Beer Forum

I'm thinking of going Natural Gas on my grill and brewing.

From what I can see is my house has 275,000 BTU coming to it with 275 CFH and 7" of pressure.

I am going to hazard a guess and say my one furnace is 70,000BTU and the other is 65,000BTU. I did this by using a timer and watching the dial- so i expect i'm close but not willing to bet my life on it!

I'm going to make an educated guess and say my grill is 50,000BTU and my current burner is 55,000 (http://www.bayouclassicdepot.com/sq14_p ... burner.htm)

This comes up to 240BTU... I need a bigger burner- and more likely 2 burners- I was thinking of trying out the 100,000BTU burners..

if I am JUST running my HLT and Kettle and the furnace comes on I will be exceeding the available BTU's.... so what happens?

Does the house blow up?
Does everything just work weak?
Does the furnaces keep resetting themselves or something till they burn up?

So what do I need to do?

I really don't want to pay for that much propane.

Thanks!

This is a friggin awesome question and I really want to post a smart-ass answer like,

"It will never work. Give up now and send me your equipment and full kegs.",

but I'm actually eager to the hear the real answer to his excellent question.

Cheers,
Push E.

But seriously, it won't work. Send me your equipment and full kegs...

No the house will not blow up. The furnace will trip off on low flow and you will have to re-lite it. Its kinda like a gasoline generator. As long as you run a few items on it, it will put up the watts needed to run. But if you overload it, it will shut down. Then you need to reset it, turn a few things off, and re-start it. Just make sure you dont run both furnaces, a gas grill and 2-100k btu burners at the same time. Or have the gas company come out and change out the flow oriface in the gas line to accommodate the required BTU's desired. May cost a little for a service call, but fuck, if your pulling 275k btu now, your either freaking rich, or stealing gas from the neighbors house.
Hope it helps.

Truth be told it won't cost you anything. They will happily provide you the biggest pipe you want.

The monthly bill is all yours (which won't be that bad). Trust me, I'm a Christmas Light nut-bar and the electric company happily upgraded my service "for free" in return for my $900 December bill.

Push E.

Beermaker wrote:...if your pulling 275k btu now, your either freaking rich, or stealing gas from the neighbors house.
Hope it helps.

Thanks!

For this summer I'll probably take the chance. I'm going to call and see how much it is to upgrade my service before next winter I guess- either that or turn the heat off when I'm brewing! I'm sure the soon-to-be wife would support that (yea... right!)

I built my house 3 years ago. I have 13 gas appliances totalling 1 million BTUs, if you count everything. When I approached SW Gas.... "No problem, Mr. Mylo. We will have you hooked up in a jiffy. You just say the word". Bastards...


Mylo