As many of you, I have been drooling over this grill for over a year. Your postings have confirmed my thoughts and I have already received financial approval. I will be getting this grill within the next 2 weeks. The question I have, and also saw that someone else asked but have not seen a response, has anyone done a "permanent" or "semi-permanent" installation with an LP heated house? My house is only a year old and is heated by LP. We have a 1000 gallon tank buried in the yard. All of the discussions of plumbing type and size encourage me to offer some detail as to our setup. There is a regulator on the side of the house that drops the pressure to 2 PSI. Inside there is a regulator attached to a manafold that provides individual taps for every appliance (2 furnaces, water heater, stove, dryer, and a dedicated run to the deck for a "future grill") All of this is done with a somewhat flexible 1/2" yellow (I guess vinyl) coated copper. That main regulator is supposed to be able to support all of the appliances and maintain the 14" of pressure. Outside is a stub of 1/2" black pipe to which I need to connect. My plan is a temporary connection (soft hose) upon purchase and a permanent one when I can build this unit in. I agree with the concerns of leaks and will obviously put a shut-off valve before any soft hose. I saw mention of a hose kit from HD for $35. This is listed as an NG hose but at roughly 1/2 PSI I assume it will work for LP? Any thoughts or input would be appreciated. Thanks, Lee

Hi, I was going to recommend this stuff to the group. I have used it for several years on stainless cookware. It makes look like new....with some elbow grease. I did my grill with it 2 weeks ago and finished off with Stainless Steel Magic. I looked new again. BKF is available at most supermarkets for about $1.50/can. It's with the cleansers.

Bgol, There is a safety device in the connector just before the regulator. There is a small ball that will stop or restrict the flow from the tank to the regulator. It is designed to stop flow if the hose ruptures, etc. If the tank valve is opened too fast, you will send the little ball crashing into the end of the fitting nearest the regulator where it might stick and restrict the flow. While you are wating for a response from Grand Hall or a new regulator, you can try this. If you are mechanically inclined, unscrew the fitting from the regulator. Try to blow both forward and backward through the fitting. If you can't free the ball this way, tap the tank end of the fitting on a piece of wood. If that does not work, you can try to gently push the ball back with a small wire. Be careful not to damage the small spring in there. If you get to this point, you may get it working but should replace the regulator under waranty. If you get the ball unstuck, reattach everything. Use some sealer (teflon, etc from the hardware store) on the threads going into the regulator. Good luck, Bill

Mini-review of Expo's Professional grill and a comparision to the Virco. After five or six years of frustration using my Weber (not enough heat) I decided to consider an upgrade. I really wanted the Weber to work, but I just couldn't get the temp over 450F. One day at Home Depot I saw the Straublestone (misspelled, I'm sure) and felt that was an upgrade at a reasonable price. So, before buying that I shopped around to be sure of my choice. One of the trips included a trip to Home Depot's Expo Center. This place is loaded with all the high-end grills, very painful to go in there because I want to buy ALL of them. ;-) But on this trip they had a new grill called the 'Professional'. It was priced at $1000 (actually $999 I think) and upon inspection it looked almost as good as the others that they had and a considerably lower price. I also strongly considered the $900 'Jenn-Air' which is really made by Vermont Castings. I choose the Pro over the Jenn-Air due to construction. It was almost all stainless where as the VC was not. So I coughed up my $1000 and went home a happy kid with his new toy. Well, about three months later I spot the Virco during a trip to Costco. Sheesh, two hundred dollars cheaper and ALL stainless. So I set out to sell the Pro (at a loss, of course) and buy a Virco. But I ended up with the MM Y0660 as explained earlier in this thread. The Pro grill is made by Charbroil for the Expo Center. They have also introduced a smaller, 45K BTU, 3-burner model for $800. Both grills has an unlimited warranty on the SS, a 10 year warranty on the burners and a 2 year warranty on any other part. Both grill come with a heavy-duty rotisserie standard and no side-burner. I don't know if this is an option, but I don't think that it is. The grill does not include a cover. It did come assembled at no additional charge. These grills arrived at the Expo unassembled and they sub-contract the assembly at their store. The Pro grill, while still a good product, seems to be overpriced when compared to the Virco. The Pro grill uses four 15K BTU cast iron burners for a 60K BTU total, same as the Virco. I was able to reach an indicated 550+ and I could tell that it was noticeably hotter than my old POS Weber. The pro's single biggest weak link is its drip tray design. First, it's fabricated out of epoxied or powder-coated steel, not stainless. Second, it is only accessable from the rear which makes it a bit of a pain to clean. and third, the dang thing is so poorly designed that it barely slides in it's slot. The tolerances are so poor that it wants to come out of its track and fall on one side or the other. It's hard to explain, but trust me, it sucks big time. I was so frustrated that I was in process of designing a new drip tray to be fabricated out of SS to replace that sorry design. I was quoted $100 by a local sheet-metal company. The Pro's rear IR burner is set in a black powder-coated steel panel wheras the Virco uses SS for the panel. The Pro's flame-tamers are make of regular steel and are black powder-coated. These will NOT last very long. They were starting to degrade during the three months that I owned my grill. They have a two-year warranty so you can probably get a set or two for free before the warranty expires. The cabinet on the Pro is inferior to the Virco. The cabinet is a single-walled wrap of stainless that has a two to three inch opening all the way around the top. So it does not offer any protection from the weather, it will get wet in there if the grill is uncovered. On the front are two single-wall doors, just folded SS sheetmetal. The Virco's cabinet is far superior. The Pro's lid is folded stainless sheet that is spot-welded on the sides. The Virco's is welded, ground and polished and as a result looks much nicer. The Pro did have a double wall lid but the gap is quite narrow. In spite of this, it did not discolor on the outside during my short ownership. The temperature gauge worked well and seems to be reasonably accurate but I never calibrated it to be sure. The handle on the lid looked like chrome plated steel, not solid SS as on the Virco. The handles on the sides of the cabinet were also chrome-plated, not SS. The Pro grill uses beautiful, cast & machined SS knobs. These really looks impressive, even better than the Vikings and DCSs. So there is absolutely nothing really wrong with the Pro except for it's price point. It served me very well and I was willing to deal with the non-SS parts as needed. But when compared to the Virco, it seems like it should be priced well under the $800 range. The Virco is truly unbeatable under $1000, at least for now. Who knows, maybe next year Virco will have some competition at that price point. -Terry