Connecting my fryer to my house propane.

Here's the situation. I would like to hook up a propane quick disconnect for my grill and turkey fryer, so I can use my house propane instead of getting bottles filled.

When we moved in, the grill was connected to the house propane. There is an outside line specifically for the grill, but when the deck was rebuilt, the contractor cut the line and crimped it (Without asking me, by the way).

So now what I would like to do, is have a quick disconnect at the supply line, so I can plug in my grill, which gets used way more than my fryer, but when it does come time to brew, I'd like to just be able to unplug the grill, and plug in my burner.

Now, as I understand it, the pressure for house propane is much lower than what you get off the bottles. So what would I need for this setup?

Would I need new regulators for the grill and burner? Or a new burner? If so, I was looking at this burner from agri supply which is low pressure, and a lot of homebrewers are happy with.

http://www.agrisupply.com/low-pressure-burner-cast-iron-70000-btus/p/40282/&sid=&eid=/

Anyway, thanks for any advice.

Are you sure it's propane your house runs on and not natural gas?

I'm not sure you can have a quick disconnect, and I also thought that if you had it hard-plumbed to your propane supply that you needed to make the appliance stationary (i.e. bolt it down)...

I could be totally off-base though.

stlbeer said:

Are you sure it's propane your house runs on and not natural gas?

Click to expand...

Bulk talks of propane are very common. I'm sure he knows if it's propane. He has to pay the nice man that shows up with a propane truck and fills the large tank outside of his house.

Yup, 100% sure it's propane. We don't have any of those fancy natural gas lines near my house. Plus, when your regulator gauge stops working and your tank gets low, you KNOW the smell of propane.

So, after looking at the outside connection, it looks like I could just take off the compression nut, and put a tee on there. Luckily, the shop at work has a flaring tool, so that's not an issue. I might just get a couple 4' hoses and do it that way...

So the grill used to be connected to that line that is now crimped off?

That tells you that at least for the grill there would be no modifications needed other than the installation of a shutoff valve and quick disconnect. (And repair of the crimped end.)


What you will need in order to connect your other burner, and whether it will give you the power you expect will depend on things like what size the pipe is and how the house regulators are set up.

Tell us more and someone with expertise will likely jump in. I haven't worked on a house plumbed for propane so this is only based on what I have read. Depending on the distance between the tank and the house, you may have a primary regulator at the tank at around 10 PSI, and then a secondary regulator at the house. The secondary will usually bring the house pressure down to only 11" water column.

A high pressure burner, like most turkey fryers, will not be able to reach acceptable output on 11" (and maybe not even at 10 PSI). A low pressure type burner (possibly with an appropriate secondary regulator) should work, provided the line is large enough to supply the flow required.

Here is some background info:
http://www.propane101.com/twostageregulatorsystem.htm

Ok, that's great for the bbq, as for the burner, I kinda figured I'd need a low pressure burner. See the link in my first post.

I'm also uploading a pic if the secondary regulator at the house. You can see the valve and crimped line to the lower left. It comes out the upper right and then down, then back left again.

And it looks like a 3/8" line. the same size that supplies my dryer.

My understanding is that for that burner you would just need a needle valve for adjustments, and the piping/fittings/quick connect to make the connection.

The only question remaining would be how far from the tee in the picture will you be setting up? There is probably a chart somewhere showing what size pipe you need for the given distance at the maximum BTU's (70,000 for that burner).

Well, the ideal location is about 6' to 8' from the house. If a beer line length calculator is available, I'm sure a propane line length calculator is too.

Here's a gas line calculator:

http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/natural-gas-pipe-calculator-d_1042.html

It defaults to natural gas. Sub 1.53 for SG and 2516 for BTU/cuft for LPG. Note your burner is really rated in BTU/hr, convention is to drop the "hr".

For a 10 ft run of 3/8" ID pipe you can expect a 1.35 inH20 drop at 70,000 BTU's. 1/2" ID gets you down to .25inH20 at 70000 BTU and .5inH20 at 100,000BTU, may be the way to go. 3/4" ID and you can melt your pot if you want provided you're regulator will let you.

