Burners wont light

We finally got all of the parts needed to plumb the natural gas from the wall to the burners. Hooked up the 24v transformer to A/C, wired up everything, flipped the switch... and ........ nothing

The pilots work fine, the valves trigger and click open, I can see gas wafting up from the burners.... but no flame.... I let them run for about 15/20 seconds just to be sure. I tried both of them. The pilots work fine but nothing seems to be lighting the burners....

Does anyone have any idea whats going on here?


We have the Hurricane burners with Natural Gas valves from Northern Brewer
7334 Hurricane Burner
40551 Natural Gas Valve for Hurricane Burner

Sounds like the jet is to small, drill it out to 1/8" and start with shutter closed, then open until just flame tips are yellow. If I remember correctly you are not the first to have this problem with the valve on NG.

Drill what out? The actual jets on the burners? Their must be 50-100 of them....

Sorry, I ment the end of the gas valve where the gas comes out, it sounds like they sent the propane version not the Natural gas version. If you pull the valve out of the burner and look at the gas opening it should be close to 1/8", if not then it is the propane valve. The propane valve was built with a smaller opening for higher pressure and the problem you have sounds like insufficient gas flow to the burner, which the propane version would cause.

I called NB where I got everything from. They said to play with the air vent to change the fuel/air mix and see if that worked.... Trying it tonight....

They dont have a propane version as far as I know and I dont even see the NG valve on their site any more....

Burners lit....

So.... is the flame on the Hurricane burners supposed to be this low? The flame is like 1/4" at best.... It feels hot but you can barely see it when the lights are on...



In this video you can see someone else's burners working. They look similar to ours when their burning until they show a side view of the flames... Ours are only 1/4" tall... theirs are at least an inch. Air vent is closed all the way off. Gas is all the way open. Opening up the air vent more only makes the flames go out.....

Are we doing something wrong?

I dunno - I can get a much higher flame on mine.

This may be a stupid question, but here goes anyway. Are you using a regulator of any kind? A regulator is not required when using NG, but you probably already knew that. It appears that the gas flow is very low for some reason. There's a restriction somewhere. How long is the gas line run and what size is the pipe? Is there any other gas appliance sharing this line? Just some things to check.

Catt22 said:

This may be a stupid question, but here goes anyway. Are you using a regulator of any kind? A regulator is not required when using NG, but you probably already knew that. It appears that the gas flow is very low for some reason. There's a restriction somewhere. How long is the gas line run and what size is the pipe? Is there any other gas appliance sharing this line? Just some things to check.

Click to expand...

Garage/brewery is 100+ feet from the house. Installed a new 1" dia. plastic gas line from house to garage. Goes to a 1" metal pipe with valve on the wall inside. From there it drops down to 1/2" QD to 1/2" NG hose which leads to the brewing system with uses all 1/2" black pipe. Pipes go directly into the 1/2" furnace valves. 3/8" flex tubing goes from the 1" opening on the furnace valves to the brass 3/8" NG valve on the burners.

Their is only one valve, the one on the wall. no regulators beyond the brass valves connected to the burners themselves. Both burners are using the same Honeywell furnace valves. 1/2" in and out.

Did you take the advice on the first post and look at the burner's valve opening? As he said, this has came up more than once around here.

It appears that you have the low pressure propane orifice, it can be drilled out to 7/64"-1/8" to get normal flame level of 1"+. A second adjustment can be made with the built in regulator on the Honeywell valve, open valve on burner wide open and adjust internal regulator for maximum fire level you want.

Thanks guys, I am hesitant to take off the valve after I put it on but I will check that and the Honeywell manual for adjusting the gas flow... though I suspect the brass valve is the issue.

I just measured the opening. It's between 1/32 and 5/64 of an inch. About half the size of the 1/8" I heard mentioned. So I should drill this out?

Mine wound up working @ approx 3/32", so I would say start smaller and work up to potentially 1/8". Hard to go backwards if you drill too big.

If the gas jet is less than 5/64" it was setup for low pressure propane, drill it out in steps and test for clean flame and air shutter not 100% open. Samc at 3/32" is the air shutter fully open and flame tips yellow, or is it partialy closed yet?.

kladue said:

If the gas jet is less than 5/64" it was setup for low pressure propane, drill it out in steps and test for clean flame and air shutter not 100% open. Samc at 3/32" is the air shutter fully open and flame tips yellow, or is it partialy closed yet?.

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It's fully open. With the original Hurricane conversion valve I got too much soot on the keggle bottom so I got some extra valves from Hurricane and went smaller.

I got it working last night! Great excuse to buy a drill press!

I did 3/32 and it was *better* then I did 1/8th and it was really cooking with the valve and air vents fully open. I can dial it back down by adjusting the valve and vents so everything looks like its working great now. Check out our working gas setup!



So what do you guys think? Everything looking good?

Thanks everyone for your help with getting this working!

Congrats! Of course you could have bought the $5 mini hand drill set at Harbor Freight as I did. Never thought of buying a drill press!

One interesting and frustrating note on my system that I noticed last night while using my converted BBQ, when the house furnace kicks on a lose my nice blue flames. I am guessing I am going to have to rework something to fix that, or turn the heat off.

Looks good, if you close the air shutter a bit until the tips of the flames start to turn yellow the amount of heat generated will be at maximum level, and hot gasses at minimum flow. That mode will keep more of the heat under the kettle to do work instead of blowing up the sides. If the air shutter has to be closed more than 25% you could up size jet 1/64" and get more fire. Space the burner so the soft blue center flames are 1/2" below kettle bottom, closer and you may get "flame quench" and CO with soot deposits on kettle bottom.