That's why you do tests

Been off on a trip to Florida to help my daughter move and attend a family Thanksgiving reunion. It was fun, but now its back to kilns and pots. I was inspired by a stop to the Clay & Paper gallery in Dunedin, FL. I got to see a number of potter's work including McKenzie Smith's. I took a workshop of his acouple of years ago and I really enjoy both him and his ware.

The test went well up to the point where I tried turned the burners up to full operating pressure. I turned up one burner and was only able to get 5 psi. I tried to turn the other up and the pressure on the whole system dropped to less than 0.5 psi. I shut the system in and went away for about 30 minutes and then tried relighting pilots and burners. They worked as before the drop. I slowly turned both burners up and when I got to 4.0 psi on both burners, it shut in again. Had to be a safety device on the line. I checked with the engineer at the gas company and he said it could be the regulator or a federally mandated flow suppression device that was under sized. They are due here in a little while to dig up the line at the connection to the town supply main to replace the flow suppression device with a larger one. Then they want to run the burners at maximum pressure to verify that was it. I am warming the kiln just because I am a little nervous about throwing that much heat at a cold kiln.

Hopefully, this will get me my 6 psi design operating pressure.