Gas bottle bandits

We were in Civic yesterday evening and stopped at a pedestrian crossing for a bloke wheeling a shopping trolley with at least two gas cylinders in it – it was probably about 6:30 or 6:45pm. I didn’t really think much of it except that perhaps he was planning a big BBQ for the weekend.

Russ said :

johnboy said :

Just wait for the ATM’s to start cooking up around town.

Yep. Fill them with gas and then blow them to kingdom come….

LPG is a poor choice for blowing things up – it has a very narrow stoichiometric range where you get a rate of burn that’s explosive – too much or too little gas relative to air and you just get either no combustion, or at best a mild “foomp”.

Oxy-acetylene on the other hand…

Yes but like a firey once told me if you get a gas leak from a LPG tank get the hell out of the area fast

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t_Y2wcipQl4

johnboy said :

Just wait for the ATM’s to start cooking up around town.

‘ATM’s’? You did that on purpose! >:(

At close to $40 a full cylinder swap and go, they do have some value. And that’s without the value of the bottle ($25 in Supercheapauto). But swap and go is just $20 at Bunnings.

IP

johnboy said :

Just wait for the ATM’s to start cooking up around town.

Yep. Fill them with gas and then blow them to kingdom come….

LPG is a poor choice for blowing things up – it has a very narrow stoichiometric range where you get a rate of burn that’s explosive – too much or too little gas relative to air and you just get either no combustion, or at best a mild “foomp”.

Oxy-acetylene on the other hand…

johnboy said :

The point is that as bottles for resale they’re pretty low value.

But as untraceable safe busters…. that’s worth some money.

Well if there’s a spate of explosions in the near future we heard it here first..

wildturkeycanoe said :

8 locations across Canberra, average travel say 40km return = 320km. Fuel at $1.60/L with say 10L/100km consumption makes it an investment of $51.20. You can get those 8.5kg bottles at around $27 for exchange, so selling them at less than that. say $20/bottle makes a sales figure of $1160. If each job took around an hour or so, with travel time included, and there were 2 men involved, that makes 8 hours per man, split profits two ways, deducting travel costs, equals $69.23 per hour. If these jobs were done outside normal working hours, taking OT rates into consideration it works out at a rate of $34.61 per hour. Some casual work pays as much in the right fields without the risk of prosecution.
Now they just need to find 58 friends who own BBQs or camper trailers who wouldn’t get suspicious and dob them in.
Personally, I’d be more concerned these will be used as some kind of crude explosive.

How long did it take you to work that out? In gas bottle hours?

I’m not defending the theft of these cylinders but seriously this swap and go is the biggest ripoff going

wildturkeycanoe said :

8 locations across Canberra, average travel say 40km return = 320km. Fuel at $1.60/L with say 10L/100km consumption makes it an investment of $51.20. You can get those 8.5kg bottles at around $27 for exchange, so selling them at less than that. say $20/bottle makes a sales figure of $1160. If each job took around an hour or so, with travel time included, and there were 2 men involved, that makes 8 hours per man, split profits two ways, deducting travel costs, equals $69.23 per hour. If these jobs were done outside normal working hours, taking OT rates into consideration it works out at a rate of $34.61 per hour. Some casual work pays as much in the right fields without the risk of prosecution.
Now they just need to find 58 friends who own BBQs or camper trailers who wouldn’t get suspicious and dob them in.
Personally, I’d be more concerned these will be used as some kind of crude explosive.

Given that there’s a reasonable chance that the thieves are on the dole the time/money equation matters little so long as it pays for their addiction. Of course there is, as you say, the possibility that the thieves may have sinister intent and intend to use the bottles as an explosive, but hopefully not.

8 locations across Canberra, average travel say 40km return = 320km. Fuel at $1.60/L with say 10L/100km consumption makes it an investment of $51.20. You can get those 8.5kg bottles at around $27 for exchange, so selling them at less than that. say $20/bottle makes a sales figure of $1160. If each job took around an hour or so, with travel time included, and there were 2 men involved, that makes 8 hours per man, split profits two ways, deducting travel costs, equals $69.23 per hour. If these jobs were done outside normal working hours, taking OT rates into consideration it works out at a rate of $34.61 per hour. Some casual work pays as much in the right fields without the risk of prosecution.
Now they just need to find 58 friends who own BBQs or camper trailers who wouldn’t get suspicious and dob them in.
Personally, I’d be more concerned these will be used as some kind of crude explosive.