Putting a pressure gauge on my SQ14

So I have a Bayou Classic SQ14 with the regulator that came with it. It takes a fair amount of twists of the red adjustment knob to go from 0% to 100%. I'm interested in knowing a reliable way to measure where I have the regulator set (vs. a reference notch or line to where I'd have to know / remember how many full turns I was at) and held to hold a rolling boil after hitting hot break so I can better control my boil-off volume.


I did some searching and only really found information on replacing / fixing regulators and hoses, or using gauges in multiple burner systems and / or with some sort of control / automation. Is it feasible to wire some sort of T with a 0-10psi gauge in after my regulator to get a reading representing my regulator position? Are these fitments on the hoses crimps that are covering a common (NPT?) fitment?

Both of my Floor Burners came with the same 0-10 psi regulator setup - braided shield and all.
The crimped hose connections are SOP in this market space, and the regulator does turn a full four rotations stop-to-stop. I have no problem with either - the rotation thing provides finer control.

fwiw, as I've hard-piped the regulators in a vertical orientation I use the 12 o'clock point as the reference, and used a black Sharpie to mark the usual boil points on the regulator knob for my BK burner for both my 10g and 20g kettles - roughly 315° and 405° from the off point, respectively. On the HLT burner I've marks for holding at around 150°F for both my 10g and 20g HLT vessels.

Puts me in the ballpark with tweakage allowed for weather/volume changes/etc...

Cheers!

First of all, propane only runs on 11" of water column. In order to properly monitor your delivery pressure you need to install a T before the reg. Install a 0-2psi spring gauge (Ashcroft is a reliable brand) on the T so you can monitor delivery pressure. 11" is roughly 0.4psi so a 0-10psi gauge will be worthless for readings in the desired range. This configuration will only allow you to monitor pressure under flow & may exceed MAOP under static conditions.

Ideally, you would install a T AFTER the reg with an isolation valve downstream of that. With this configuration you could close the downstream iso valve to establish your lockup pressure & open it up to see what you get under flow. The coolest part about this configuration is that if you are running multiple appliances/burners off of that reg, you can see if your system if "blowing down" your system downstream of the reg by monitoring delivery pressure. If it can't keep up, simply drill out the orifice & you should be rocking

jammin said:

First of all, propane only runs on 11" of water column. [...]

Click to expand...

I can't get past this misstatement to believe any of the rest.


Cheers!

day_trippr said:

I can't get past this misstatement to believe any of the rest.


Cheers!

Click to expand...

Is this some sort of trap question? 11" WC is industry standard.

Here's what's known:
- The OP is running on PROPANE, not natural gas.
- That is not a .5 psi barbecue grill regulator.
- His regulator (same as mine) is variable from 0 to 10 psi.



Cheers!

Come on, guys. Let's stick to facts and leave the snarky comments out, ok, day_trippr?

And jammin, "Cheers" seems to be day_trippr's signature. It really has no bearing on the tone in this thread, it's just a general have a nice day that he puts on every one of his posts. Don't get bent out of shape about that.

I'm trimming the excess off both your posts to help keep the discussion on topic so we can lose the animosity and keep moving forward with the goal of helping the OP.

day_trippr said:

Both of my Floor Burners came with the same 0-10 psi regulator setup - braided shield and all.
The crimped hose connections are SOP in this market space, and the regulator does turn a full four rotations stop-to-stop. I have no problem with either - the rotation thing provides finer control.

fwiw, as I've hard-piped the regulators in a vertical orientation I use the 12 o'clock point as the reference, and used a black Sharpie to mark the usual boil points on the regulator knob for my BK burner for both my 10g and 20g kettles - roughly 315° and 405° from the off point, respectively. On the HLT burner I've marks for holding at around 150°F for both my 10g and 20g HLT vessels.

Puts me in the ballpark with tweakage allowed for weather/volume changes/etc...

Cheers!

Click to expand...

From what I understand, mine is actually 0-5psi (and some folks have upgraded to the 0-10psi included w/other Bayou Classic units / available separately), but outside of that probably the same. A reference mark is kind of my "fallback" plan if my endeavor of putting a gauge on proves much more than trivial.

