6" low pressure burners

I was wondering if I could use the 6" low pressure burners from agrisupply (http://www.agrisupply.com/burner-cast-low-presure-multi-hole-/p/40282/cn/6000138/) with natural gas if I drilled out the orifice?

yes. I just got one of these. Instead of drilling out the orifice, I used the conversion valve that Williams brewing sells. I did have to drill and tap the opening in the burner to fit this as it is larger than the supplied propane adapter.

It lights up quite nicely on NG, I took some pictures of it. I'll have to post it for you.

Here it is wide open

Nice flame! What size hole did you drill and what kind of tap? Will one of those cheap Harbor Freight sets work on this? I don't know much about taps - obviously. I do have one of those burners that would be nice to use on another project for grilling.

I don't know about the burner, but I own 2 Harbor Freight tap and die sets (one metric, one SAE) and, so far, they have never let me down. Those sets may be cheap, but, quality wise, they can compete with the best of them.

I had to enlarge the hole in the burner to 1/4" NPT which is what the threads on the conversion valve from Williams are. Any tap set the right size should work, it's pretty soft metal. My tap set did not go that big, so I had to buy that one separate.

Did you ever time how long it would take to bring 10 gallons to a boil?

not yet. I just got it, its not even in a stand yet. Maybe this weekend I can see if it will mount in my turkey fryer base. I had poor luck converting a high pressure burner to NG, so I wanted to see how clean this burned before messing with mounting it.

Any luck getting it mounted?

not yet, weather sucked too bad this past weekend. I should play with it after work this week though.

Great find! This is exactly what I was looking for to build my rig.

beeboy said:

yes. I just got one of these. Instead of drilling out the orifice, I used the conversion valve that Williams brewing sells. I did have to drill and tap the opening in the burner to fit this as it is larger than the supplied propane adapter.

It lights up quite nicely on NG, I took some pictures of it. I'll have to post it for you.

Click to expand...

Do you see any problem with drilling out the orifice instead? Looks like it has a 90 degree angle on it -- do you think that would make it difficult to drill out?

CP, that should be fine to do. I like the williams valve because it has a ball valve to adjust the flow.

Ok, got it mounted in my turkey fryer stand tonight. I fits ok, I think it sits a bit high up. It also hits the stand at one point so it sits crooked. I need to notch the stand to fix that.

Boil test: Just over 5 gallons of water. 40 degrees and breezy outside. From 80 to boiling in 23 minutes. Flames were coming out all around the kettle. The kettle stayed clean, which is a huge improvement from when I converted a high pressure burner!

I'll post more pics tomorrow hopefully.

Sounds like if the flames were coming out around the sides, then you probably do have it mounted too high. I'd like to know what the ideal distance from burner to kettle is with this burner in preparation to build my rig.

I'm looking forward to the new pics.

ColonelPanic said:

Sounds like if the flames were coming out around the sides, then you probably do have it mounted too high. I'd like to know what the ideal distance from burner to kettle is with this burner in preparation to build my rig.

I'm looking forward to the new pics.

Click to expand...

I think the standard distance used here with these burners is 4-5" below the kettle, but it is definitely a personal trial and error kind of thing. Your system might be slightly different and you might need a little more or a little less. I am in the process of getting my burner manifold together with these burners and I intend to make the BK and HLT approximately the same distance from the kettle but my MT will be slightly farther away and will have a much lower standard size flame, to aid in preventing scorching during direct fire recirculations

Here is the end of the burner after I drilled and tapped it for the new valve



Here is the orifice in the valves from Williams brewing. If you look closely you can see that the one on the right has been filled with solder, then redrilled to a smaller opening. I did this while playing with a high pressure burner that I did not have much luck with.



Here is the Williams brewing valve in the burner.



The original burner mounted in the Bass Pro turkey fryer. I need to notch the fryer base so the new one can sit level.

This is the propane orifice that comes with the burner from Agri Supply. You can see how much smaller it is than what I am using now. It would be easy to drill out.



I'm running it off a hard line I have piped out for my BBQ. I had to drop the 1/2 Hansen qd'S down to 3/8, which is what my gas hose is. A local hose store carried these parts in house.





Running low for simmering.



Wide open!



Here's the flames coming out around the kettle



Here's a video of it running. Click on the picture and it will open in a new window

Thanks for the pics beeboy. I am planning on putting together a single tier brew stand and am thinking of using these burners with NG.

Do you know if you have loss any BTU's in the conversion? I have heard that changing a LP burner to NG will result in a 40% loss of BTU's. Thanks for the great info!!

Phunhog said:

Do you know if you have loss any BTU's in the conversion? I have heard that changing a LP burner to NG will result in a 40% loss of BTU's. Thanks for the great info!!

Click to expand...

I have no way of measuring it. The 3/8" gas hose I believe is rated for up to 60K btu's, so I know it's not higher than that.

Awesome stuff beeboy. thanks for all the info!
i do have one question though: are you using any kind of regulator or are you running straight off the supply?
Thanks!

I am running it straight off of the gas line I have out on my deck.

Beeboy your wide open flame looks good, mine looks bad (too Yellow). My burner has same burner style as your, and it is a Camp Chef brand I purchased in the 90s. It came with a ball valve with orifice and low pressure regulator. I ditched the low pressure regulator and ball valve for a high pressure one and it worked much better. I decided to convert the old ball valve to NG by enlarging orifice to 1/8" ( Same size orifice as Williams conversion valve). The problem is that at wide open the flame is huge and yellow. Does this mean it is not getting enough air for full combustion?

I had to turn the burner way down to get completely blue flame(1st photo). Probably will take forever to boil. 2nd photo is wide open.

Any advice?

Looking back at beeboy's burner from page 2, his inlet seems to have larger openings for air to get in. As you can see from below photos, by opening is smaller, so I opened it up using the trusty Dremel(not pretty, but larger). This still did not improve combustion. I wanted to test my low oxygen theory and brought out my compressor and found the sweet spot to get complete combustion of the gas. Well, lack of oxygen is definitely my problem. How do I get more air into the burner without having to haul my compressor out every brew day and create and adjustable inline air supply? Maybe drilling out the holes of the burner itself will work. Any thoughts or advice?

Your at the point where your choices are few, you need a bigger "pipe" other than that you could use a mini blower or force fan, but it would be better to get a larger burner.