I ordered one a couple three months ago, and it seemed like it took 3 weeks to arrive.

I sent a check for $50 to their address, and received the kit within a week. See my experience installing it under Virco Section 4. Good luck!

I got mine Friday, one day after I ordered. Now to find the time to do it. :-) I'll have to look into Foilist's remarks on his/her experience.

I'm trying to work out the cost to convert my grill to NG. I know the kit cost, I'm waiting on a couple of bids to stub my gas out to my deck. I'm wondering how much the 12' quick disconnect hose cost, and where people purchased it. (Since it looks like the Virco kit does not include this). Also - what size hose is needed, and connectors.

thanks

philippe,
You will want to have a 3/4" minimum line run to the grill area. Then you can use a 3/8" gas valve just before the quick disconnect fitting which comes with the 12' Charbroil brand hose that is available at Home Depot. Good luck.

do you recall how much the 12' hose cost? (roughly) I couldn't get it to come up on Home Depot's page.

philippe

I could not either, just had to go there. It was about $35.00

By what percentage (or how much less than the 84K btu total) does the NG conversion reduce the grill? (I'm working out my gas capacity of the houses circuit to determine what I need to do in bringing out gas to the grill).

thanks,

philippe

I think someone here posted that the total BTU with NG and the kit is only slightly less than the original setup with LP. Maybe 17 BTU out of each of the main burners instead of 18 BTU. There is no set formula for this, as it depends on the burner design and the design of the conversion kit. The conversion kit is supposed to compensate for the lower BTU/cubic foot that NG has versus LP, and it sounds like this one does a pretty good job of that.

IMHO, 17 BTU per burner is more than enough.

according to the manual, with butane, the main burners are 20k btu each, 12k btu for the side and for the rotis (total of 84k btu). So...

I guess I'll give them a call.

philippe

I talked with Virco, the main burners drop from 20K btu to 15Kbtu, the rotis and side burners stay the same. (The main burners go to a 1.7mm orfice. I asked him why, he said that is the orfices they have and proceeded to say one could drill it out if one wanted more btu but that 15K was probably plenty adequate.

anyhow - that is the 'official' answer.

philippe

what is the number to Virco customer service? I can't find it!

It's on your grill, it's also 1-800--913-8999

FYI FWIW: I converted my Member's Mark BBQ grill
from LP to NG and you can read (and see pictures)
of how I did it at:
  http://www.komar.org/bbq/mm/convert/

The basic concepts are the same for the Virco (or any
grill for that matter) ... and most of the work is
removing/replacing the valves/orifices anyway, so
drilling the holes yourself isn't that much more work.

*AND* you can then "tune" the BTU's to whatever you want! ;-)

alek

I can't keep track of the BTU's! In any case, I agree, 15,000 BTU per main burner, considering you have three of them, should be plenty.

thanks alek,

i prefer to get their conversion kit. It allows me to go back to propane if ever needed. (Or return it to Costco if some appropriate reason came up.) Of course I can fine tune their converision kit if I decide that 15K btu isn't enough although I'm guessing it will be fine (as spamdamn points out). Anyhow, mainly I'm just trying to figure out if my gas network off the meter is going to be able to handle all this extra capacity.

Anyone have any opinions as to how 'over engineered' the code gas tables are? (or how not over engineered)? It is looking like I'll be over tapped if I add the grill unless going back to the trunk of my gas network and upgrading from 3/4" to 1". Of course this assumes that every appliance is on high and all at the same time which would rarely if ever be the case. (Basically a 50K btu furnace, two gas fire places, one 31k btu and one 40k btu, and this. And it is rare that both gas fire places are on at the same time, in addition to the fact that they are both turned down from their max settings, probably to about 75%).

Oh - and if anyone knows, do I count the 12' quick connect hose as an additional 12' in my calculations for gas code?

thanks,

philippe

So what is the final verdict on the valves from the conversion kit? Are they the same as the original? According to Virco techs, they are exactly the same and only the orifices are different? The conversion seems a lot more simple if only the orifices needs to be changed.
Should I really need to modify the valves to avoid blow outs from too low of a level. Wouldn't just turning up the knob in between high and low a little bit prevent this?

Not trying to be argumentative, but just wanted to know what will happen if I modify the orifice and not the valves?

Again, thank you for all the replies.

You won't be able to keep the burners on at the low setting. The valves are set up for LP so the openings on low are much smaller than they would be for NG. You will need to disassemble the valves and drill the holes larger. A good place for this information is at Alek's web site. The grill he has is a Member's Mark from Sam's, but the principal and modifications are the same for the Virco.

Here is a link that might be useful: NG conversion