After a false start or two, I picked up a Dwyer air flow meter on Ebay for about $10 and installed it on my homemade propane powered roaster Making Your Own 57 Ounce Roaster Updated Again. Get one with the built in valve, that black knob in the picture. By the way it is possible to totally unscrew the valve which will result in propane to the face, so don't unscrew it.



The false starts were buying the wrong range meter. One needs (thanks Jon for the advice) something with about a 0-20 SCFH scale. SCFM is not what is wanted here. (Standard Cubic Foot/Minute-- we need Standard Cubit Foot/Hour meters). For me the ideal scale would actually be 5-25, but 0-20 is fine.

Hooking it up is easy with 45 degree flared fittings. I had never flared before, and it was simple and satisfying and I found I had a flair for it. (If you do this yourself, it is easy, but get familiar with 45 degree fittings (not 37 degree), cutting tubing properly, deburring, knowing not to use pipe dope on flare fittings, etc etc etc, all of which is easily found on the web. Or get someone who knows how-- it's a 20 minute job.)

I've only used it a couple times so far, but I find it very convenient. The absolute numbers have no meaning to me, but I can only put out about 19 SCFH and my normal roasting range falls between 12-18 SCFH. The gauge does not measure pressure, which for reasons I don't understand, is the typical gauge on roasters. It doesn't make much sense to me since one can have high pressure, but due to the size of the tubing, not much gas and one can have low pressure and a big pipe with lots of gas.

What I found is that it is very intuitive and useful to be able to get the gas flow to various repeatable levels, absolute numbers aside. Before, I was sort of counting turns of a valve handle which are easy to lose track of. Including fittings, the whole setup can be put together for less than $50, though in my case, I ended up with extra bits and pieces that drove the price up.

I highly recommend it. For safety, don't forget to turn off the valve on the flowmeter as well as the main propane valve and don't leave it unattended... Also, all of the above assumes you are using "high pressure" propane regulators which are the red ones. If you are using blue or green regulators which are "household" pressure in the US please ignore this posting. Also I know very little about the above, other than what I learned by doing it-- I am not a gas, propane or plumbing expert.

dan

Looks great Dan!
Glad I could help.....

Now if I could only get offa my butt and install my meter on the roaster! As you know, I have one that I purchased a while back but have yet to install it.

But I'm highly motivated now. I feel that my current setup lacks the precision I would like for the lower settings I use at the end of the roast, so while most roasts come out nicely I would like tighter control.

Thanks for providing even more motivation.
Jon