Help With Natural Gas setup

[dordelli]

Trying to get my rig hooked up to Natural Gas. I am using BG12 and have drilled out my orifice to 1/16" and connected to my NG line via a 10 ft hose with quick disconnect. I get a healthy looking blue flame but took 1.5 hrs to get 5 gals to boil, is my next step to go up to 1/8". I was under impression if orifice size insufficient, I would get all red flame? I am unsure of household gas pressure here in SoCal.

Also, wanted to hook up a ball valve to control flame at the burner, but could not find a valve at HD or Lowes that I could use without adding 5-6 different brass adapter fittings. Any online suggestions for a better selection of ball valves?

 

[b-boy]

How big is the hose? I use 1/2" hose on mine. I know 1/4" seemed to be common too.

 

[dordelli]

1/2" Brinkmann at Home Depot

 

[worksnorth]

I've got half inch hoses too and found valves and crossovers at different supply stores. HD or Lowes should have what you need but if they don't maybe look around for a plumbing supply shop in your area. As for drilling out the oriface, try going up in size one drill bit at a time till it works right for you. I had to go up in size past where the flame burned the cleanest in order to get the heat up enough to boil 10 gallon batches quickly. An 1/8 hole may be to big for you.
And yeah if you go to big the flame isn't perfect blue and your pot will get a little bit dirty on the outside

 

[dordelli]

OK thanks, I'll go bigger and see what happens. I'll try a plumbing shop on the valve.

Just curious, are most of u drilling by hand or use a drill press, I did mine by hand, looks straight but who knows?

 

[worksnorth]

Did both of mine by hand

 

[Jay55]

Did the same thing you're doing. Mine is a Blichmann floor burner, and I found the orifice diameter spec in the user guide for natural gas conversion. 1/8 in. Works like a champ. Drilled mine out by hand too. I found a gas ball valve at Lowes that I'm using as a cutoff at the wall. If you can't find it anywhere else, you can get control valves from Blichmann. Might also try Brewers Hardware. If they don't have it they'll most likey know where to find it.

 

[dordelli]

Drilled out my orifice using the "step up" approach til I got to 7/64" which is one step below 1/8". I think this is largest I can go with my orifice as it is cone shaped and going any further would probably crack it. Now at full-on I was able to boil 5 gals in under 40 mins with the air opening all the way open, but am concerned about flames creeping up the sides of my kettle and melting the rubber on my valve!!

 

[worksnorth]

If you place a flat piece of tin/steel between the kettle bottom and the edge of the burner top, that extends out from the bottom of the kettle under the valve, it will deflect enough of the heat around the valve to keep from melting the handle. Works for sight glasses too.

 

[worksnorth]

Hope that made sense!

 

[worksnorth]

Hope that made sense!

It can be a pretty thin piece of sheet metal or what ever you have laying around, just something use as a shield.

 

[dordelli]

It can be a pretty thin piece of sheet metal or what ever you have laying around, just something use as a shield.

Makes sense, will give it a try. But I think the Burner and BK may be too close. I have two BK's a 9 gallon and a 15 gallon and the flames only creep up the sides of the much wider 15g. I am using an old square turkey fryer base (very similiar to the bayou classic model1114) and the 15 completely covers the surface leaving only the corners where the flame shoot out. On full on, the flames really leap out quite high!

 

[dordelli]

For those thinking about going to Natural Gas, I love my setup. I have a 23 tip jet burner (6 tips plugged) as my BK and repurposed the BG-12 turkey fryer as my HLT with the orifice drilled out to 9/64. The jet burner is hot, really hot but flame control is tough, BG-12 has great flame control but no where near as hot as the jet. I ended up plumbing my 3 tier stand with 1/2" gas pipe and use a gas hose with quick disconnect, so my stand is still portable.

 

[Terek]

I want to go natural gas and have a few questions. I have been installing gas fired heating equipment for 15 years in homes, so I'm no beginner to natural gas. I was just wondering what you guys are doing with the inline regulator that is installed on most propaine burners. Propaine needs much more water column pressure than natural gas, like 3x more. Are you guys adjusting the water column on your regulators, or just cutting them off and connecting your lines directly to your homes gas lines?

 

[dordelli]

I'm far from an expert on natural gas, but from what I've read, the NG is already regulated so u don't need regulator, I'm not using one, just ball valves for flame control.

 

[Terek]

All ng appliances have a secondary regulator, so you can have full gas flow to it and not have to adjust a ball valve, but most need a set gas allowance. U are basically using the ball valve as a regulator and a flow control. It's rudimentary and possibly a little dangerous, But if it is working for everyone with no Ill effect, then sweet. I will attempt to get my set up going.

 

[Terek]

FYI: if this is the set up most of you have, I would unhook everything if you for any reason have a city inspector come to ur house. You could get in a lot of trouble and a hefty fine. Mabe I'll start designing a add on set up for ng conversion for brewing that is both legal and safe. But with my expertise and IMO the setup explained by most is really not dangerous. Just make sure there are no leaks

 

[dordelli]

My setup works great and I've definitely checked every connection more then once. I'm connecting to a pre-existing valve that was on the house using a quick disconnect. Not to say the threads I have read about NG were written by experts, (not sure) but I believe I read most of the NG forums on HBT prior to even attempting this and did not find one that recommended using a regulator.

 

[b-boy]

I have a regulator on my setup. if you look at the strut build thread you'll see a few regulators on there.