hooking up propane

[amandley]

OK,
Ive been reading through all the forums and have become confused. I recently built a thre tier brew stand and am ready to plumb it for propane.
I will be brewing primarily 5 gallon batches with some 10 gallon batches. I am converting 3 sanke kegs to serve as HLT,MT and BK. From what I can tell I should be fine with going with BG-12 burners for all three, although I plan on hardly ever using one on the MT, aside from the random step mash. Now we get to where I get confused.
I went to Lowes and got a few sections of 3/8" black pipe, 3/8 tees and ball valves. I feel like now I should return the ball valves and find some needle valves. First, does anyone see an issue with this?
Second, Lowes had 5ft replacement hoses that I think I can hook up from the valve to the burner. What I dont know is what regulator to get and what orifice to get.
It seem like I should be able to run the entire thing off of one regulator and control each burner at the manifold with the needle valve. Im lost on the orifice. I cant figure out what it does and which one to get. Any help is appreciated.
Andy

 

[amandley]

Sorry, also, as far as the regulator goes. Ive seen where BG12's are said to be high pressure but on a few sites Ive seen them as low pressure. What regulator do I need to get? I really like the stuff on tejas smokers but its so damn expensive. I can pick up BG 12's for about 15$ each at the local hardware store. Which is a major reason Im going with them

 

[boogyman]

It depends on the orifice being used. The BG12 that came with my SQ14 is high pressure, and has a high pressure orifice.

 

[daphatgrant]

This is about where I am stuck as well man. I also haven't had much luck finding info. I bought my burners from Amazon BG-14's, it says high pressure. I hooked it up to the Bayou Classic 5HPR-40 which is a high pressure regulator and it works. I wish this was a better answer for you but it's all the info that I've got.

As far as valves go it seems that needle valves are the standard. I'm going to visit my local pipe and plumbing shop in a bit and I'll try and get some more info for you although given the thread date you may have already gotten an answer .

I'll be using 2 burners so again my propane setup will be similar.

 

[day_trippr]

fwiw, I don't believe the BG12 does well on NG or equivalent low-pressure propane (11" WC, roughly .4 psi).

Amazon has a line in the description for this burner that calls it "low pressure" but in the same sentence refers to 10psi.
That is not "low pressure", and it wouldn't surprise me that the same text gets used on other vendor sites...

Cheers!

 

[amandley]

I swapped out valves with some needle valves and all is well. I still can't crank it all the way open but frankly, I wouldn't want to. These burners really rock! I brewed for the first time with the set up on this past Monday. Still need to iron out some of the process but overall a great success. Thanks!

 

[amandley]

Oh and I went with high pressure orifices and one main regulator at the tank. Each line has a needle valve and an orifice at the burner.

 

[daphatgrant]

Hey man would you let me know exactly what you bought? I went to Lowes today and the thread on the regulator does not match up to the thread on the black iron pipe.

Thanks!