Propane Tank and Regulator freezing up

Yesterday I finaly got to brew on my new system. My RIMS tube worked great bringing my mash temp back up after undershooting it, and kept everything perfect.
The problem I had was my propane tank and regulator were freezing up. My new stand has banjo burners, I never ran them at the same time. The propane is plumbed through the stand to each burner (it's one of Marcus' stands). When I was trying to get the boil going, the flame kept going down. I could not belive the frost that was on the side of the tank and the regulator. I had to keep shaking it around to get the propane flowing again to keep a good boil going.
I did a search, and came up with a bunch of different things, but no one said anything that worked to stop it from freezing.
What have you guys/girls done to stop this?
Thanks,
Dave

IMHO it sounds like the regulator is running too high. A too fast release of pressured gas causes cooling. I have two 60k burners running off one 10psi regulator.

What type of regulator do you have

FishFace said:

IMHO it sounds like the regulator is running too high. A too fast release of pressured gas causes cooling. I have two 60k burners running off one 10psi regulator.

What type of regulator do you have

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To be honest, I am not sure. It is the one that was sent with my stand, so I assumed it was the correct one. I will have to check it later.
I tried adjusting the knob on the regulator but it did not do anything.

How cold was it outside? You can put the propane tank in a big tub of warm water to help keep the temps up a bit.

Other than that, you may just be running the regulator a bit too high as stated above.

The other factor, do you know when your tank was filled? The mixture from the bulk distributors usually varies a bit from summer to winter. Winter mix in most cases has a higher vaporization rate than does summer mix. They mix propane with various other hydrocarbons such a butane to alter the vaporization rates. When it freezes up, it is basically caused by demanding more propane be drawn from the tank than can be vaporized.

wyzazz said:

How cold was it outside? You can put the propane tank in a big tub of warm water to help keep the temps up a bit.

Other than that, you may just be running the regulator a bit too high as stated above.

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It was almost 50* out. Today it is back down to 20*.
I was trying to lower the dial but it wasn't reaslly doing anything.
I wonder if I got a bad regulator.

autobaun70 said:

The other factor, do you know when your tank was filled? The mixture from the bulk distributors usually varies a bit from summer to winter. Winter mix in most cases has a higher vaporization rate than does summer mix. They mix propane with various other hydrocarbons such a butane to alter the vaporization rates. When it freezes up, it is basically caused by demanding more propane be drawn from the tank than can be vaporized.

Click to expand...

That I didn't know, but it was filled in November i think.

Dave258 said:

I was trying to lower the dial but it wasn't reaslly doing anything.
I wonder if I got a bad regulator.

Click to expand...

So it's not the temp then, you can always swap the regulator out to see if that's it. Got a turkey fryer? Or stop at a big box store and pick one up, you can always return it if that's not the culprit.

also, double check to make sure you aren't feeding a low pressure burner with a high pressure regulator. If you are using a needle valve controlled burner, I personally prefer a non adjustable regulator like is used on a grill so that there is only one gas adjustment to have to mess with. If this is the case and you are using a low pressure burner, you can probably steal the regulator off of your gas grill if you have one for testing purposes.

Dave258 said:

That I didn't know, but it was filled in November i think.

Click to expand...

most definitely not the mix then.

I find if the tank is <1/3 full it'll freeze up more in cold weather. I'll second the tub of warm water, or at least 50F when it's cold out.

Even just pouring hot water over the tank will help a lot. I used to have to do that to get my water heater to work on a winter morning when it was -35 to -40. Great fun!

I just had my first freeze-up in 20 years last Friday during the boil. I took what was left of the warm sparge water, put it in a spare bucket and dropped the LP tank in there. The burner instantly came back to life.
I'll agree with mtbiker278's observation where the tank was less than a third full. I was also running 2 burners off it for most of the morning. So in retrospect, the freeze-up is not surprising.

I've noticed a similar freeze up when the tank was getting close to empty. I was getting kind of upset because my boil just wasn't doing what it should have been. After a few minutes of trying to figure out what was going on I remembered reading about shaking the tank. Worked like a charm and the burner roared to life. I've never brewed when it was that cold before, so this was new to me.

The last brew I did, I had the tank in the garage and a makeshift wind shield which helped keep some of the heat from the burner in. The door was wide open, but it seemed to work just enough to not have the tank freeze up