinging unexpectedly when alongside.