Most times, the height of the flames in your gas fire pit will be affected by the size of your burner and the gas.
Size of the burner.
All Fire pit burners come with a BTU rating which standards for British Thermal Unit. The BTU rating of a fire pit burner dictates how much gas the burner is going to consume, to provide a reasonable heat and of course flame height.
The bigger the burner the higher the BTU rating which will require more gas pressure.
Gas pressure at the fire pit burner
So you have a chosen a fire pit burner with a particular BTU rating, this rating will tell how much gas pressure will be required at the burner for the fire pit to generate maximum heat and reasonable flames.
Gas pressure at the fire pit burner will be affected by;
- Gas pressure at source
The more the pressure of your gas fire pit at the source, the better because this will allow the gas to flow harder and faster to your burner which will lead to better more robust fire pit flames.
- The distance the gas has to travel
The less the distance the gas has to travel the more the pressure with which the gas gets fed into the burner for those taller flames.
Also, the less the corners the gas has to cut to reach the burner the better because more corners will only serve to reduce the gas pressure finally getting into the burner.
How to increase fire pit flames of an existing fire pit.
There is good news for you if you once had tall robust flames and after a few uses the flames became puny and weak. This could just mean that your fire pit just needs a little bit of maintenance and everything goes back to the way it was.
1. So first, remove all the fire glass, lava rocks or log sets so that you can examine whether the gas holes are clogged.
2. If any of the gas holes appear to be clogged with dust rust,corrosion or any other debris, find something such as a wire brush that you can use to thoroughly clean the gas holes without enlarging them.
Use an air compressor to clean out any remaining dust and particles to ensure the gas holes are completely clean.
4. Put back your fire glass or lava rocks, adjust the valve fully on and you should be able to see improvement in the height of your gas fire pit.
If you originally had good flames, doing this little process should bring back your fire pit’s flames to their original state. However, if there is no improvement in flame height, the problem might be the burner size of your fire pit and your gas pressure.
What you should not do to try and increase the flame of your gas fire pit;
Install a larger burner with higher BTU rating in your fire pit- this will only reduce the flame height even more because it will demand even more gas at more pressure. You’re be back to where you started only this time you’re be worse of!