My daughter asked me to ask the brain trust, sigforum, if there was a safe way to do this. Thanks for any advice.

It's not too hard. You'll change the "orifice". Say you had a 20,000 BTU LG heater and connected it to NG. The existing orifice would only put out 8-to-10 KBTUs with the lower pressure NG.

Your owners manual will tell you what size orifice to swap into the burner. I see a lot of #42 - #48 orifices with restaurant equipment. Swapping in a new range valve usually means moving the orifice from the old valve to the new one.

The ones I see have female threads on them; the orifice number is roll-stamped into the side. More info: https://www.thebbqdepot.com/gr.../gas-valves/orifice/

Here's a capacity chart:
https://ssl.ca/wp-content/them...e-Capacity-Chart.pdf

Most likely. But would she have the expense of running a line out... and it would become semi stationary.

I bought a one year old used 30 gallon propane water heater once for 25 bucks. My local gas company tech converted it to natural gas for free. He had a little book with a chart in it and a set of tiny drill bits to use. He just drilled out the existing orifice after double checking the actual gas pressure on the line and referring his chart. It worked great.

Thank you for the help.

IF you already have gas service to the home and into the area then NG would be great, no need to haul propane tanks around to fill.

I would have her contact her NG supplier to see about getting it done, if they will hook it up and change the orifice size or if she needs a contractor.

If they have NG going to a grill on the patio it wouldn't be much to hook up the heater.




Link to original video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPZo0xg-z-g

Natural gas does not put out the same amount of heat that propane produces.

Converting a propane device to natural gas involved drilling out the orifice (little hole that controls the gas flow) to a larger size.

The ratio between the two hole sizes is 1:2.5

Propane uses an orifice hole of 1.

Natural gas needs a hole size 2.5x the size of the propane hole.

Now I don’t know the size of the orifice you have. You could use a small drill index and figure it out. Try and fit a bit to the hole. Likely that you don’t have a drill index with wire size or number drills. The orifice is (in most cases) pretty small. Anyway, say you find an orifice with a bit that is .010”. Doing the math, you would need to drill it out to .025” for natural gas.
Is .010” a realistic drill size? Well yes it is. My smallest is .003”.
Another detail drilling with small drills - they should be run VERY fast with an extremely slow feed.

Two final facts -
Many people have done this themselves and can do it safely.

If you do it yourself you may be opening yourself to issues should the device cause a fire and burn something down. If the service guy does it, they take on the liability. If you do it, you take on the liability and the insurance company may not trust your ability. IE they may not honor their policy if your modification causes a fire.

Am I revealing anything you can’t find anywhere else?

No. This information is available elsewhere on the web, from technicians and textbooks. You would just have to do the research (as I have done).