Nice cooking on a gaspit, connected to that well -known, blue bottle. Cooking with a gas bottle is the order of the day for the many campinggoers in the coming weeks. But in Eindhoven things went wrong on Saturday afternoon when a man wanted to check his camping cooker and exploded things. Koen Jacobs and Henk to the Westeind of the Scouting Eindhoven region give much needed tips to keep your gas bottle free at the campsite. “At the national scouting matches you get penalty points for something like that,” says Henk.
A man in Eindhoven was setting up his camping gear in his apartment on Saturday afternoon. In addition, he wanted to check his cooking set. That went wrong, because the gas bottle exploded which caused a great pressure wave. The man got rid of it miraculously enough without cracks. His apartment, on the other hand, was a havoc, with even major damage to the facade of the building.
According to scouting experts Henk and Koen, an accident is in a small corner. “The most important thing that you have to check with the gas bottle is whether your gas hose is in order,” says Koen, who is chairman of the scouting in the Eindhoven region.
“Always check the shelf life of the hose. If this date is in order, see if there are cracks or nods in the hose.” According to Koen, an easy way to do this is the snake with some water wet and see if bubbles are created. “Actually, just like you check a bicycle tire on a leak.”
Safe gas bottle
Henk is a material master of the scouts in the Eindhoven region and also manages the material store for the scouting. He agrees the importance of a safe gas hose, but also has his reservations about the gas bottle of the Eindhoven citizen who went wrong on Saturday: “Where did this gas bottle come from? If it is one from outside Europe, then they are often less controlled than the bottles here in the Netherlands.”
He mentions as an example that you can get a gas bottle very cheaply via web stores like Temu. “You sometimes have a gas bottle there for ten, while here in the Netherlands you pay around forty euros. But the gas bottles in the Netherlands and the EU are well controlled and are safe.”
Even though the Dutch gas bottles are safe, the scouting experts emphasize once again that an accident is in a small corner. “The biggest mistake you can make is that the gas hose is not well connected,” says Koen. “Gas can then escape with which a flame shoots back into the snake.”
Penalty points
According to Henk and Koen, they are therefore very strict on the young scouts at the scouting when it comes to the use of gas bottles and seeds. “Always keep the bottles in a dark, cool place,” says Henk. And when you start using the Gaspit: “Never put it inside or near your tent. A small gust of wind can already make the flame skip,” adds Koen.
The young scouts in Eindhoven get at least early on how important it is to be safe with your cooker, say the scouting experts. “If you have a wrong gas hose or do not fit it properly during the national scouting competitions, we will take it off and you will get some penalty points.”
Also during cooking a crush is kept on things, says Koen. “We then check whether everything goes well during use. But we also immediately see if there is a good cooking. We all eat it in the end, so it’s also out of our own,” he laughs.