Gas Grill / Natural vs propane

rgood · Jan 7, 2009

I have a propane grill I'd like to convert to nat. gas - There's no conversion kit available for this grill - I contacted the gas company and they said they could come out and drill the oriface so nat. gas would work.

I can do this myself and save $65 if I knew what size bit to use.

Any suggestions? Thanks, Rod

Airic · Jan 7, 2009

Is there a web site for your grill mfg? I would assume they would provide the size information or better yet the part you need. To easy of a fix to pay $65. If I remember correctly when installing my cook top the size of the orface for natural gas was about double of the one for propane but, don't take my word on that.

moeh1 · Jan 7, 2009

The area goes up rapidly as you increase the orifice hole diameter, so ease up to the flame you want to achieve with a number drill set. Here is one link to an online guide that may be of some help
Barbeque Parts and Repair - Grill Maintenance and Repair Tips Home

kenmac · Jan 7, 2009

some propane grills you can buy a conversion kit for. Some you can't as they are made by the mfg.not to be converted. That said, you can still convert. If your grill burns 40,000 btu & you have a 2 burner grill. You will need to 1/2 the 40,000 btu which is 20,000 per burner. 20,000 btu per burner @ ??? gas pressure look at the drill index chart for the correct drill size

Egon · Jan 7, 2009

This may not be recommended but has worked for some in the past.

Find yourself a set of drills that are in the range of what your propane orifice size is. Then find the present orifice size and go up one with the drill size and drill it out. See if this meets the heat requirements and repeat till you get the proper size of flame.

You should be able to find a small kit of drills for this purpose. these bits will be too Small for a regular drill but should come with a little holder that lets you drill by hand.

Note: Procedure is not recommended if in doubt!

kenmac · Jan 7, 2009

Egon said:
This may not be recommended but has worked for some in the past.

Find yourself a set of drills that are in the range of what your propane orifice size is. Then find the present orifice size and go up one with the drill size and drill it out. See if this meets the heat requirements and repeat till you get the proper size of flame.

You should be able to find a small kit of drills for this purpose. these bits will be too Small for a regular drill but should come with a little holder that lets you drill by hand.

Note: Procedure is not recommended if in doubt!

This isn't the way I would do it.( to each his/her own) unless you know how to clock a gas meter to know what the appliance is burning ( BTU wise). You may over fire or under fire the appliance

jerrykn · Jan 8, 2009

Please be careful doing this coversion.
I don't do appliances but have exp with larger furnaces, boilers etc.
Normally a conversion REQUIRES different sized orifices AND a different or modified pressure regulator (for small appliances usually just a different spring).
Nat Gas mostly operates at 3.5 to 4 " wc and propane at 11" wc

Sometimes you can also have ignition problems as propane is heavier than air and will settle down and Nat Gas is lighter than air and wil naturally rise.

My suggestion is to contact the man and get instructions and coversion kit from them if available.

Jerry

Erik_in_Hoyt · Jan 8, 2009

my kitchen stove came with conversion orifices. It might be worth looking at some of them for a comparison between the orifice on your nat gas burner to what you want to do with propane. I think my 19k btu burner uses an .065 orifice for the propane.

ray66v · Jan 8, 2009

There is a high end gas grille store here in the Cleveland area. They do these conversions all the time. If you have a similar one in your area, I'm sure you can take the orifice to them, and they can calculate the proper size, and drill it for you.

Jagmandave · Jan 14, 2009

One caution about converting from propane to natural gas.........

We live in the city and when we bought a nice high end grill I purposely had it specc'd in nat gas. I ran a line from the shutoff in the basement that feeds the fireplace starter and it works perfectly. In fact, too perfectly.

We grill a lot, and one Sunday my wife went out to preheat the grill, only to find it already on and fully warmed up. She then realized the last time we'd used it was the Sunday before!

With propane, all you can lose is a bottle, with nat gas...............well you see my point........