High pressure stove vs. low pressure

[sandskeeter]

we are looking into buying a low pressure stove for the outside of our coleman bayside.. would a low pressure stove work on the outside and what kind of mods would i have to do to make it work.. i believe the outside of our popup is set up for high pressure

[kathybrj]

We just did the opposite of what you're doing (and sold the high pressure stove we had).

The outside of your rig is a high pressure set up for a stove, I believe (it was on our 2002 Utah). So you'd need a high pressure stove set up.

The set up on our current rig is low pressure. I ended up finding a low pressure Atwood stove on Ebay and we are now using that for an outside stove.

Blaise experimented with changing a high pressure stove to a low pressure stove. Lots of work and can be expensive. Folks here have run hoses straight from their tanks to a stove to accomodate the high or low pressure.

I wanted to use the fitting on the camper so we had to find a low pressure stove. I believe you'll need to find a high pressure stove for your Bayside or run a hose from your tanks to accomodate a low pressure stove.

[flyfisherman]

Interior propane appliances for popup campers are designed low pressure, 11 inches/water column pressure (0.4 psig). My present little Starcraft has an indoor/outdoor stove (3-burner Suburban) - it does an O.K. job for the interior but a real hassle trying to tote it outside and then back inside again, especially since it sits in a moulded base platform. Since I already had a 2-burner Coleman propane for tent camping, I simply set this stove up outside and usually around the picnic table. Now the Coleman is a high pressure stove, it uses the  disposable 16oz L/P canisters or can be connected to a larger re-fillable L/P tank. Performance wise, the high pressure Coleman will out perform the Suburban interior low pressure stove hands down.

My previous popup, a '96 Coleman(Fleetwood) Yukon had the two stove set-up ~ the interior low pressure and an outside high pressure. Again, no contest as to which would out perform ~ but again, the low pressure systems were designed for a safer interior stove.



Fly

[mike4947]

A few facts:
 
High or low pressure is not the reason inside or inside/outside stoves do hot heat well. Remember the 20K BTU water heater and 16K BTU furnace are both low pressure. The stove issue has to due with insulation and proxcimity to flammable fabric walls in the vicinity of the burners.
 
Camp Chef makes a very nice low pressure stove. With high BTU rated burners that works well as an outside stove.
 
As for what's on the camper; the connector will tell you. A snap type connector that resembles the type used with air lines is low pressure. High pressure uses a screw on connector.

[flyfisherman]

A few facts:
 
High or low pressure is not the reason inside or inside/outside stoves do hot heat well. Remember the 20K BTU water heater and 16K BTU furnace are both low pressure. The stove issue has to due with insulation and proxcimity to flammable fabric walls in the vicinity of the burners.
 

I'm having trouble following your reasoning here ... not sure I understand what your saying.

A low pressure, inside/outside stove, operating at 11" WC pressure (0.4 psig) of L/P,  cannot possibly perform against a high pressure outside stove where the L/P flow is 10 psig.


Fly

[mike4947]

The inside stove and inside outside stove burners are limited to apx 4000 BTU's due to the proxcimity of the fabric and vinyl walls right near the stove. As for low pressure not being up to high pressure stoves, don't bend over a Camp Chef  stove which use low pressure or their 15,000 BTU burners will take your eyebrows off. Weber's Baby Q also runs off of low pressure.
It's the design of the burners that makes the difference.
More pressure doesn't mean more power.
 
A green handled acme nut low pressure regulator will output 200,000 BTU's. A black nut acme low pressure regulator outputs 80,000 BTU's. So it is also not a regulator issue.

[flyfisherman]

No doubt stove burner design is an important part of the overall equation, however, what would be the sense in having and setting a gas regulator to downstream a small amount of fuel (which equates to Btu's) to one place and a larger amount to another? All things being equal, the high pressure stove is the sqeaking wheel that gets the grease (in this case the fuel) and that means the Btu output (like I said, all things being equal).

I know nothing about a Camp Chef Stove ... or the Weber's Baby Q ... would'nt know one if I fell over them! But I do know first hand about the performances of the outside Coleman stove that was on the old '96 Coleman/Fleetwood popup, and my present Coleman L/P camp stove, both are high pressure stoves. Let me just take the old Coleman that I use today; if those stoves you reference are low pressure units (i.e., 11 WC pressure), then I'd make a wager of a new crisp $10.00 bill I have in my pocket against a little tiny pinch of horse manure that my old Coleman high pressure stove will eat their lunch!  It loves copous amounts of L/P to be run through it's burners and it responds with delivering the Btu's! Indeed, I can melt lead in a ladle over one of the burners! And I've never seen (in my experience) a low pressure stove that would come anywhere near it, performance wise. Like they say ... got to break some eggs to bake a real from scratch cake; and you gots to have a real L/P fuel flow to deliver some serious Btu's.