What is the regulator at the house set to? A tap off of that should be more than adequate to run a decent burner as long as your furnace isn't running at the time, even then it would probably be okay, it depends on how your installer sized everything. Another approach could be to tap off your bleeder valve. It should be restricted by a 0.054" orifice, but it's fed at tank pressure. I've had some decent flames off bleeders in the past. Make sure your tank hasn't just been filled before you try it though, there's alot of slop in the tolerances of a LPG tank and changes in temperature could cause you to pick up a slug of liquid and while that might put on a good show......never mind, don't use the bleeder!

Since you have a meter on your supply you can easily calculate your burner output. Make sure your furnace, water heater, etc... isn't running, fire up your burner and with a stopwatch time how many minutes it takes to clock a couple of cubic feet. cubic feet*2516/minutes/60 = BTU/hr your burner is putting out.

Oh yeah, make sure you have a shutoff valve before a quick connect. I've never seen a spring/piston/o-ring type seal that reliably worked on LPG over time. Maybe as it's a low pressure feed it would be okay, but a valve is better. To that end I've never seen a decent quick connect that when exposed to the elements didn't become a pain in the butt over time. If you can find the appropriate fittings something easy to thread on like on a barbeque bottle has it would likely serve you better over the long haul.

Ok, wow. That was a ton of info. So what i'm taking from this, is to use a half inch pipe over 6 feet and somehow get a fitting with the acme threads, so I can hook up both my grill and fryer without modifying them.

That's what I got anyway.

Sounds like a plan. As far as thread sealant goes I'd recommend Loctite 567. It's high pressure petroleum rated which may be overkill on the low pressure side of the regulator but it works better than any other sealant I've tried. No one likes the smell of mercaptan.

Now, does does anyone where to get that fitting? I've been searching everywhere, but it looks like I'll be using normal brass fittings, and getting quick connects ( http://www.agrisupply.com/Propane-Natural-Gas-Quick-Connector/p/48878/&sid=&eid=/ ), and using two hoses. I'm ok with that. And thanks for the sealant tip.

*edit* I did find this ( http://www.propaneproducts.com/cata...opane-steak-saver-reserve-gas-adapter-88.html ). Looks like you could unscrew the Acme threaded side and thread it into a normal fitting...

I typically work with high pressure liquid, so my bbq bottle knowledge is limited, but I think this is all you need;

http://propanewarehouse.com/qccfittingdetail.asp?ID=3050

Again, I'd put a ball valve before the connection, the LPG industry as a whole has surprisingly low acceptance standards with regards to quality and durability. It was good enough thirty years ago, it's good enough today!

Well alright, now we're talking! That looks ideal. I could easily run my lines to that bad boy and all my worries are over. And the ball valve is already in place, so no worries there.

Thanks Troll.

Do your self a favor and call a plumber that does gas line work this way it will be to code. also you will need to have a safety line attached to your gear to keep it from accidently pulling on the quick disconnect, this can be a simple metal cable with carabiners.

I'm really confused. I see the line coming out of the ground to the regulator which I assume comes from the tank. It goes into the meter and I see the tap for the grill, but where is the line that goes into the house for everything else? Is it being hidden by the meter?

That adapter doesn't have any check valve inside. I'm pretty sure code would require that a cap (or plug) be installed on that fitting when not in use so that the gas can't flow if the ball valve is accidentally turned. The check valve in a normal tank fitting provides that secondary protection.


This one has the check valve and would be a better choice:
http://propanewarehouse.com/qccfittingdetail.asp?ID=3031

Confused as well as I've never seen a propane meter since the propane is usually dispensed from the truck to the tank and you pay for what is put into the tank. The 1/2" line off the meter also looks small for most 11" wg systems unless you have a 2psi delivery into the house. What else does the meter feed and what do the connections on the tank look like? Single feed to the house or two?

Ok, so here's the deal. We have a very large propane tank that feeds our house, and a large garage across the driveway with an apartment above it. Damn near everything in the house runs on propane, except the fridge. The dryer, boiler and stove. The same in the apartment.

The main feed for the house goes in through the foundation wall directly behind the meter, so that's why you can't see it in the pic.