I guess I don't know a couple things: 1) if anything science-y is preventing me from slapping on a generic psi-unit low pressure gauge after the regulator to measure pressure from a propane tank (as suggested by jammin) 2) what's under those crimped connections / what the connection coming out of the regulator looks like / if I'm able to modify the hose and put a T fitting in with said gauge (something like http://www.ebay.com/itm/Kodiak-Controls-KC25-10-Low-Pressure-Gauge-10-PSI-/172103687944 )


On one hand it seems a bit silly to spend some amount of time and money (even if this would work fine) on something where most people would use a reference line....but (and I'd have to go out and test again) I feel like it takes my regulator more than 4 full turns to go min->max, and something readable providing a reasonable degree of an accurate measurement would be fun for a one-time expense.

I know mine takes a fair number of turns, but COMPLETE turns may be 4. I do feel like I crank many times, but they are partial turns.

I don't fee like I could expect reasonable accuracy if I drew a line and tried to get the exact same boil each time, even though the valve is pretty fine. OTOH having a valve that adjust within a single turn might not give enough resolution to work either.

My method is to adjust by sight and sound. Sometimes I have to adjust during different parts of the process, like full on to heat up, then turn it down as it starts to foam, and then again to maintain a steady boil.

You might be able to do what you want with an electric system and controller.

That's pretty much where I am now, and it's more or less the only part of my brewery that still is dependent on "guesswork". I feel like I was more consistent with the jet burner-style burner we used to use, but switched to the SQ14 when we switched to a keggle for a BK. Earlier this year, I had a Maharaja clone boil down quite a bit more than expected and was using London Ale (as used by Avery), hit their attenuation % which was also the high range of the yeast but due to increase in OG, I ended up with a 1.020 DIPA vs. a 1.012 DIPA. And we just finished a 200min boil barleywine where I finished with 5gal vs. 5.5gal.


Kind of poking around at ordering another regulator not pre-wired and / or with more evident threaded connections to work with, but could be a pricey failed experiment if there was some reason a T + a gauge wouldn't work.

My apologies to HBT and @jammin for my lack of tact.
My inner curmudgeon got lit. My bad.

Anyway, I think sticking a pressure gauge on a flammable gas supply line is probably not worth the down-sides vs marking the regulator knob to a reference datum. Indeed, I don't recall ever seeing a gas fired system sporting a supply line gauge - brew rig, or domestic heating system.

There might be a good reason for that, I dunno.
But the reference line thing, crude as it may be, won't blow up in your face

I bought my Floor Burners the first year they came out, so I've been doing the reference line thing since then. It always gets me within a notch of whatever is actually needed given the prevailing conditions...

Cheers!

Hmmm... I think a pressure gauge might work ok if the right one were found. Not sure if varying conditions would defeat the purpose of both a gauge and indicator mark, though. I know that my boil-off varies depending on the weather conditions.

I've been so busy using different systems (Keggle, Ekeggle, stovetop, 2.5 gallons, BIAB, etc.) that I never have really nailed down my Boil-off, nor my deadspace. At some point in this life I would like to have my Electric system fully implemented and have my BS settings configured perfectly. Until then I continue to wing it.

I'd be curious to know if a pressure indicator or some other method of repeating gas flow would improve boil-off consistency.

day_trippr said:

Indeed, I don't recall ever seeing a gas fired system sporting a supply line gauge - brew rig, or domestic heating system.

Click to expand...

I've seen gauges tank-side on grills with a "full / medium / low" measurement to attempt to show how much propane is left. Which begs the question of how quickly pressure tapers on a dwindling tank and how much that might affect the "notch" system (though that'd probably be one brew out of X, not terribly often).

Homercidal said:

Hmmm... I think a pressure gauge might work ok if the right one were found. Not sure if varying conditions would defeat the purpose of both a gauge and indicator mark, though. I know that my boil-off varies depending on the weather conditions.

Click to expand...

It was one of the hopes of the gauge vs. the crude notch that I could better say X psi @ Y degrees (and perhaps humidity, but I think more just temp is the big factor, right?) over Z minutes = ___ gals of boiloff, so that I could better adjust to different weather conditions after a couple batches.


Looking around at constructing a regulator + a gauge + a tee + a hose + mating to burner fittings, on just the everyman's googling re: supply sourcing, it gets pretty expensive. And the reviews for the stuff that has credible-ish / useful reviews (mostly regulators on Amazon) have a decent amount of 1-star results for things like leaks, so yeah, that's fun considering combustible gas. Then again, some of those are like Bayou Classic regulators commonly used in homebrewing already.