Fly

[mike4947]

Someone has been watching to many reruns of Home Improvement.  Lately even 80K BTU outside grills are starting to use low pressure regulators.
 
You don't need the high pressure to get BTU's.
Like I said a green Acme capped regulator will output 200,000 BTU's worth of gas at 11 column inches of water or what is called low pressure.
Your high pressure outside stoves had either 6K or 8K BTU burners depending on the model Fleetwood provided and/or year.

[flyfisherman]

Someone has been watching to many reruns of Home Improvement.  Lately even 80K BTU outside grills are starting to use low pressure regulators.
 
You don't need the high pressure to get BTU's.

Well, there's watching too many re-runs of Home Improvement, but there's also smoking something funny. Physics is physics ... A set point on a L/P regulator, set for a certain psig or/either inches of water column, is for a Btu delivery to a downstream appliance. There is only so much that can be obtained from "X" amount of propane, no matter what kind of a doohickey, thig-a-ma-jig, or whatever else you hang on to an appliance. Are there more efficient methods of obtaining better performance out of one appliance vs another ...?  Of course. But you simply are not going to get higher performance out of an appliance using 11" WC than you would get from another efficient appliance using twenty-five times that amount. Maybe that's just too hard grasp - Let me say it another way ... the Btu's come from the propane delivered.

Enough of this conversation.



Fly

[mike4947]

A 6000 BTU rated burner uses X amount of propane. It doesn't matter if the burner orifice is a little larger from a low pressure line or smaller from a high pressure line.
Having a high pressure line does not mean "more power".

[flyfisherman]

Having a high pressure line does not mean "more power".

It do if that appliance is so designed to utilize it. High pressure = more propane; more propane = more Btu's.  Now, Mike, it's just not that complicated!



Fly

[mike4947]

Nope, you still don't get it. You little stove doesn't put out any more BTU's than any other model with the same rating that uses low pressure.
Since regulators outputting low pressure have flow ratings of up to 200,000 BTU's there aren't any appliances you could hook to your high pressure line with it's 100,000 BTU flow rated high pressure single stage regulator that would "outdo" an equivalent low pressure appliance.

[flyfisherman]

Nope, you still don't get it. You little stove doesn't put out any more BTU's than any other model with the same rating that uses low pressure.
Since regulators outputting low pressure have flow ratings of up to 200,000 BTU's there aren't any appliances you could hook to your high pressure line with it's 100,000 BTU flow rated high pressure single stage regulator that would "outdo" an equivalent low pressure appliance.

[mike4947]

Both the stoves that were for inside use were limited in their burner BTU's because of insulation/flammability issues due to the flammable walls of fabric and vinyl near the stove location inside the camper.
NOT because they were low pressure.
Normal BTU limit for stove burners designed for use inside the camper is 4000 BTU's. Yes this is low in comparision to 6000 or 8000 BTU burners normally used in outside only or camp stoves and it would seem like the high pressure was the difference, but it ain't.
If you had a Camp Chef stove with 12000 or 15000 BTU burners on low pressure you'd think your outside stove or even a Coleman Camp stove were wimpy in comparison.

[flyfisherman]

Both the stoves that were for inside use were limited in their burner BTU's because of insulation/flammability issues due to the flammable walls of fabric and vinyl near the stove location inside the camper.
NOT because they were low pressure.]

Not so. For RV inside use, reducing propane tank pressures down to a nominal 11" W.C. pressure is in accordance with the National Fuel Gas Code NFPA54 (and The Standard For Handling and Storage of Liquified Petroleum Gases Code NFPA58)

 

[Normal BTU limit for stove burners designed for use inside the camper is 4000 BTU's. Yes this is low in comparision to 6000 or 8000 BTU burners normally used in outside only or camp stoves and it would seem like the high pressure was the difference, but it ain't.]

Your obviously Btu confused. Not only are Btu's used to describe gas input to an appliance, but Btu's are also used to describe the capacity of the L/P regulators and are rated at the amount of Btu's per hour they can deliver to a specific inlet and outlet pressure. The set point of a regulator is for a specific inlet pressure and a Btu delivery to a downstream appliance.



[If you had a Camp Chef stove with 12000 or 15000 BTU burners on low pressure you'd think your outside stove or even a Coleman Camp stove were wimpy in comparison.

Dream on ... (common sense should tell you the more propane (Btu's) delivered to an appliance that's equiped to handle it will out perform another that has a more restricted fuel supply.)
Let me do this one more time just in case you missed it previously ...
higher pressure (psig) = more propane
more propane = more Btu's