23 tip burner/brewstand question/boil time

Hi all....I am building a brewstand using two 23-tip jet burners with several of the jets plugged off and Honeywell gas valves. I am tweaking my natural gas pressure for an optimal burn, and am curious about how long it takes other people to bring 5 gallons of water to a boil. I am using the traditional 15.5 gallon sanke converted. It presently takes me 30 minutes to bring 5 gallons to a boil, any thoughts? Is that par for the course? Thanks for your time.

From what starting temp? After two or more years working with the Beertoolspro software and I still haven't gone through all the calibration steps for the vessel heat capacity and actual BTU achieved from the burners. I ought to do that soon because it will then tell me how long each heat step should take.

FYI, their calculations are based on vessel heat capacity, ambient temp, volume, and time to heat to a 18F rise. If you can give me the last three figures, I can tell you how much effective BTU you're getting.

How many tips are you running now?

Just for chits and giggles how are you tweaking your natural gas pressure? You can tweek your flow with a valve but how are you tweeking your pressure? Is there a variable pressure NG regulator? If there is such a thing, I want one.

I picked up a pair of adjustable 1/2" NG regs on Ebay for like $15. I chucked one on the input to my system and didn't find any point to it since my run is already as restrictive as I need it to be. If I planned to stick with nat gas, I'd probably run 3/4" hardline directly to the brew area and cut the pressure with these regs.

Okay, not sure about the 18f temp rise and all that...we just had a big snow, so I'm not up for getting the stand out right now. But anyway, ambient temp was about 50, same for the water temp. I have 12 of the tips plugged, and I was regulating the pressure with the built in regulator on the honeywell valve. Just for anyone reading this, it may help, because I had a problem with this.

When I first brought home the rig from my dad's machine shop for it's first test burn, I had a real real crappy flame. I have 2 of the burners, and when I would run one burner, it would actually bring down the pilot light of the other burner so much, it wouldn't heat the thermocouple enough to let the gas valve keep the pilot light lit. The natural gas hookup, I used the super expensive approved hose, the gas grill 10' sections, three of them. They were nice, had quick disconnects, and it was all that was available locally. Turns out, the inside diameter of that hose was only 3/8"s, and going through 30' was just too much pressure drop.

So, after looking at a lot of pictures on here and doing some research, I decided to hell with trying to run approved hose, and bought 3/4" id goodyear heater hose. I don't know what natural gas will do to it over time, but I will just keep an eye on it. And what a difference it made!!!! I have more fire that I know what to do with now! So, if anyone out there is in the planning for something like this, use big hose!

This is a great forum by the way. BobbyM, you have been a huge help. Also, I left a comment on youtube the other day, but maybe you havent seen it yet. Where did you get those brass quick disconnects? Mcmaster? Also, are you running silicone hose? Where did you buy your hose from?

Thanks again!!!