Lyndon has emailed to ask about reusing – or recycling – propane gas canisters (the ones for heating, barbecues or patio heaters etc):

Trying to tidy up the yard at work, what can I do with some old gas bottles?

If there is a company name on the bottles (like Calor Gas, Flo Gas or TotalGaz – to name but three), the safest/laziest thing might be to contact them to see if they could pick them up – gas bottles get reused again and again by gas supply companies and if the canisters are still in reusable condition, they might be more than willing to take them off your hands and put them back into circulation. (They’ll be able to dispose of any remaining gas too.) (UPDATED: see the note below from Calor – you should really give their tanks back to them.)

Empty or old gas bottles also pop up quite frequently on Freecycle/Freegle, Gumtree and eBay as it is cheaper to refill old tanks than buy new ones every time (and hurrah for that!). Again, hopefully they’ll disappear from your yard with minimal effort and be reused again & again.

As for non-intended purpose reuses, some people turn them into outdoor woodburning stoves – but do be careful if you want to try anything like that yourself! Safety first, and all that.

Have you got any suggestions for how he could reuse these bottles? Or ways to recycle them? And any other advice (particularly about safety issues)?

In a bit of an impromptu barbecue-themed week, I thought I’d ask about building the key part of the experience: the barbecue itself. This is partly because I’m interested in hearing bbq ideas and partly because I’m thinking of building myself a little smokehouse for my birthday and I suspect there will be a bit overlap – and asking about smokehouses may be a little obscure.

So anyway, barbecues. John’s dad, my father-in-love, has built a number of brick barbecues – a squared-off u-shape of bricks to about waist height – from salvaged bricks: I think he used grill kits for the grill bits but there is a possibility he made the coals pan from scrap metal. I’ll ask him tomorrow.

But brick structures tend to be a bit permanent – what about slightly more mobile ones? Ones made from old oil barrels (or ideally non-oil metal barrels) seem quite common the DIY bbq world. Old gas bottles can apparently be used for smaller versions but there are more safety concerns with initial cutting.

Any other suggestions? Any ideas about things to use for the coals pan or the grill itself? And what about alternatives like fire pits?