Summit regulator "icing" over

[David Ward]

Well, I've heard about it but never had it happen before. Can't say that now though.

Went to cook some brats on the Summit 670 tonight and I knew the LP tank was getting low, so I had a full one on standby. Sure enough, about 5 minutes into heating the grill, poof, it goes out. No big thing, just shut down the valves and change the tank, right? Errrr, wrong.

Put the new tank on, got the two burners I was using lit and thought all was well. Went back out to check and the fire was out again!!!! Regulator was totally iced up on the exterior. Kept relighting the burners and noticed they did not look like full on should. Sure enough, it kept going out.

A quick search on TVWBBB and I found out all about icing regulators and low flame (ie, low gas flow). Since it was a newly filled tank, my guess was it was slightly overfilled even though it was an OPD valved tank. I did the safety valve reset procedure just to eliminate it as the cause, but it kept icing back over. So with a jug of hot tap water in hand and determination, I just kept thawing the regulator and relighting until the liquid LP that was causing the regulator to freeze up was burned off. Every 30 seconds or so I would drizzle a little warm water over the regulator to ensure it remained thawed. Once the LP level was lowered some, it worked fine.

Cooked the brats and then did a high temp burn out just to make sure the flow was good to go.

So I guess I learned something new today...

 

[George Curtis]

does seem funny that it would do this when overfilled. never ran into this on my coal grills though

 

[David Ward]

From some of the other sites I looked at, the cause was likely the tank was slightly overfilled (even though it is a OPD valved tank). This resulted in liquid LP instead of gaseous LP flowing into the regulator. As the pressure drops in the regulator, the liquid transitions to vapor which causes a drop in temperature so the regulator housing cools enough for frost to form and restrict the full flow of LP. Normally the LP level is low enough in a filled tank to let this liquid to vapor transition occur in the tank and not in the regulator.

Once I burned off enough LP to lower the liquid level in the tank, I could hear the vapor transformation in the tank so I cranked open all the Summit 670's burners to full and it was back to normal. With a 670 on full, you can actually hear the LP transition to vapor in the tank if you listen closely as the flow is rather significant. 6 main burners, sear burner, and the smoker box burner put out a lot of BTU's in a hurry. I ran it up to 700* degrees for a while.

I love this grill....

But you are right there will always be something about a charcoal grill that you cannot duplicate with a gasser (still keeping the S670).