3/8" Gas Line for Weber Genesis 230

I have had this existing setup for close to 20 years but now that there are bigger better natural gas grills available I wonder if 3/8" is good enough its around a 28' run reduced from a 1/2 pipe in the house.

The grill I'm looking at is rated at 42,000 BTUs. I'm wondering if the feed will be enough to get the grill hot enough?

TIA.
J

I doubt it. You might even have problems with the 1/2" supply. Many of those grills indicate a 3/4" NG line. The instructions should tell you the required supply line. Check this out http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/natural-gas-pipe-sizing-d_826.html

Thanks, I just went and looked everything over, its 1/2" to where it comes out of the building where its refuced to 3/8" copper tubing, that run is under 20' I do have enought room to remove 10' of the tubing so the run would actually only be 10' so it would be a 10' run.

Is it possible??

TIA,
J

jadnashua said:

I doubt it. You might even have problems with the 1/2" supply. Many of those grills indicate a 3/4" NG line. The instructions should tell you the required supply line. Check this out http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/natural-gas-pipe-sizing-d_826.html

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What most people call 3/8" copper tubing is actually 1/4" and even 10' may be too long for it.

3/8th will not be enough. Over 10' you will only get about 35,000 BTU out of it.

But that would also depend on how long of run the 1/2 steel is because in gas fitting you take what is called the "longest measured run" to size out the gas piping.

If you upgrade that 3/8th to 1/2" steel you'll be more then ok I would guess (again without knowing the LMR or the load the system already). 1/2" steel will give you about 107,000 BTU over 40'.

This is all ofcourse assuming you're running between 7-14" water column.

Well put toghter the Weber S-320 NG yesterday and decided to plug it in and try it before I started changing anything. The grill heated to 575F in about 15 minutes (hotter than any of my previous grills) so I'm not going to do a thing.

Thanks for the info though.

Doherty Plumbing said:

3/8th will not be enough. Over 10' you will only get about 35,000 BTU out of it.

But that would also depend on how long of run the 1/2 steel is because in gas fitting you take what is called the "longest measured run" to size out the gas piping.

If you upgrade that 3/8th to 1/2" steel you'll be more then ok I would guess (again without knowing the LMR or the load the system already). 1/2" steel will give you about 107,000 BTU over 40'.

This is all ofcourse assuming you're running between 7-14" water column.

Click to expand...

escorial said:

Well put toghter the Weber S-320 NG yesterday and decided to plug it in and try it before I started changing anything. The grill heated to 575F in about 15 minutes (hotter than any of my previous grills) so I'm not going to do a thing.

Thanks for the info though.

Click to expand...

That means absolutely nothing. You would need to fire all the appliances at the same time and make sure they're all running like they should.

Starving an appliance of gas is NOT a good thing at all. If I were you I'd atleast fire up all the appliances on FULL FIRE at the same time and then clock the gas meter. You should be burning enough gas to cover all the BTU counts of the appliances combined. This is not the best method of checking for under fired appliances because the number you'd get at the meter doesn't tell you what each appliance is burning, just what they are burning in total. But it will give you a rough idea of how well the gas lines are sized.

If you have a combined load of lets say 100,000 BTU on the system and you clock the meter and find that you're only burning about 80,000 BTU you have a problem with the sizing.

I hope this helps and makes sense!