Weldless KAB4 improvement

[TheYoshi]

The KAB4 burner is fantastic with a few issues:

1. It can blow out pretty easily on a windy day
2. The burner is pretty far from the pot bottom resulting in lots of lost/wasted heat
3. It's a bit of a gas hog

A simple fix for the first two actually seems to help somewhat with the 3rd as well (although I haven't done hard testing yet for gas savings).

Basically all I did was get some steel sheet metal (you can buy at pretty much any hardware store, usually labeled "weldable")

Once I had it, I made a shroud around the burner using the existing bolts that hold the burner on to keep it in place. The hardest part is holding things together while you tighten the bolts, some pre-bending helped with that as did a steel zip-tie. All in all super easy project and has made a HUGE difference in terms of the burner blowing out, also it seems to help speed up the boil, etc.

Here are a few pictures of the end result (click image for large version):




I will probably either drill some holes or try to cut up from the bottom a bit as I think it could use some airflow from underneath the burner. The metal is cheap so perhaps I'll just make another one that's a little less tall.

All in all a very quick mod that will make your burner work much better.

 

[jasonsbeer]

Nice job. Every brew day, I've been wrapping aluminum foil around mine in a similar fashion. Your solution is a bit more elegant.

 

[Gremlyn]

Nice, I'm going to be doing a similar thing to my KAB4's on my brewstand. I used aluminium flashing and it wilted away, thicker steel would be much better,

 

[TheYoshi]

Nice, I'm going to be doing a similar thing to my KAB4's on my brewstand. I used aluminium flashing and it wilted away, thicker steel would be much better,

I tried flashing first as well and had the same issue. The steel of course doesn't have anything close to that going on.